Purple Hibiscus

and buy a soft drink for your Aunty.”
    “Don’t worry, I will drink water,” Mama said.
    “We have not had light, the water will not be cold.”
    “It does not matter. I will drink it.”
    Mama sat carefully at the edge of a cane chair. Her eyes were glazed over as she looked around. I knew she could not see the picture with the cracked frame or the fresh African lilies in the oriental vase.
    “I do not know if my head is correct,” she said, and pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, in the way that one checks the degree of a fever. “I got back from the hospital today. The doctor told me to rest, but I took Eugene’s money and asked Kevin to take me to the park. I hired a taxi and came here.”
    “You were in hospital? What happened?” Aunty Ifeoma asked quietly.
    Mama looked around the room. She stared at the wall clock for a while, the one with the broken second hand, before she turned to me. “You know that small table where we keep the family Bible,
nne
? Your father broke it on my belly.” She sounded as if she were talking about someone else, as if the table were not made of sturdy wood. “My blood finished on that floor even before he took me to St. Agnes. My doctor said there was nothing he could do to save it.” Mama shook her head slowly. A thin line of tears crawled down her cheeks as though it had been a struggle for them to get out of her eyes.
    “To save it?” Aunty Ifeoma whispered. “What do you mean?”
    “I was six weeks gone.”
    “
Ekwuzina
! Don’t say that again!” Aunty Ifeoma’s eyes widened.
    “It is true. Eugene did not know, I had not yet told him, but it is true.” Mama slid down to the floor. She sat with her legs stretched out in front of her. It was so undignified, but I lowered myself and sat next to her, our shoulders touching.
    She cried for a long time. She cried until my hand, clasped in hers, felt stiff. She cried until Aunty Ifeoma finished cooking the rotting meat in a spicy stew. She cried until she fell asleep, her head against the seat of the chair. Jaja laid her on a mattress on the living room floor.
    Papa called that evening, as we sat around the kerosene lamp on the verandah. Aunty Ifeoma answered the phone and came out to tell Mama who it was. “I hung up. I told him I would not let you come to the phone.”
    Mama flew up from her stool. “Why? Why?”
    “
Nwunye m
, sit down right now!” Aunty Ifeoma snapped.
    But Mama did not sit down. She went into Aunty Ifeoma’s room and called Papa. The phone rang shortly afterward, and I knew he had called back. She emerged from the room after about a quarter of an hour.
    “We are leaving tomorrow. The children and I,” she said, staring straight ahead, above everyone’s eye level.
    “Leaving for where?” Aunty Ifeoma asked.
    “Enugu. We’re going back home.”
    “Has a nut come loose in your head,
gbo
? You are not going anywhere.”
    “Eugene is coming himself to pick us up.”
    “Listen to me.” Aunty Ifeoma softened her voice; she musthave known the firm voice would not penetrate the fixed smile on Mama’s face. Mama’s eyes were still glazed, but she looked like a different woman from the one who had come out of the taxi that morning. She looked possessed by a different demon. “At least stay a few days,
nwunye m
, don’t go back so soon.”
    Mama shook her head. Except for the stiff stretch of her lips, she was expressionless. “Eugene has not been well. He has been having migraines and fever,” she said. “He is carrying more than any man should carry. Do you know what Ade’s death did to him? It is too much for one person.”
    “
Ginidi
, what are you saying?” Aunty Ifeoma swiped impatiently at an insect that flew close to her ears. “When Ifediora was alive, there were times,
nwunye m
, when the university did not pay salaries for months. Ifediora and I had nothing, eh, yet he never raised a hand to me.”
    “Do you know that Eugene pays the school fees of up to a hundred of our people? Do you know how many people are alive because of your brother?”
    “That is not the point and you know it.”
    “Where would I go if I leave Eugene’s house? Tell me, where would I go?” She did not wait for Aunty Ifeoma to respond. “Do you know how many mothers pushed their daughters at him? Do you know how many asked him to impregnate them, even, and not to bother paying a bride price?”
    “And so? I ask you—and so?” Aunty Ifeoma was shouting now.
    Mama lowered