Purple Hibiscus

living room, wondering why Jaja had asked for the key. Of course Papa would never give it to him, he knew that, knew that Papa would never let us lock our doors. For a moment, I wondered if Papa was right, if being with Papa-Nnukwu had made Jaja evil, had made us evil.
    “It feels different to be back,
okwia
?” Mama asked. She was looking through samples of fabric, to pick out a shade for the new curtains. We replaced the curtains every year, toward the end of harmattan. Kevin brought samples for Mama to look at, and she picked some and showed Papa, so he could make the final decision. Papa usually chose her favorite. Dark beige last year. Sand beige the year before.
    I wanted to tell Mama that it did feel different to be back, that our living room had too much empty space, too much wasted marble floor that gleamed from Sisi’s polishing and housed nothing. Our ceilings were too high. Our furniture was lifeless: the glass tables did not shed twisted skin in the harmattan, the leather sofas’ greeting was a clammy coldness, the Persian rugs were too lush to have any feeling. But I said, “You polished the étagère.”
    “Yes.”
    “When?”
    “Yesterday.”
    I stared at her eye. It appeared to be opening now; it musthave been swollen completely shut yesterday.
    “Kambili!” Papa’s voice carried clearly from upstairs. I held my breath and sat still. “Kambili!”
    “
Nne
, go,” Mama said.
    I went upstairs slowly. Papa was in the bathroom, with the door ajar. I knocked on the open door and stood by, wondering why he had called me when he was in the bathroom. “Come in,” he said. He was standing by the tub. “Climb into the tub.”
    I stared at Papa. Why was he asking me to climb into the tub? I looked around the bathroom floor; there was no stick anywhere. Maybe he would keep me in the bathroom and then go downstairs, out through the kitchen, to break a stick off one of the trees in the backyard. When Jaja and I were younger, from elementary two until about elementary five, he asked us to get the stick ourselves. We always chose whistling pine because the branches were malleable, not as painful as the stiffer branches from the gmelina or the avocado. And Jaja soaked the sticks in cold water because he said that made them less painful when they landed on your body. The older we got, though, the smaller the branches we brought, until Papa started to go out himself to get the stick.
    “Climb into the tub,” Papa said again.
    I stepped into the tub and stood looking at him. It didn’t seem that he was going to get a stick, and I felt fear, stinging and raw, fill my bladder and my ears. I did not know what he was going to do to me. It was easier when I saw a stick, because I could rub my palms together and tighten the muscles of my calves in preparation. He had never asked me to standinside a tub. Then I noticed the kettle on the floor, close to Papa’s feet, the green kettle Sisi used to boil hot water for tea and garri, the one that whistled when the water started to boil. Papa picked it up. “You knew your grandfather was coming to Nsukka, did you not?” he asked in Igbo.
    “Yes, Papa.”
    “Did you pick up the phone and inform me of this,
gbo
?”
    “No.”
    “You knew you would be sleeping in the same house as a heathen?”
    “Yes, Papa.”
    “So you saw the sin clearly and you walked right into it?”
    I nodded. “Yes, Papa.”
    “Kambili, you are precious.” His voice quavered now, like someone speaking at a funeral, choked with emotion. “You should strive for perfection. You should not see sin and walk right into it.” He lowered the kettle into the tub, tilted it toward my feet. He poured the hot water on my feet, slowly, as if he were conducting an experiment and wanted to see what would happen. He was crying now, tears streaming down his face. I saw the moist steam before I saw the water. I watched the water leave the kettle, flowing almost in slow motion in an arc to my feet. The pain of contact was so pure, so scalding, I felt nothing for a second. And then I screamed.
    “That is what you do to yourself when you walk into sin. You burn your feet,” he said.
    I wanted to say “Yes, Papa,” because he was right, but the burning on my feet was climbing up, in swift courses of excruciating pain, to my head and lips and eyes. Papa was holdingme with one wide hand, pouring the water carefully with the other. I did not know that the sobbing voice—“I’m sorry! I’m