Purple Hibiscus

into my stomach walls and letting go. “Do you have Panadol, Mama?”
    “Cramps
abia
?”
    “Yes. My stomach is so empty, too.”
    Mama looked at the wall clock, a gift from a charity Papa donated to, oval shaped and embossed with his name in gold lettering. It was 7:37. The Eucharist fast mandated that thefaithful not eat solid food an hour before Mass. We never broke the Eucharistic fast; the table was set for breakfast with teacups and cereal bowls side by side, but we would not eat until we came home.
    “Eat a little corn flakes, quickly,” Mama said, almost in a whisper. “You need something in your stomach to hold the Panadol.”
    Jaja poured the cereal from the carton on the table, scooped in powdered milk and sugar with a teaspoon, and added water. The glass bowl was transparent, and I could see the chalky clumps the milk made with the water at the bottom of the bowl.
    “Papa is with visitors, we will hear him as he comes up,” he said.
    I started to wolf the cereal down, standing. Mama gave me the Panadol tablets, still in the silver-colored foil, which crinkled as I opened it. Jaja had not put much cereal in the bowl, and I was almost done eating it when the door opened and Papa came in.
    Papa’s white shirt, with its perfectly tailored lines, did little to minimize the mound of flesh that was his stomach. While he stared at the glass bowl of corn flakes in my hand, I looked down at the few flaccid flakes floating among the clumps of milk and wondered how he had climbed the stairs so soundlessly.
    “What are you doing, Kambili?”
    I swallowed hard. “I…I…”
    “You are eating ten minutes before Mass? Ten minutes before Mass?”
    “Her period started and she has cramps—” Mama said.
    Jaja cut her short. “I told her to eat corn flakes before she took Panadol, Papa. I made it for her.”
    “Has the devil asked you all to go on errands for him?” The Igbo words burst out of Papa’s mouth. “Has the devil built a tent in my house?” He turned to Mama. “You sit there and watch her desecrate the Eucharistic fast,
maka nnidi
?”
    He unbuckled his belt slowly. It was a heavy belt made of layers of brown leather with a sedate leather-covered buckle. It landed on Jaja first, across his shoulder. Then Mama raised her hands as it landed on her upper arm, which was covered by the puffy sequined sleeve of her church blouse. I put the bowl down just as the belt landed on my back. Sometimes I watched the Fulani nomads, white jellabas flapping against their legs in the wind, making clucking sounds as they herded their cows across the roads in Enugu with a switch, each smack of the switch swift and precise. Papa was like a Fulani nomad—although he did not have their spare, tall body—as he swung his belt at Mama, Jaja, and me, muttering that the devil would not win. We did not move more than two steps away from the leather belt that swished through the air.
    Then the belt stopped, and Papa stared at the leather in his hand. His face crumpled; his eyelids sagged. “Why do you walk into sin?” he asked. “Why do you like sin?”
    Mama took the belt from him and laid it on the table.
    Papa crushed Jaja and me to his body. “Did the belt hurt you? Did it break your skin?” he asked, examining our faces. I felt a throbbing on my back, but I said no, that I was not hurt. It was the way Papa shook his head when he talked about liking sin, as if something weighed him down, something he could not throw off.
    We went to the later Mass. But first we changed our clothes, even Papa, and washed our faces.
    WE LEFT ABBA right after New Year’s. The wives of the umunna took the leftover food, even the cooked rice and beans that Mama said were spoiled, and they knelt in the backyard dirt to thank Papa and Mama. The gate man waved with both hands over his head as we drove off. His name was Haruna, he had told Jaja and me a few days before, and in his Hausa-accented English that reversed
P
and
F
, he told us that our pather was the best Big Man he had ever seen, the best emfloyer he had ever had. Did we know our pather faid his children’s school pees? Did we know our pather had helfed his wipe get the messenger job at the Local Government oppice? We were lucky to have such a pather.
    Papa started the rosary as we drove onto the expressway. We had driven for less than half an hour when we came to a checkpoint; there was a traffic jam, and policemen, many more than was usual, were waving their guns and