Purple Hibiscus

low wooden stool, his legs bent into a triangle. The loose knot of his wrapper had come undone, and the wrapper had slipped off his waist to cover the stool, its faded blue edges grazing the floor. A kerosene lamp, turned to its lowest, was right next to him. The flickering light cast a topaz glow over the narrow verandah, over the stubby gray hairs on Papa-Nnukwu’s chest, over the loose, soil-colored skin on his legs. He leaned down to draw a line on the floor with the nzu in his hand. He was speaking, his face down as if addressing the white chalk line, which now looked yellow. He was talking to the gods or the ancestors; I remembered Aunty Ifeoma saying that the two could be interchanged.
    “Chineke! I thank you for this new morning! I thank you for the sun that rises.” His lower lip quivered as he spoke. Perhaps that was why his Igbo words flowed into each other, as if writing his speech would result in a single long word. He bent down to draw another line, quickly, with a fierce determination that shook the flesh on his arm, which was hanging low like a brown leather pouch. “Chineke! I have killed no one, Ihave taken no one’s land, I have not committed adultery.” He leaned over and drew the third line. The stool squeaked. “Chineke! I have wished others well. I have helped those who have nothing with the little that my hands can spare.”
    A cock was crowing, a drawn-out, plaintive sound that seemed very close close by.
    “Chineke! Bless me. Let me find enough to fill my stomach. Bless my daughter, Ifeoma. Give her enough for her family.” He shifted on the stool. His navel had once jutted out, I could tell, but now it looked like a wrinkled eggplant, drooping.
    “Chineke! Bless my son, Eugene. Let the sun not set on his prosperity. Lift the curse they have put on him.” Papa-Nnukwu leaned over and drew one more line. I was surprised that he prayed for Papa with the same earnestness that he prayed for himself and Aunty Ifeoma.
    “Chineke! Bless the children of my children. Let your eyes follow them away from evil and towards good.” Papa-Nnukwu smiled as he spoke. His few front teeth seemed a deeper yellow in the light, like fresh corn kernels. The wide gaps in his gums were tinged a subtle tawny color. “Chineke! Those who wish others well, keep them well. Those who wish others ill, keep them ill.” Papa-Nnukwu drew the last line, longer than the rest, with a flourish. He was done.
    When Papa-Nnukwu rose and stretched, his entire body, like the bark of the gnarled gmelina tree in our yard, captured the gold shadows from the lamp flame in its many furrows and ridges. Even the age spots that dotted his hands and legs gleamed. I did not look away, although it was sinful to look upon another person’s nakedness. The rumples in Papa-Nnukwu’s belly did not seem so many now, and his navel rosehigher, still enclosed between folds of skin. Between his legs hung a limp cocoon that seemed smoother, free of the wrinkles that crisscrossed the rest of his body like mosquito netting. He picked up his wrapper and tied it around his body, knotting it at his waist. His nipples were like dark raisins nestled among the sparse gray tufts of hair on his chest. He was still smiling as I quietly turned and went back to the bedroom. I never smiled after we said the rosary back home. None of us did.
    PAPA-NNUKWU WAS BACK on the verandah after breakfast, sitting on the stool, with Amaka settled on a plastic mat at his feet. She scrubbed his foot gently with a pumice stone, soaked it in a plastic bowl of water, rubbed it over with Vaseline, and then moved to the other foot. Papa-Nnukwu complained that she would make his feet too tender, that even soft stones would pierce his soles now because he never wore sandals in the village, though Aunty Ifeoma made him wear them here. But he did not ask Amaka to stop.
    “I am going to paint him out here on the verandah, in the shade. I want to catch the sunlight on his skin,” Amaka said, when Obiora joined them.
    Aunty Ifeoma came out, dressed in a blue wrapper and blouse. She was going to the market with Obiora, who she said figured out change faster than a trader with a calculator. “Kambili, I want you to help me do the
orah
leaves, so I can start the soup when I come back,” she said.
    “
Orah
leaves?” I asked, swallowing.
    “Yes. Don’t you know how to prepare
orah
?”
    I shook my head. “No, Aunty.”
    “Amaka will do it, then,” Aunty Ifeoma said. She