Purple Hibiscus

me a big card that read “Get well soon to someone special,” and she sat by my bed and talked to me, in confidential whispers, as if we had always been friends. She even showed me her reportcard—she had come second. Before they left, Ezinne asked, “You will stop running away after school, now, won’t you?”
    Mama told me that evening that I would be discharged in two days. But I would not be going home, I would be going to Nsukka for a week, and Jaja would go with me. She did not know how Aunty Ifeoma had convinced Papa, but he had agreed that Nsukka air would be good for me, for my recuperation.
    Rain splashed across the floor of the verandah, even though the sun blazed and I had to narrow my eyes to look out the door of Aunty Ifeoma’s living room. Mama used to tell Jaja and me that God was undecided about what to send, rain or sun. We would sit in our rooms and look out at the raindrops glinting with sunlight, waiting for God to decide.
    “Kambili, do you want a mango?” Obiora asked from behind me.
    He had wanted to help me into the flat when we arrived earlier in the afternoon, and Chima had insisted on carrying my bag. It was as if they feared my illness lingered somewhere within and would pounce out if I exerted myself. Aunty Ifeoma had told them mine was a serious illness, that I had nearly died.
    “I will eat one later,” I said, turning.
    Obiora was pounding a yellow mango against the living room wall. He would do that until the inside became a soft pulp. Then he would bite a tiny hole in one end of the fruit and suck it until the seed wobbled alone inside the skin, like a person in oversize clothing. Amaka and Aunty Ifeoma were eating mangoes too, but with knives, slicing the firm orange flesh off the seed.
    I went out to the verandah and stood by the wet metal railings, watching the rain thin to a drizzle and then stop. God had decided on sunlight. There was the smell of freshness in the air, that edible scent the baked soil gave out at the first touch of rain. I imagined going into the garden, where Jaja was on his knees, digging out a clump of mud with my fingers and eating it.
    “
Aku na-efe! Aku
is flying!” a child in the flat upstairs shouted.
    The air was filling with flapping, water-colored wings. Children ran out of the flats with folded newspapers and empty Bournvita tins. They hit the flying aku down with the newspapers and then bent to pick them up and put them in the tins. Some children simply ran around, swiping at the aku just for the sake of it. Others squatted down to watch the ones that had lost wings crawl on the ground, to follow them as they held on to one another and moved like a black string, a mobile necklace.
    “Interesting how people will eat
aku
. But ask them to eat the wingless termites and that’s another thing. Yet the wingless ones are just a phase or two away from
aku
” Obiora said.
    Aunty Ifeoma laughed. “Look at you, Obiora. A few years ago, you were always first to run after them.”
    “Besides, you should not speak of children with such contempt,” Amaka teased. “After all, they are your own kind.”
    “I was never a child,” Obiora said, heading for the door.
    “Where are you going?” Amaka asked. “To chase
aku
?”
    “I’m not going to run after those flying termites, I am just going to look,” Obiora said. “To observe.”
    Amaka laughed, and Aunty Ifeoma echoed her.
    “Can I go, Mom?” Chima asked. He was already heading for the door.
    “Yes. But you know we will not fry them.”
    “I will give the ones I catch to Ugochukwu. They fry
aku
in their house,” Chima said.
    “Watch that they do not fly into your ears,
inugo
? Or they will make you go deaf!” Aunty Ifeoma called as Chima dashed outside.
    Aunty Ifeoma put on her slippers and went upstairs to talk to a neighbor. I was left alone with Amaka, standing side by side next to the railings. She moved forward to lean on the railings, her shoulder brushing mine. The old discomfort was gone.
    “You have become Father Amadi’s sweetheart,” she said. Her tone was the same light tone she had used with Obiora. She could not possibly know how painfully my heart lurched. “He was really worried when you were sick. He talked about you so much. And,
amam
, it wasn’t just priestly concern.”
    “What did he say?”
    Amaka turned to study my eager face. “You have a crush on him, don’t you?”
    “Crush” was mild. It did not come close to what I felt, how I felt, but I