Purple Hibiscus

hung them to dry that morning. Jaja and I washed our school uniforms while Sisi washed the rest of our clothes. We always soaked tiny sections of fabric in the foamy water first to check if the colors would run, although we knew they would not. We wanted to spend every minute of the half hour Papa allocated to uniform washing.
    “Thank you, Mama, I was about to bring them in,” I said, getting up to fold the clothes. It was not proper to let an older person do your chores, but Mama did not mind; there was so much that she did not mind.
    “A drizzle is coming. I did not want them to get wet.” She ran her hand across my uniform, a gray skirt with a darker-tonedwaistband, long enough to show no calf when I wore it. “
Nne
, you’re going to have a brother or a sister.”
    I stared. She was sitting on my bed, knees close together. “You’re going to have a baby?”
    “Yes.” She smiled, still running her hand over my skirt.
    “When?”
    “In October. I went to Park Lane yesterday to see my doctor.”
    “Thanks be to God.” It was what Jaja and I said, what Papa expected us to say, when good things happened.
    “Yes.” Mama let go of my skirt, almost reluctantly. “God is faithful. You know after you came and I had the miscarriages, the villagers started to whisper. The members of our umunna even sent people to your father to urge him to have children with someone else. So many people had willing daughters, and many of them were university graduates, too. They might have borne many sons and taken over our home and driven us out, like Mr. Ezendu’s second wife did. But your father stayed with me, with us.” She did not usually say so much at one time. She spoke the way a bird eats, in small amounts.
    “Yes,” I said. Papa deserved praise for not choosing to have more sons with another woman, of course, for not choosing to take a second wife. But then, Papa was different. I wished that Mama would not compare him with Mr. Ezendu, with anybody; it lowered him, soiled him.
    “They even said somebody had tied up my womb with
ogwu
.” Mama shook her head and smiled, the indulgent smile that stretched across her face when she talked about people who believed in oracles, or when relatives suggested she consult a witch doctor, or when people recounted tales of digging up hair tufts and animal bones wrapped in cloth that had beenburied in their front yards to ward off progress. “They do not know that God works in mysterious ways.”
    “Yes,” I said. I held the clothes carefully, making sure the folded edges were even. “God works in mysterious ways.” I did not know she had been trying to have a baby since the last miscarriage almost six years ago. I could not even think of her and Papa together, on the bed they shared, custom-made and wider than the conventional king-size. When I thought of affection between them, I thought of them exchanging the sign of peace at Mass, the way Papa would hold her tenderly in his arms after they had clasped hands.
    “Did school go well?” Mama asked, rising. She had asked me earlier.
    “Yes.”
    “Sisi and I are cooking
moi-moi
for the sisters; they will be here soon,” Mama said, before going back downstairs. I followed her and placed my folded uniforms on the table in the hallway, where Sisi would get them for ironing.
    The sisters, members of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal prayer group, soon arrived, and their Igbo songs, accompanied by robust hand clapping, echoed upstairs. They would pray and sing for about half an hour, and then Mama would interrupt in her low voice, which barely carried upstairs even with my door open, to tell them she had prepared a “little something” for them. When Sisi started to bring in the platters of moi-moi and jollof rice and fried chicken, the women would gently chastise Mama. “Sister Beatrice, what is it? Why have you done this? Are we not content with the
anara
we are offered in other sisters’ homes? You shouldn’t have, really.” Then a piping voice would say, “Praise the Lord!” dragging out thefirst word as long as she could. The “Alleluia” response would push against the walls of my room, against the glass furnishings of the living room. Then they would pray, asking God to reward Sister Beatrice’s generosity, and add more blessings to the many she already had. Then the
clink-clink-clink
of forks and spoons scraping against plates would echo over the house. Mama never used plastic cutlery, no matter how