Purple Hibiscus

floor of the living room, to make sure no dangerous pieces of figurines were left lying somewhere, she did not lower her voice to a whisper. She did not hide the tiny smile that drew lines at the edge of her mouth. She did not sneak Jaja’s food to his room, wrapped in cloth so it would appear that she had simply brought his laundryin. She took him his food on a white tray, with a matching plate.
    There was something hanging over all of us. Sometimes I wanted it all to be a dream—the missal flung at the étagère, the shattered figurines, the brittle air. It was too new, too foreign, and I did not know what to be or how to be. I walked to the bathroom and kitchen and dining room on tiptoe. At dinner, I kept my gaze fixed on the photo of Grandfather, the one where he looked like a squat superhero in his Knights of St. Mulumba cape and hood, until it was time to pray and I closed my eyes. Jaja did not come out of his room even though Papa asked him to. The first time Papa asked him, the day after Palm Sunday, Papa could not open his door because he had pushed his study desk in front of it.
    “Jaja, Jaja,” Papa said, pushing the door. “You must eat with us this evening, do you hear me?”
    But Jaja did not come out of his room, and Papa said nothing about it while we ate; he ate very little of his food but drank a lot of water, telling Mama to ask “that girl” to bring more bottles of water. The rashes on his face seemed to have become bigger and flatter, less defined, so that they made his face look even puffier.
    Yewande Coker came with her little daughter while we were at dinner. As I greeted her and shook her hand, I examined her face, her body, looking for signs of how different life was now that Ade Coker had died. But she looked the same, except for her attire—a black wrapper, black blouse, and a black scarf covering all of her hair and most of her forehead. Her daughter sat stiffly on the sofa, tugging at the red ribbon that held her braided hair up in a ponytail. When Mamaasked if she would drink Fanta, she shook her head, still tugging at the ribbon.
    “She has finally spoken, sir,” Yewande said, her eyes on her daughter. “She said ‘mommy’ this morning. I came to let you know that she has finally spoken.”
    “Praise God!” Papa said, so loudly that I jumped.
    “Thanks be to God,” Mama said.
    Yewande stood up and knelt before Papa. “Thank you, sir,” she said. “Thank you for everything. If we had not gone to the hospital abroad, what would have become of my daughter?”
    “Get up, Yewande,” Papa said. “It is God. It is all from God.”
    THAT EVENING, WHEN PAPA was in the study praying—I could hear him reading aloud a psalm—I went to Jaja’s door, pushed it and heard the scraping sound of the study desk lodged against it as it opened. I told Jaja about Yewande’s visit, and he nodded and said Mama had told him about it. Ade Coker’s daughter had not spoken since her father died. Papa had paid to have her see the best doctors and therapists in Nigeria and abroad.
    “I didn’t know she hadn’t talked since he died,” I said. “It is almost four months now. Thanks be to God.”
    Jaja looked at me silently for a while. His expression reminded me of the old looks Amaka used to give me, that made me feel sorry for what I was not sure of.
    “She will never heal,” Jaja said. “She may have started talking now, but she will never heal.”
    As I left Jaja’s room, I pushed the study desk a little way aside. And I wondered why Papa could not open Jaja’s door when he tried earlier; the desk was not that heavy.
    I DREADED EASTER SUNDAY . I dreaded what would happen when Jaja did not go to communion again. And I knew that he would not go; I saw it in his long silences, in the set of his lips, in his eyes that seemed focused on invisible objects for a long time.
    On Good Friday, Aunty Ifeoma called. She might have missed us if we had gone to the morning prayers, as Papa had planned. But during breakfast, Papa’s hands kept shaking, so much that he spilled his tea; I watched the liquid creep across the glass table. Afterward, he said he needed to rest and we would go to the Celebration of the Passion of Christ in the evening, the one Father Benedict usually led before the kissing of the cross. We had gone to the evening celebration on Good Friday of last year, because Papa had been busy with something at the
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in the morning. Jaja and I walked side by side to the