Purple Hibiscus

diverting traffic. We didn’t see the cars involved in the accident until we were in the thick of the jam. One car had stopped at the checkpoint, and another had rammed into it from behind. The second car was crushed to half of its size. A bloodied corpse, a man in blue jeans, lay on the roadside.
    “May his soul rest in peace,” Papa said, crossing himself.
    “Look away,” Mama said, turning back to us.
    But Jaja and I were already looking at the corpse. Papa was talking about the policemen, about how they set up the roadblocks in wooded parts, even if it was dangerous for motorists, just so that they could use the bushes to hide the money theyextorted from travelers. But I was not really listening to Papa; I was thinking of the man in the blue jeans, the dead man. I was wondering where he was going and what he had planned to do there.
    PAPA CALLED AUNTY IFEOMA two days later. Perhaps he would not have called her if we had not gone to confession that day. And perhaps then we would never have gone to Nsukka and everything would have remained the same.
    It was the feast of the Epiphany, a holy day of obligation, so Papa did not go to work. We went to morning Mass, and although we did not usually visit Father Benedict on holy days of obligation, we went to his house afterward. Papa wanted Father Benedict to hear our confession. We had not gone in Abba because Papa did not like to make his confession in Igbo, and besides, Papa said that the parish priest in Abba was not spiritual enough. That was the problem with our people, Papa told us, our priorities were wrong; we cared too much about huge church buildings and mighty statues. You would never see white people doing that.
    In Father Benedict’s house, Mama and Jaja and I sat in the living room, reading the newspapers and magazines that were spread on the low, coffin-like table as if they were for sale while Papa talked with Father Benedict in the adjoining study room. Papa emerged and asked us to prepare for confession; he would go first. Even though Papa shut the door firmly, I heard his voice, words flowing into each other in an endless rumble like a revving car engine. Mama went next, and the door remained open a crack, but I could not hear her. Jaja took the shortest time. When he came out, still crossing himself as if he hadbeen in too much of a hurry to leave the room, I asked him with my eyes if he had remembered the lie to Papa-Nnukwu, and he nodded. I went into the room, barely big enough to hold a desk and two chairs, and pushed the door to make sure it shut properly.
    “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” I said, sitting on the very edge of the chair. I longed for a confessional, for the safety of the wood cubicle and the green curtain that separated priest and penitent. I wished I could kneel, and then I wished I could shield my face with a file from Father Benedict’s desk. Face-to-face confessions made me think of Judgment Day come early, made me feel unprepared.
    “Yes, Kambili,” Father Benedict said. He sat upright on his chair, fingering the purple stole across his shoulders.
    “It has been three weeks since my last confession,” I said. I was staring fixedly at the wall, right below the framed photo of the Pope, which had a signature scrawled underneath. “Here are my sins. I lied two times. I broke the Eucharistic fast once. I lost concentration during the rosary three times. For all I have said and for all I have forgotten to say, I beg pardon from your hands and the hands of God.”
    Father Benedict shifted on his chair. “Go on, then. You know it’s a sin against the Holy Spirit to willfully keep something back at confession.”
    “Yes, Father.”
    “Go on, then.”
    I looked away from the wall to glance at him. His eyes were the same green shade of a snake I had seen once, slithering across the yard near the hibiscus bushes. The gardener had said it was a harmless garden snake.
    “Kambili, you must confess all your sins.”
    “Yes, Father. I have.”
    “It is wrong to hide from the Lord. I will give you a moment to think.”
    I nodded and stared back at the wall. Was there something I had done that Father Benedict knew about that I did not know? Had Papa told him something?
    “I spent more than fifteen minutes at my grandfather’s house,” I said finally. “My grandfather is a pagan.”
    “Did you eat any of the native foods sacrificed to idols?”
    “No, Father.”
    “Did you participate in any pagan