Purple Hibiscus

count.”
    “Eh? So I don’t count? Has Eugene ever asked about your aching leg? If I do not count, then I will stop asking if you rose well in the morning.”
    Papa-Nnukwu chuckled. “Then my spirit will haunt you when I join the ancestors.”
    “It will haunt Eugene first.”
    “I joke with you,
nwa m
. Where would I be today if my
chi
had not given me a daughter?” Papa Nnukwu paused. “My spirit will intercede for you, so that
Chukwu
will send a good man to take care of you and the children.”
    “Let your spirit ask
Chukwu
to hasten my promotion to senior lecturer, that is all I ask,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
    Papa-Nnukwu did not reply for a while, and I wondered if the mix of high life music from the car radio and the rattling of the loose screws and the harmattan haze had eased him into sleep.
    “Still, I say it was the missionaries that misled my son,” he said, startling me.
    “We have heard this many times. Tell us something else,” Aunty Ifeoma said. But Papa-Nnukwu kept talking as though he had not heard her.
    “I remember the first one that came to Abba, the one they called Fada John. His face was red like palm oil; they say our type of sun does not shine in the white man’s land. He had a helper, a man from Nimo called Jude. In the afternoon they gathered the children under the ukwa tree in the mission and taught them their religion. I did not join them,
kpa
, but I went sometimes to see what they were doing. One day I said to them, Where is this god you worship? They said he was like
Chukwu, that
he was in the sky. I asked then, Who is the person that was killed, the person that hangs on the wood outside the mission? They said he was the son, but that the son and the father are equal. It was then that I knew that the white man was mad. The father and the son are equal?
Tufia
! Do you not see? That is why Eugene can disregard me, because he thinks we are equal.”
    My cousins chuckled. So did Aunty Ifeoma, who soon stopped and said to Papa-Nnukwu, “It is enough, close your mouth and rest. We are almost there and you will need your energy to tell the children about the
mmuo
.”
    “Papa-Nnukwu, are you comfortable?” Amaka asked, leaning across toward the front seat. “Do you want me to adjust your seat, to make more room for you?”
    “No, I am fine. I am an old man now and my height is gone. I would not have fit in this car in my prime. In those days, I plucked
icheku
from the trees by just reaching out high; I did not need to climb.”
    “Of course,” Aunty Ifeoma said, laughing again. “And could you not reach out and touch the sky, too?”
    She laughed so easily, so often. They all did, even little Chima.
    When we got to Ezi Icheke, cars lined the road almost bumper to bumper. The crowds that pressed around the cars were so dense there was no space between people and they blended into one another, wrappers blended into T-shirts, trousers into skirts, dresses into shirts. Aunty Ifeoma finally found a spot and eased the station wagon in. The mmuo had started to walk past, and often a long line of cars waited for an mmuo to walk past so they could drive on. Hawkers were at every corner, with glass-enclosed cases of akara and suya and browned chicken drumsticks, with trays of peeled oranges, with coolers the size of bathtubs full of Walls banana ice cream. It was like a vibrant painting that had come alive. I had never been to see mmuo, to sit in a stationary car alongside thousands of people who had all come to watch. Papa had driven us past the crowds at Ezi Icheke once, some years ago, and he muttered about ignorant people participating in the ritual of pagan masquerades. He said that the stories about mmuo, that they were spirits who had climbed out of ant holes, that they could make chairs run and baskets hold water, were all devilish folklore.
Devilish Folklore
. It sounded dangerous the way Papa said it.
    “Look at this,” Papa-Nnukwu said. “This is a woman spirit, and the women
mmuo
are harmless. They do not even go near the big ones at the festival.” The mmuo he pointed to was small; its carved wooden face had angular, pretty features and rouged lips. It stopped often to dance, wiggling this way andthat, so that the string of beads around its waist swayed and rippled. The crowds nearby cheered, and some people threw money toward it. Little boys—the followers of the mmuo who were playing music with metal ogenes and wooden ichakas—picked up the crumpled naira notes.