Purple Hibiscus

voices rise sometimes in argument, just as we heard the up-down cadence of the female voices in the backyard, the wives of our umunna who were oiling pots to make them easier to wash later and grinding spices in wooden mortars and starting fires underneath the tripods.
    “Will you confess it?” I asked Jaja, as we ate.
    “What?”
    “What you said today, that if we were thirsty, we would drink in Papa-Nnukwu’s house. You know we can’t drink in Papa-Nnukwu’s house,” I said.
    “I just wanted to say something to make him feel better.”
    “He takes it well.”
    “He hides it well,” Jaja said.
    Papa opened the door then and came in. I had not heard him come up the stairs, and besides, I did not think he would come up because the church council meeting was still going on downstairs.
    “Good afternoon, Papa,” Jaja and I said.
    “Kevin said you stayed up to twenty-five minutes with your grandfather. Is that what I told you?” Papa’s voice was low.
    “I wasted time, it was my fault,” Jaja said.
    “What did you do there? Did you eat food sacrificed to idols? Did you desecrate your Christian tongue?”
    I sat frozen; I did not know that tongues could be Christian, too.
    “No,” Jaja said.
    Papa was walking toward Jaja. He spoke entirely in Igbo now. I thought he would pull at Jaja’s ears, that he would tug and yank at the same pace as he spoke, that he would slap Jaja’s face and his palm would make that sound, like a heavy book falling from a library shelf in school. And then he would reach across and slap me on the face with the casualness of reaching for the pepper shaker. But he said, “I want you to finish that food and go to your rooms and pray for forgiveness,” before turning to go back downstairs. The silence he left was heavy but comfortable, like a well-worn, prickly cardigan on a bitter morning.
    “You still have rice on your plate,” Jaja said, finally.
    I nodded and picked up my fork. Then I heard Papa’s raised voice just outside the window and put the fork down.
    “What is he doing in my house? What is Anikwenwa doing in my house?” The enraged timber in Papa’s voice made myfingers cold at the tips. Jaja and I dashed to the window, and because we could see nothing, we dashed out to the verandah and stood by the pillars.
    Papa was standing in the front yard, near an orange tree, screaming at a wrinkled old man in a torn white singlet and a wrapper wound round his waist. A few other men stood around Papa.
    “What is Anikwenwa doing in my house? What is a worshiper of idols doing in my house? Leave my house!”
    “Do you know that I am in your father’s age group,
gbo
?” the old man asked. The finger he waved in the air was meant for Papa’s face, but it only hovered around his chest. “Do you know that I sucked my mother’s breast when your father sucked his mother’s?”
    “Leave my house!” Papa pointed at the gate.
    Two men slowly ushered Anikwenwa out of the compound. He did not resist; he was too old to, anyway. But he kept looking back and throwing words at Papa. “
Ifukwa gi
! You are like a fly blindly following a corpse into the grave!”
    I followed the old man’s unsteady gait until he walked out through the gates.

    Aunty Ifeoma came the next day, in the evening, when the orange trees started to cast long, wavy shadows across the water fountain in the front yard. Her laughter floated upstairs into the living room, where I sat reading. I had not heard it in two years, but I would know that cackling, hearty sound anywhere. Aunty Ifeoma was as tall as Papa, with a well-proportioned body. She walked fast, like one who knew just where she was going and what she was going to do there. And she spoke the way she walked, as if to get as many words out of her mouth as she could in the shortest time.
    “Welcome, Aunty,
nno
,” I said, rising to hug her.
    She did not give me the usual brief side hug. She clasped me in her arms and held me tightly against the softness of her body. The wide lapels of her blue, A-line dress smelled of lavender.
    “Kambili,
kedu
?” A wide smile stretched her dark-complected face, revealing a gap between her front teeth.
    “I’m fine, Aunty.”
    “You have grown so much. Look at you, look at you.” She reached out and pulled my left breast. “Look how fast these are growing!”
    I looked away and inhaled deeply so that I would not start to stutter. I did not know how to handle that kind of playfulness.
    “Where is