Purple Hibiscus
bleaching creams—her hands were the dark brown color of Boumvita with no milk added. She held a huge gray chicken. It was a symbol of her formal announcement to Aunty Ifeoma that she was getting married, she said. When her fiance learnedof yet another university closure, he had told her he could no longer wait until she graduated, since nobody knew when the university would reopen. The wedding would be next month. She did not call him by his name, she called him “dim,” “my husband,” with the proud tone of someone who had won a prize, tossing her braided, reddish gold-dyed hair.
“I’m not sure I will come back to school when we reopen. I want to have a baby first. I don’t want
dim
to think that he married me to have an empty home,” she said, with a high, girlish laugh. Before she left, she copied Aunty Ifeoma’s address down, so she could send an invitation card.
Aunty Ifeoma stood looking at the door. “She was never particularly bright, so I shouldn’t be sad,” she said thoughtfully, and Amaka laughed and said, “Mom!”
The chicken squawked. It was lying on its side because its legs were tied together.
“Obiora, please kill this chicken and put it in the freezer before it loses weight, since there’s nothing to feed it,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
“They have been taking the light too often the past week. I say we eat the whole chicken today,” Obiora said.
“How about we eat half and put the other half in the freezer and pray NEPA brings back the light so it doesn’t spoil,” Amaka said.
“Okay,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
“I’ll kill it,” Jaja said, and we all turned to stare at him.
“
Nna m
, you have never killed a chicken, have you?” Aunty Ifeoma asked.
“No. But I can kill it.”
“Okay,” Aunty Ifeoma said, and I turned to stare, startled athow easily she had said that. Was she absentminded because she was thinking about her student? Did she really think Jaja could kill a chicken?
I followed Jaja out to the backyard, watched him hold the wings down under his foot. He bent the chicken’s head back. The knife glinted, meeting with the sun rays to give off sparks. The chicken had stopped squawking; perhaps it had decided to accept the inevitable. I did not look as Jaja slit its feathery neck, but I watched the chicken dance to the frenzied tunes of death. It flapped its gray wings in the red mud, twisting and flailing. Finally, it lay in a puff of sullied feathers. Jaja picked it up and dunked it in the basin of hot water that Amaka brought. There was a precision in Jaja, a singlemindedness that was cold, clinical. He started to pluck the feathers off quickly, and he did not speak until the chicken had been reduced to a slim form covered with white-yellow skin. I did not realize how long a chicken’s neck is until it was plucked.
“If Aunty Ifeoma leaves, then I want to leave with them, too,” he said.
I said nothing. There was so much I wanted to say and so much I did not want to say. Two vultures hovered overhead and then landed on the ground, close enough that I could have grabbed them if I had jumped fast. Their bald necks glistened in the early-morning sun.
“See how close the vultures come now?” Obiora asked. He and Amaka had come to stand by the back door. “They are getting hungrier and hungrier. Nobody kills chickens these days, and so there are less entrails for them to eat.” He picked up a stone and threw it at the vultures. They flew up and perched on the branches of the mango tree only a little distance away.
“Papa-Nnukwu used to say that the vultures have lost their prestige,” Amaka said. “In the old days, people liked them because when they came down to eat the entrails of animals used in sacrifice, it meant the gods were happy.”
“In these new days, they should have the good sense to wait for us to be done killing the chicken before they descend,” Obiora said.
Father Amadi came after Jaja had cut up the chicken and Amaka had put half of it in a plastic bag for the freezer. Aunty Ifeoma smiled when Father Amadi told her he was taking me to get my hair done. “You are doing my job for me, Father, thank you,” she said. “Greet Mama Joe. Tell her I will come soon to plait my hair for Easter.”
MAMA J>OE’S SHED IN Ogige market just barely fit the high stool where she sat and the smaller stool in front of her. I sat on the smaller stool. Father Amadi stood outside, beside the wheelbarrows and pigs and people and chickens
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