Purple Hibiscus

fenders. Amaka was seated in the front; Obiora and Chima were in the back seat. Jaja and I climbed into the middle seats. Mama stood watching until the car disappeared from her sight. I knew because I felt her eyes, felt her presence. The car made rattling sounds as if some bolts had come loose and were shaking with every rise and fall of the bumpy road. There were gaping rectangular spaces on the dashboard instead of air-conditioner vents, so the windows were kept down. Dust sailed across my mouth, into my eyes and nose.
    “We’re going to pick up Papa-Nnukwu, he will come with us,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
    I felt a lurch in my stomach and I glanced at Jaja. His eyes met mine. What would we tell Papa? Jaja looked away; he did not have an answer.
    Before Aunty Ifeoma stopped the engine in front of the mud-and-thatch-enclosed compound, Amaka had opened the front door and bounded out. “I’ll fetch Papa-Nnukwu!”
    The boys climbed out of the car and followed Amaka past the small wooden gate.
    “Don’t you want to come out?” Aunty Ifeoma asked, turning to Jaja and me.
    I looked away. Jaja was sitting as still as I was.
    “You don’t want to come into your Papa-Nnukwu’s compound? But didn’t you come to greet him two days ago?” Aunty Ifeoma widened her eyes to stare at us.
    “We are not allowed to come here after we’ve greeted him,” Jaja said
    “What kind of nonsense is that, eh?” Aunty Ifeoma stopped then, perhaps remembering that the rules were not ours. “Tell me, why do you think your father doesn’t want you here?”
    “I don’t know,” Jaja said.
    I sucked my tongue to unfreeze it, tasting the gritty dust. “Because Papa-Nnukwu is a pagan.” Papa would be proud that I had said that.
    “Your Papa-Nnukwu is not a pagan, Kambili, he is a traditionalist,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
    I stared at her. Pagan, traditionalist, what did it matter? He was not Catholic, that was all; he was not of the faith. He was one of the people whose conversion we prayed for so that they did not end in the everlasting torment of hellfire.
    We sat silently until the gate swung open and Amaka cameout, walking close enough to Papa-Nnukwu to support him if he needed it. The boys walked behind them. Papa-Nnukwu wore a loose print shirt and a pair of knee-length khaki shorts. I had never seen him in anything but the threadbare wrappers that were wound around his body when we visited him.
    “I got him those shorts,” Aunty Ifeoma said, with a laugh. “See how he looks so youthful, who would believe he is eighty?”
    Amaka helped Papa-Nnukwu get into the front seat, and then she got in the middle with us.
    “Papa-Nnukwu, good afternoon sir,” Jaja and I greeted.
    “Kambili, Jaja, I see you again before you go back to the city?
Ehye
, it is a sign that I am going soon to meet the ancestors.”
    “
Nna anyi
, are you not tired of predicting your death?” Aunty Ifeoma said, starting the engine. “Let us hear something new!” She called him nna anyi, our father. I wondered if Papa used to call him that and what Papa would call him now if they spoke to each other.
    “He likes to talk about dying soon,” Amaka said, in amused English. “He thinks that will get us to do things for him,”
    “Dying soon indeed. He’ll be here when we are as old as he is now,” Obiora said, in equally amused English.
    “What are those children saying,
gbo
, Ifeoma?” Papa-Nnukwu asked. “Are they conspiring to share my gold and many lands? Will they not wait for me to go first?”
    “If you had gold and lands, we would have killed you ourselves years ago,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
    My cousins laughed, and Amaka glanced at Jaja and me, perhaps wondering why we did not laugh, too. I wanted tosmile, but we were driving past our house just then, and the sight of the looming black gates and white walls stiffened my lips.
    “This is what our people say to the High God, the
Chukwu
,” Papa-Nnukwu said. “Give me both wealth and a child, but if I must choose one, give me a child because when my child grows, so will my wealth.” Papa-Nnukwu stopped, turned to look back toward our house. “
Nekenem
, look at me. My son owns that house that can fit in every man in Abba, and yet many times I have nothing to put on my plate. I should not have let him follow those missionaries.”
    “Nna anyi
,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “It was not the missionaries. Did I not go to the missionary school, too?”
    “But you are a woman. You do not