Purple Hibiscus

funeral,” Amaka said. “Now I know he’ll rest in peace. Uncle Eugene gave Mom so much money she’s buying seven cows for the funeral!”
    “That’s nice.” A mumble.
    “I hope you and Jaja can come for Easter. The apparitions are still going on, so maybe we can go on pilgrimage to Aokpe this time, if that will make Uncle Eugene say yes. And I am doing my confirmation on Easter Sunday and I want you and Jaja to be there.”
    “I want to go, too,” I said, smiling, because the words I had just said, the whole conversation with Amaka, were dreamlike. I thought about my own confirmation, last year at St. Agnes. Papa had bought my white lace dress and a soft, layered veil, which the women in Mama’s prayer group touched, crowdingaround me after Mass. The bishop had trouble lifting the veil from my face to make the sign of the cross on my forehead and say, “Ruth, be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Ruth. Papa had chosen my confirmation name.
    “Have you picked a confirmation name?” I asked.
    “No,” Amaka said. “
Ngwanu
, Mom wants to remind Aunty Beatrice of something.”
    “Greet Chima and Obiora,” I said, before I handed the phone to Mama.
    Back in my room, I stared at my textbook and wondered if Father Amadi had really asked about us or if Aunty Ifeoma had said so out of courtesy, so it would be that he remembered us, just as we remembered him. But Aunty Ifeoma was not like that. She would not say it if he had not asked. I wondered if he had asked about us, Jaja and me at the same time, like asking about two things that went together. Corn and ube. Rice and stew. Yam and oil. Or if he had separated us, asked about me and then about Jaja. When I heard Papa come home from work, I roused myself and looked at my book. I had been doodling on a sheet of paper, stick figures, and “Father Amadi” written over and over again. I tore up the piece of paper.
    I tore up many more in the following weeks. They all had “Father Amadi” written over and over again. On some I tried to capture his voice, using the symbols of music. On others I formed the letters of his name using Roman numerals. I did not need to write his name down to see him, though. I recognized a flash of his gait, that loping, confident stride, in the gardener’s. I saw his lean, muscular build in Kevin and, when school resumed, even a flash of his smile in Mother Lucy. Ijoined the group of girls on the volleyball field on the second day of school. I did not hear the whispers of “backyard snob” or the ridiculing laughter. I did not notice the amused pinches they gave one another. I stood waiting with my hands clasped until I was picked. I saw only Father Amadi’s clay-colored face and heard only “You have good legs for running.”
    It rained heavily the day Ade Coker died, a strange, furious rain in the middle of the parched harmattan. Ade Coker was at breakfast with his family when a courier delivered a package to him. His daughter, in her primary school uniform, was sitting across the table from him. The baby was nearby, in a high chair. His wife was spooning Cerelac into the baby’s mouth. Ade Coker was blown up when he opened the package—a package everybody would have known was from the Head of State even if his wife Yewande had not said that Ade Coker looked at the envelope and said “It has the State House seal” before he opened it.
    When Jaja and I came home from school, we were almost drenched by the walk from the car to the front door; the rain was so heavy it had formed a small pool beside the hibiscuses. My feet itched inside my wet leather sandals. Papa was crumpled on a sofa in the living room, sobbing. He seemed so small.Papa who was so tall that he sometimes lowered his head to get through doorways, that his tailor always used extra fabric to sew his trousers. Now he seemed small; he looked like a rumpled roll of fabric.
    “I should have made Ade hold that story” Papa was saying. “I should have protected him. I should have made him stop that story.”
    Mama held him close to her, cradling his face on her chest. “No,” she said. “
O zugo
. Don’t.”
    Jaja and I stood watching. I thought about Ade Coker’s glasses, I imagined the thick, bluish lenses shattering, the white frames melting into sticky goo. Later, after Mama told us what had happened, how it had happened, Jaja said, “It was God’s will, Papa,” and Papa smiled at Jaja and gently patted his back.
    Papa organized Ade