THE PIECES OF GODS

After Palm Sunday

Everything came tumbling down after Palm Sunday. Howling winds came with an angry rain, uprooting frangipani trees in the front yard. They lay on the lawn, their pink and white flowers grazing the grass, their roots waving lumpy soil in the air. The satellite dish on top of the garage came crashing down, and lounged on the driveway like a visiting alien spaceship. The door of my wardrobe dislodged completely. Sisi broke a full set of Mama’s china.

Even the silence that descended on the house was sudden, as though the old silence had broken and left us with the sharp pieces. When Mama asked Sisi to wipe the 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 laundry in. 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 Mama asked 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 Standard in the morning. Jaja and I walked side by side to the altar to kiss the cross, and Jaja pressed his lips to the wooden crucifix first, before the Mass server wiped the cross and held it out to me. It felt cool to my lips. A shiver ran across me and I felt goose bumps appear on my arms. I cried afterward, when we were seated, silent crying with tears running down my cheeks. Many people around me cried, too, the way they did during the Stations of the Cross when they moaned and said, “Oh, what the Lord did for me” or “He died for a common me!” Papa was pleased with my tears; I still remembered clearly how he leaned toward me and caressed my cheek. And although I was not sure why I was crying, or if I was crying for the same reasons as those other people kneeling in front of the pews, I felt proud to have Papa do that.

I was thinking about this when Aunty Ifeoma called. The phone rang for too long, and I thought Mama would pick it up, since Papa was asleep. But she didn’t, so I went to the study and answered it.

Aunty Ifeoma’s voice was many notches lower than usual. “They have given me notice of termination,” she said, without even waiting for me to reply to her “How are you?” “For what they call illegal activity. I have one month. I have applied for a visa at the American Embassy. And Father Amadi has been notified. He is leaving for missionary work in Germany at the end of the month.”

It was a double blow. I staggered. It was as if my calves had sacks of dried beans tied to them. Aunty Ifeoma asked for Jaja, and I nearly tripped, nearly fell to the floor, as I went to his room to call him. After Jaja talked to Aunty Ifeoma, he put the phone down and said, “We are going to Nsukka today. We will spend Easter in Nsukka.”

I did not ask him what he meant, or how he would convince Papa to let us go. I watched him knock on Papa’s door and go in.

“We are going to Nsukka. Kambili and I,” I heard him say.

I did not hear what Papa said, then I heard Jaja say, “We are going to Nsukka today, not tomorrow. If Kevin will not take us, we will still go. We will walk if we have to.”

I stood still in front of the staircase, my hands trembling violently. Yet I did not think to close my ears; I did not think to count to twenty. Instead, I went into my room and sat by the window, looking out at the cashew tree. Jaja came in to say that Papa had agreed that Kevin could take us. He held a bag so hastily packed he had not even done up the zipper, and he watched me throw some things into a bag, saying nothing. He was moving his weight from one leg to the other impatiently.

“Is Papa still in bed?” I asked, but Jaja did not answer as he turned to go downstairs.

I knocked on Papa’s door and opened it. He was sitting up in bed; his red silk pajamas looked disheveled. Mama was pouring water into a glass for him.

“Bye, Papa,” I said.

He got up to hug me. His face looked much brighter than in the morning, and the rashes seemed to be clearing.

“We will see you soon,” he said, kissing my forehead.

I hugged Mama before I left the room. The stairs seemed delicate all of a sudden, as if they would crumble and a huge hole would appear and prevent me from leaving. I walked slowly until I got downstairs. Jaja was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs, and he reached out to take my bag.

Kevin stood by the car when we came outside. “Who will take your father to church, now?” he asked, looking at us suspiciously. “Your father is not well enough to drive himself.”

Jaja remained silent for so long that I realized he was not going to give Kevin an answer, and I said, “He said you should take us to Nsukka.”

Kevin shrugged, and muttered, “This kind of trip, can’t you go tomorrow?” before starting the car. He remained silent throughout the drive, and I saw his eyes often dart to us, mostly to Jaja, in the rearview mirror.

A FILM OF SWEAT coated my entire body like a transparent second skin. It gave way to a dripping wetness on my neck, my forehead, underneath my breasts. We had left the back door of Aunty Ifeoma’s kitchen wide open although flies buzzed in, circling over a pot of old soup. It was a choice between flies and even more heat, Amaka had said, swiping at them.

Obiora was wearing a pair of khaki shorts and nothing else. He was bent over the kerosene stove, trying to get the fire to spread across the wick. His eyes were blotchy from the fumes.

“This wick has thinned so much there’s nothing left to hold the fire,” he said, when he finally got the fire to spread around. “We should use the gas cooker for everything now, anyway. There’s no point saving the gas, since we won’t be needing it for much longer.” He stretched, the sweat clinging to the outline of his ribs. He picked up an old newspaper and fanned himself for a while, then swatted at some flies.

“Nekwa! Don’t knock them into my pot,” Amaka said. She was pouring bright reddish-orange palm oil into a pot.

“We shouldn’t be bleaching any more palm oil. We should splurge on vegetable oil for these last few weeks,” Obiora said, still swatting at the flies.

“You sound like Mom has already gotten the visa,” Amaka snapped. She placed the pot on the kerosene burner. The fire snaked around to the side of the pot, still a wild orange, spewing fumes; it had not yet stabilized to a clean blue.

“She will get the visa. We should be positive.”

“Haven’t you heard how those American embassy people treat Nigerians? They insult you and call you a liar and on top of it, eh, refuse to give you a visa,” Amaka said.

“Mom will get the visa. A university is sponsoring her,” Obiora said.

“So? Universities sponsor many people who still don’t get visas.”

I started to cough. Thick white smoke from the bleaching palm oil filled the kitchen, and in the stuffy mix of the fumes and heat and flies, I felt faint.

“Kambili,” Amaka said. “Go to the verandah until the smoke blows out.”

“No, it’s nothing,” I said.

“Go, biko.”

I went to the verandah, still coughing. It was clear that I was unused to bleaching palm oil, that I was used to vegetable oil, which did not need bleaching. But there had been no resentment in Amaka’s eyes, no sneer, no turndown of her lips. I was grateful when she called me back later to ask that I help her cut the ugu for the soup. I did not just cut the ugu, I made the garri also. Without her still eyes bearing down on me, I did not pour in too much hot water, and the garri turned out firm and smooth. I ladled my garri onto a flat plate, pushed it to the side, and then spooned my soup beside it. I watched the soup spreading, seeping in underneath the garri. I had never done this before; at home, Jaja and I always used separate dishes for garri and soup.

We ate on the verandah, although it was almost as hot as the kitchen. The railings felt like the metal handles of a boiling pot.

“Papa-Nnukwu used to say that an angry sun like this in rainy season means that a swift rain will come. The sun is warning us of the rain,” Amaka said, as we settled down on the mat with our food.

We ate quickly because of the heat, because even the soup tasted like sweat. Afterward, we trooped to the neighbors’ flat on the topmost floor and stood on their verandah, to see if we could catch a breeze. Amaka and I stood by the railings, looking down. Obiora and Chima squatted to watch the children playing on the floor, clustered around the plastic Ludo board and rolling dice. Somebody poured a bucket of water on the verandah and the boys lay down, with their backs on the wet floor.

I looked out at Marguerite Cartwright Avenue below, at a red Volkswagen driving past. It revved loudly as it went over the speed bump, and even from the verandah, I could see where the color had faded to a rusty orange. I felt nostalgic as I watched the Volkswagen disappear down the street, and I was not sure why. Maybe it was because it revved like Aunty Ifeoma’s car sometimes did, and it reminded me that very soon, I would not see her or her car anymore. She had gone to the police station to get a statement, which she would take to her visa interview at the American embassy to prove that she had never been convicted of a crime. Jaja had gone with her.

“I suppose we won’t need to protect our doors with metal in America,” Amaka said, as if she knew what I was thinking about. She was fanning herself briskly with a folded newspaper.

“What?”

“Mom’s students broke into her office once and stole exam questions. She told the works department that she wanted metal bars on her office doors and windows, and they said there was no money. You know what she did?”

Amaka turned to look at me; a small smile at the edges of her lips. I shook my head.

“She went to a construction site, and they gave her metal rods for free. Then she asked Obiora and me to help her install them. We drilled holes and fit the rods in with cement, across her windows and doors.”

“Oh,” I said. I wanted to reach out and touch Amaka.

“And then she put up a sign at her door that said EXAM QUESTIONS ARE IN THE BANK.” Amaka smiled and then started to fold and refold the newspaper. “I won’t be happy in America. It won’t be the same.”

“You will drink fresh milk from a bottle. No more stunted tins of condensed milk, no more homemade soybean milk,” I said.

Amaka laughed, a hearty laugh that showed her gap. “You’re funny.”

I had never heard that before. I saved it for later, to ruminate over and over that I had made her laugh, that I could make her laugh.

The rains came then, pouring down in strong sheets that made it impossible to see the garages across the yard. The sky and rain and ground merged into one silver-colored film that seemed to go on and on. We dashed back to the flat and placed buckets on the verandah to catch the rainwater and watched them fill rapidly. All the children ran out to the yard in their shorts, twirling and dancing, because this was clean rain, the kind that did not come with dust, that did not leave brown stains on clothes. It stopped as quickly as it had started, and the sun came out again, mildly, as if yawning after a nap. The buckets were full; we fished out floating leaves and twigs and took the buckets in.

I saw Father Amadi’s car turning into the compound when we went back out to the verandah. Obiora saw it, too, and asked, laughing, “Is it me or does Father visit more often whenever Kambili is here?”

He and Amaka were still laughing when Father Amadi came up the short flight of stairs. “I know Amaka just said something about me,” he said, sweeping Chima into his arms. He stood backing the setting sun. The sun was red, as if it were blushing, and it made his skin look radiant.

I watched how Chima clung to him, how Amaka’s and Obiora’s eyes shone as they looked up at him. Amaka was asking him about his missionary work in Germany, but I did not hear much of what she said. I was not listening. I felt so many things churning inside me, emotions that made my stomach growl and swirl.

“Do you see Kambili bothering me like this?” Father Amadi asked Amaka. He was looking at me, and I knew he had said that to include me, to get my attention.

“The white missionaries brought us their god,” Amaka was saying. “Which was the same color as them, worshiped in their language and packaged in the boxes they made. Now that we take their god back to them, shouldn’t we at least repackage it?”

Father Amadi smirked and said, “We go mostly to Europe and America, where they are losing priests. So there is really no indigenous culture to pacify, unfortunately.”

“Father, be serious!” Amaka was laughing.

“Only if you will try to be more like Kambili and not bother me so much.”

The phone started to ring, and Amaka made a face at him before walking into the flat.

Father Amadi sat down next to me. “You look worried,” he said. Before I could think of what to say, he reached out and slapped my lower leg. He opened his palm to show me the bloody, squashed mosquito. He had cupped his palm so that it would not hurt too much and yet would kill the mosquito. “It looked so happy feeding on you,” he said, watching me.

“Thank you,” I said.

He reached out and wiped the spot on my leg with a finger. His finger felt warm and alive. I did not realize that my cousins had left; now the verandah was so silent I could hear the sound of the raindrops sliding off the leaves.

“So tell me what you’re thinking about,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What you think will always matter to me, Kambili.”

I stood up and walked to the garden. I plucked off yellow allamanda flowers, still wet, and slid them over my fingers, as I had seen Chima do. It was like wearing a scented glove. “I was thinking about my father. I don’t know what will happen when we go back.”

“Has he called?”

“Yes. Jaja refused to go to the phone, and I did not go, either.”

“Did you want to?” He asked gently. It was not what I expected him to ask.

“Yes,” I whispered, so Jaja wouldn’t hear, although he was not even in the area. I did want to talk to Papa, to hear his voice, to tell him what I had eaten and what I had prayed about so that he would approve, so that he would smile so much his eyes would crinkle at the edges. And yet, I did not want to talk to him; I wanted to leave with Father Amadi, or with Aunty Ifeoma, and never come back. “School starts in two weeks, and Aunty Ifeoma might be gone then,” I said. “I don’t know what we will do. Jaja does not talk about tomorrow or next week.”

Father Amadi walked over to me, standing so close that I if I puffed out my belly, it would touch his body. He took my hand in his, carefully slid one flower off my finger and slid it onto his. “Your aunt thinks you and Jaja should go to boarding school. I am going to Enugu next week to talk to Father Benedict; I know your father listens to him. I will ask him to convince your father about boarding school so you and Jaja can start next term. It will be fine, inugo?”

I nodded and looked away. I believed him, that it would be fine, because he said so. I thought then of catechism classes, about chanting the answer to a question, an answer that was “because he has said it and his word is true.” I could not remember the question.

“Look at me, Kambili.”

I was afraid to look into the warm brownness of his eyes, I was afraid I would swoon, that I would throw my hands around him and lace my fingers together behind his neck and refuse to let go. I turned.

“Is this the flower you can suck? The one with the sweet juices?” he asked. He had slid the allamanda off his finger and was examining its yellow petals.

I smiled. “No. It’s ixora you suck.”

He threw the flower away and made a wry face. “Oh.”

I laughed. I laughed because the allamanda flowers were so yellow. I laughed imagining how bitter their white juices would taste if Father Amadi had really sucked them. I laughed because Father Amadi’s eyes were so brown I could see my reflection in them.

THAT NIGHT WHEN I BATHED, with a bucket half full of rainwater, I did not scrub my left hand, the hand that Father Amadi had held gently to slide the flower off my finger. I did not heat the water, either, because I was afraid that the heating coil would make the rainwater lose the scent of the sky. I sang as I bathed. There were more earthworms in the bathtub, and I left them alone, watching the water carry them arid send them down the drain.

The breeze following the rain was so cool that I wore a sweater and Aunty Ifeoma wore a longsleeved shirt, although she usually walked around the house in only a wrapper. We were all sitting on the verandah, talking, when Father Amadi’s car nosed its way to the front of the flat.

“You said you would be very busy today, Father,” Obiora said.

“I say these things to justify being fed by the church,” Father Amadi said. He looked tired. He handed Amaka a piece of paper and told her he had written some suitably boring names on it, that she had only to choose one and he would leave. After the bishop used it in confirming her, she need never even mention the name again. Father Amadi rolled his eyes, speaking with a painstaking slowness, and although Amaka laughed, she did not take the paper.

“I told you I am not taking an English name, Father,” she said.

“And have I asked you why?”

“Why do I have to?”

“Because it is the way it’s done. Let’s forget if it’s right or wrong for now,” Father Amadi said, and I noticed the shadows under his eyes.

“When the missionaries first came, they didn’t think Igbo names were good enough. They insisted that people take English names to be baptized. Shouldn’t we be moving ahead?”

“It’s different now, Amaka, don’t make this what it’s not,” Father Amadi said, calmly. “Nobody has to use the name. Look at me. I’ve always used my Igbo name, but I was baptized Michael and confirmed Victor.”

Aunty Ifeoma looked up from the forms she was going through. “Amaka, ngwa, pick a name and let Father Amadi go and do his work.”

“But what’s the point, then?” Amaka said to Father Amadi, as if she had not heard her mother. “What the church is saying is that only an English name will make your confirmation valid. ‘Chiamaka’ says God is beautiful. ‘Chima’ says God knows best, ‘Chiebuka’ says God is the greatest. Don’t they all glorify God as much as ‘Paul’ and ‘Peter’ and ‘Simon’?”

Aunty Ifeoma was getting annoyed; I knew by her raised voice, by her snappy tone. “O gini! You don’t have to prove a senseless point here! Just do it and get confirmed, nobody says you have to use the name!”

But Amaka refused. “Ekwerom,” she said to Aunty Ifeoma—I do not agree. Then she walked into her room and turned her music on very loud until Aunty Ifeoma knocked on the door and shouted that Amaka was asking for a slap if she did not turn it down right away. Amaka turned the music down. Father Amadi left, with a bemused sort of smile on his face.

That evening, tempers cooled and we had dinner together, but there was not much laughter. And the next day, Easter Sunday, Amaka did not join the rest of the young people who wore all white and carried lit candles, with folded newspapers to trap the melting wax. They all had pieces of paper pinned to their clothes, with names written on them. Paul. Mary. James. Veronica. Some of the girls looked like brides, and I remembered my own confirmation, how Papa had said I was a bride, Christ’s bride, and I had been surprised because I thought the Church was Christ’s bride.

AUNTY IFEOMA WANTED to go on pilgrimage to Aokpe. She was not sure why she suddenly wanted to go, she told us, probably the thought that she might be gone for a long time. Amaka and I said we would go with her. But Jaja said he would not go, then was stonily silent as if he dared anyone to ask him why. Obiora said he would stay back, too, with Chima. Aunty Ifeoma did not seem to mind. She smiled and said that since we didn’t have a male, she would ask Father Amadi if he wanted to accompany us.

“I will turn into a bat if Father Amadi says yes,” Amaka said.

But he did say yes. When Aunty Ifeoma hung up the phone after talking to him and said he would be coming with us, Amaka said, “It’s because of Kambili. He would never have come if not for Kambili.”

Aunty Ifeoma drove us to the dusty village about two hours away. I sat in the back with Father Amadi, separated from him by the space in the middle. He and Amaka sang as we drove; the undulating road made the car sway from side to side, and I imagined that it was dancing. Sometimes I joined in the singing, and other times I remained quiet and listened, wondering what it would feel like if I moved closer, if I covered the space between us and rested my head on his shoulder.

When we finally turned into the dirt road with the handpainted sign that read WELCOME TO AOKPE APPARITION GROUND, all I saw at first was chaos. Hundreds of cars, many bearing scrawled signs that read CATHOLICS ON PILGRIMAGE, jostled to fit into a tiny village that Aunty Ifeoma said had not known as many as ten cars until a local girl started to see the vision of the Beautiful Woman. People were packed so close that the smell of other people became as familiar as their own. Women crashed to their knees. Men shouted prayers. Rosaries rustled. People pointed and shouted, “See, there, on the tree, that’s Our Lady!” Others pointed at the glowing sun. “There she is!”

We stood underneath a huge flame-of-the-forest tree. It was in bloom, its flowers fanning out on wide branches and the ground underneath covered with petals the color of fire. When the young girl was led out, the flame-of-the-forest swayed and flowers rained down. The girl was slight and solemn, dressed in white, and strong-looking men stood around her so she would not be trampled. She had hardly passed us when other trees nearby started to quiver with a frightening vigor, as if someone were shaking them. The ribbons that cordoned off the apparition area shook, too. Yet there was no wind. The sun turned white, the color and shape of the host. And then I saw her, the Blessed Virgin: an image in the pale sun, a red glow on the back of my hand, a smile on the face of the rosary-bedecked man whose arm rubbed against mine. She was everywhere.

I wanted to stay longer, but Aunty Ifeoma said we had to leave, because it would be impossible to drive out if we waited until most people were leaving. She bought rosaries and scapulars and little vials of holy water from the vendors as we walked to the car.

“It doesn’t matter if Our Lady appeared or not,” Amaka said, when we got to the car. “Aokpe will always be special because it was the reason Kambili and Jaja first came to Nsukka.”

“Does that mean you don’t believe in the apparition?” Father Amadi asked, a teasing lilt in his voice.

“No, I didn’t say that,” Amaka said. “What about you? Do you believe it?”

Father Amadi said nothing; he seemed to be focused on rolling the window down to get a buzzing fly out of the car.

“I felt the Blessed Virgin there. I felt her,” I blurted out. How could anyone not believe after what we had seen? Or hadn’t they seen it and felt it, too?

Father Amadi turned to study me; I saw him from the corner of my eye. There was a gentle smile on his face. Aunty Ifeoma glanced at me, then turned back and faced the road.

“Kambili is right,” she said. “Something from God was happening there.”

I WENT WITH FATHER AMADI to say his good-byes to the families on campus. Many of the lecturers’ children clung tightly to him, as if the tighter they held him, the less likely he could break free and leave Nsukka. We did not say much to each other. We sang Igbo chorus songs from his cassette player. It was one of those songs—“Abum onye n’uwa, onye ka m bu n’uwa”—that eased the dryness in my throat as we got into his car, and I said, “I love you.”

He turned to me with an expression that I had never seen, his eyes almost sad. He leaned over the gear and pressed his face to mine. I wanted our lips to meet and hold, but he moved his face away. “You are almost sixteen, Kambili. You are beautiful. You will find more love than you will need in a lifetime,” he said. And I did not know whether to laugh or cry. He was wrong. He was so wrong.

As he drove me home, I looked out of the open window at the compounds we drove past. The gaping holes in the hedges had closed up, and green branches snaked across to meet each other. I wished that I could see the backyards so I could occupy myself with imagining the lives behind the hanging clothes and fruit trees and swings. I wished I could think about something, anything, so that I would no longer feel. I wished I could blink away the liquid in my eyes.

When I got back, Aunty Ifeoma asked if I was all right, if something was wrong.

“I’m fine, Aunty,” I said.

She was looking at me as though she knew I was not fine. “Are you sure, nne?”

“Yes, Aunty.”

“Brighten up, inugo? And please pray for my visa interview. I will leave for Lagos tomorrow.”

“Oh,” I said, and I felt a new, numbing rush of sadness. “I will, Aunty.” Yet I knew that I would not, could not, pray that she get the visa. I knew it was what she wanted, that she did not have many other choices. Or any other choices. Still, I would not pray that she get the visa. I could not pray for what I did not want.

Amaka was in the bedroom, lying in bed, listening to music with the cassette player next to her ear. I sat on the bed and hoped she would not ask me how my day with Father Amadi had gone. She didn’t say anything, just kept nodding to the music.

“You are singing along,” she said after a while.

“What?”

“You were just singing along with Fela.”

“I was?” I looked at Amaka and wondered if she was imagining things.

“How will I get Fela tapes in America, eh? Just how will I get them?”

I wanted to tell Amaka that I was sure she would find Fela tapes in America, and any other tapes that she wanted, but I didn’t. It would mean I assumed that Aunty Ifeoma would get the visa—and besides, I was not sure Amaka wanted to hear that.

MY STOMACH WAS UNSTEADY until Aunty Ifeoma came back from Lagos. We had been waiting for her on the verandah, although there was power and we could have been inside, watching TV The insects did not buzz around us, perhaps because the kerosene lamp was not on or perhaps because they sensed the tension. Instead, they flitted around the electric bulb above the door, making surprised thuds when they bumped against it. Amaka had brought the fan out, and its whir created music with the hum of the refrigerator inside. When a car stopped in front of the flat, Obiora jumped up and ran out.

“Mom, how did it go? Did you get it?”

“I got it,” Aunty Ifeoma said, coming onto the verandah.

“You got the visa!” Obiora screamed, and Chima promptly repeated him, rushing over to hug his mother. Amaka and Jaja and I did not stand; we said welcome to Aunty Ifeoma and watched her go inside to change. She came out soon, with a wrapper tied casually around her chest. The wrapper that stopped above her calves would stop above the ankles of an average-size woman. She sat down and asked Obiora to get her a glass of water.

“You do not look happy, Aunty,” Jaja said.

“Oh, nna m, I am. Do you know how many people they refuse? A woman next to me cried until I thought that blood would run down her cheeks. She asked them, ‘How can you refuse me a visa? I have shown you that I have money in the bank. How can you say I will not come back? I have property here, I have property.’ She kept saying that over and over: ‘I have property.’ I think she had wanted to attend her sister’s wedding in America.”

“Why did they refuse her?” Obiora asked.

“I don’t know. If they are in a good mood, they will give you a visa, if not, they will refuse you. It is what happens when you are worthless in somebody’s eyes. We are like footballs that they can kick in any direction they want to.”

“When are we leaving?” Amaka asked, tiredly, and I could tell that right now she did not care about the woman who had nearly cried blood or about Nigerians being kicked around or about anything at all.

Aunty Ifeoma drank the whole glass of water before speaking. “We have to move out of this flat in two weeks. I know they are waiting to see that I don’t, so they can send security men to throw my things out on the street.”

“You mean we leave Nigeria in two weeks?” Amaka asked, shrilly.

“Am I a magician, eh?” Aunty Ifeoma retorted. The humor was lacking in her tone. There was nothing in her tone to speak of, really, except for fatigue. “I have to get the money for our tickets first. They are not cheap. I will have to ask your Uncle Eugene to help, so I think we will go to Enugu with Kambili and Jaja, perhaps next week. We will stay in Enugu until we are ready to leave, that will also give me an opportunity to talk to your Uncle Eugene about Kambili and Jaja going to boarding school.” Aunty Ifeoma turned to Jaja and me. “I will convince your father in any way I can. Father Amadi has offered to ask Father Benedict to talk to your father, too. I think it is the best thing for you both now, to go to school away from home.”

I nodded. Jaja got up and walked into the flat. Finality hung in the air, heavy and hollow.

FATHER AMADI’S LAST DAY sneaked up on me. He came in the morning, smelling of that masculine cologne I had come to smell even when he was not there, wearing the same boyish smile, wearing the same soutane.

Obiora looked up at him and intoned, “From darkest Africa now come missionaries who will reconvert the West.”

Father Amadi started to laugh. “Obiora, whoever gives you those heretical books should stop.”

His laugh was the same, too. Nothing seemed to have changed about him, yet my new, fragile life was about to break into pieces. Anger suddenly filled me, constricting my air passages, pressing my nostrils shut. Anger was alien and refreshing. With my eyes, I traced the lines of his lips, the flare of his nose, as he spoke to Aunty Ifeoma and my cousins, all the while nursing my anger. Finally, he asked me to walk him to the car.

“I have to join the chaplaincy council members for lunch; they are cooking for me. But come and spend an hour or two with me, while I do the final cleaning up at the chaplaincy office,” he said.

“No.”

He stopped to stare at me. “Why?”

“No. I don’t want to.”

I was standing with my back to his car. He moved toward me and stood in front of me. “Kambili,” he said.

I wanted to ask him to say my name in a different way because he did not have the right to say it the old way. Nothing should be the same, was the same anymore. He was leaving. I breathed through my mouth now. “The first day you took me to the stadium, did Aunty Ifeoma ask you to?” I asked.

“She was worried about you, that you could not hold a conversation with even the children upstairs. But she didn’t ask me to take you.” He reached out to straighten the sleeve of my shirt. “I wanted to take you. And after that first day, I wanted to take you with me every day.”

I bent down to pick up a grass stalk, narrow like a green needle.

“Kambili,” he said. “Look at me.”

But I did not look at him. I kept my eyes on the grass in my hand as if it held a code I could decipher by concentrated staring, as if it could explain to me why I wished he had said he didn’t want to take me even that first time so that I would have a reason to be angrier, so that I would not have this urge to cry and cry.

He climbed into his car and started it. “I will come back and see you this evening.”

I stared at his car until it disappeared down the slope that led to Ikejiani Avenue. I was still staring when Amaka walked over to me. She placed her arm lightly on my shoulder.

“Obiora says you must be having sex, or something close to sex, with Father Amadi. We have never seen Father Amadi look so bright-eyed.” Amaka was laughing.

I did not know whether or not she was serious. I did not want to dwell on how strange it felt discussing whether or not I had had sex with Father Amadi.

“Maybe when we are in the university you will join me in agitating for optional celibacy in the priesthood?” Amaka asked. “Or maybe fornication should be permitted all priests once in a while. Say, once a month?”

“Amaka, please stop it.” I turned and walked to the verandah.

“Do you want him to leave the priesthood?” Amaka sounded more serious now.

“He will never leave.”

Amaka tilted her head thoughtfully, and then smiled. “You never know,” she said, before walking into the living room.

I copied Father Amadi’s German address over and over in my notebook. I was copying it again, trying at different writing styles, when he came back. He took the notebook from me and closed it. I wanted to say, “I will miss you” but instead I said, “I will write you.”

“I will write you first,” he said.

I did not know that tears slipped down my cheeks until Father Amadi reached out and wiped them away, running his open palm over my face. Then he enclosed me in his arms and held me.

AUNTY IFEOMA COOKED DINNER for Father Amadi, and we all ate the rice and beans at the dining table. I knew that there was much laughter, much talk about the stadium and about remembering, but I did not feel that I was involved. I was busy locking little parts of me up, because I would not need them if Father Amadi was not here.

I did not sleep well that night; I tossed around so often that I woke Amaka up. I wanted to tell her about my dream where a man chased me down a rocky path littered with bruised allamanda leaves. First the man was Father Amadi, his soutane flying behind him, then it was Papa, in the floor-length gray sack he wore when he distributed ash on Ash Wednesday. But I didn’t tell her. I let her hold and soothe me like a little child, until I fell asleep. I was glad to wake up, glad to see morning stream in through the window in shimmering strips the color of a ripe orange.

THE PACKING WAS DONE; the hallway looked oddly big now that the bookshelves were gone. In Aunty Ifeoma’s room, only a few things remained on the floor, the things we would use until we all left for Enugu: a bag of rice, a tin of milk, a tin of Boumvita. The other cartons and boxes and books had been cleared up or given away. When Aunty Ifeoma gave some clothes to the neighbors, the woman from the flat upstairs told her, “Mh, why won’t you give me that blue dress you wear to church? After all, you will get more in America!”

Aunty Ifeoma had narrowed her eyes, annoyed. I was not sure if it was because the woman was asking for the dress or because she had brought up America. But she did not give her the blue dress.

There was restlessness in the air now, as if we had all packed everything too quickly and too well and we needed something else to do.

“We have fuel, let’s go for a drive,” Aunty Ifeoma suggested.

“A good-bye tour of Nsukka,” Amaka said, with a wry smile.

We piled into the car. It swerved as Aunty Ifeoma turned onto the stretch of road bordered by the faculty of engineering, and I wondered if it would crash into the gutter and then Aunty Ifeoma would not get the fair rate she said a man in town had offered for it. She had also said that the money she would get for the car would pay only for Chima’s ticket, which was half the full price of a ticket.

Since my dream, the night before, I had had a feeling that something big would happen. Father Amadi would come back; it had to be what would happen. Maybe there was a mistake in his departure date; maybe he had postponed his trip. So as Aunty Ifeoma drove, I looked at the cars on the road, seeking Father Amadi, looking for that pastel-colored small Toyota.

Aunty Ifeoma stopped at the foot of Odim hill and said, “Let’s climb to the top.”

I was surprised. I was not sure Aunty Ifeoma had planned to have us climb up the hill; it sounded like something she had said on impulse. Obiora suggested we have a picnic up the hill, and Aunty Ifeoma said it was a good idea. We drove to town and bought moi-moi and bottles of Ribena from Eastern Shop and then came back to the hill. The climb was easy because there were many zigzagging paths. There was a fresh smell in the air and, once in a while, a crackling in the long grass that bordered the paths.

“The grasshoppers make that sound with their wings,” Obiora said. He stopped by a mighty anthill, with ridges running across the red mud as if they were deliberate designs. “Amaka, you should paint something like this,” he said. But Amaka did not respond; instead, she started to run up the hill. Chima ran after her. Jaja joined them. Aunty Ifeoma looked at me. “What are you waiting for?” she asked, and she raised her wrapper, almost above her knees, and ran after Jaja. I took off, too, feeling the wind rush past my ears. Running made me think of Father Amadi, made me remember the way his eyes had lingered on my bare legs. I ran past Aunty Ifeoma, past Jaja and Chima, and I got to the top of the hill at about the same time as Amaka.

“Hei!” Amaka said, looking at me. “You should be a sprinter.” She flopped down on the grass, breathing hard. I sat next to her and brushed away a tiny spider on my leg. Aunty Ifeoma had stopped running before she got to the top of the hill. “Nne,” she said to me. “I will find you a trainer, eh, there is big money in athletics.”

I laughed. It seemed so easy now, laughter. So many things seemed easy now. Jaja was laughing, too, as was Amaka, and we were all sitting on the grass, waiting for Obiora to come up to the top. He walked up slowly, holding something that turned out to be a grasshopper. “It’s so strong,” he said. “I can feel the pressure of its wings.” He spread his palm and watched the grasshopper fly off.

We took our food into the damaged building tucked into the other side of the hill. It may have once been a storeroom, but its roof and doors had been blown off during the civil war years ago, and it had remained that way. It looked ghostly, and I did not want to eat there, although Obiora said people spread mats on the charred floors to have picnics all the time. He was examining the writings on the walls of the building, and he read some of them aloud. “Obinna loves Nnenna forever.” “Emeka and Unoma did it here.” “One love Chimsimdi and Obi.”

I was relieved when Aunty Ifeoma said we would eat outside on the grass, since we did not have a mat. As we ate the moi-moi and drank the Ribena, I watched a small car crawl around the base of the hill. I tried to focus, to see who was inside, even though it was too far away. The shape of the head looked very much like Father Amadi’s. I ate quickly and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, smoothed my hair. I didn’t want to look untidy when he appeared.

Chima wanted to race down the other side of the hill, the side that didn’t have many paths, but Aunty Ifeoma said it was too steep. So he sat down and slithered on his behind down the hill. Aunty Ifeoma called out, “You will use your own hands to wash your shorts, do you hear me?”

I knew that, before, she would have scolded him some more and probably made him stop. We all sat and watched him slide down the hill, the brisk wind making our eyes water.

The sun had turned red and was about to fall when Aunty Ifeoma said we had to leave. As we trudged down the hill, I stopped hoping that Father Amadi would appear.

WE WERE ALL in the living room, playing cards, when the phone rang that evening.

“Amaka, please answer it,” Aunty Ifeoma said, even though she was closest to the door.

“I can bet it’s for you, Mom,” Amaka said, focused on her cards. “It’s one of those people who want you to dash them our plates and our pots and even the underwear we have on.”

Aunty Ifeoma got up laughing and hurried to the phone. The TV was off and we were all silently absorbed in our cards, so I heard Aunty Ifeoma’s scream clearly. A short, strangled scream. For a short moment, I prayed that the American embassy had revoked the visa, before I rebuked myself and asked God to disregard my prayers. We all rushed to the room.

“Hei, Chi m o! nwunye m! Hei!” Aunty Ifeoma was standing by the table, her free hand placed on her head in the way that people do when they are in shock. What had happened to Mama? She was holding the phone out; I knew she wanted to give it to Jaja, but I was closer and I grasped it. My hand shook so much the earpiece slid away from my ear to my temple.

Mama’s low voice floated across the phone line and quickly quelled my shaking hand. “Kambili, it’s your father. They called me from the factory, they found him lying dead on his desk.”

I pressed the phone tighter to my ear. “Eh?”

“It’s your father. They called me from the factory, they found him lying dead on his desk.” Mama sounded like a recording. I imagined her saying the same thing to Jaja, in the same exact tone. My ears filled with liquid. Although I had heard her right, heard her say he was found dead on his office desk, I asked, “Did he get a letter bomb? Was it a letter bomb?”

Jaja grabbed the phone. Aunty Ifeoma led me to the bed. I sat down and stared at the bag of rice that leaned against the bedroom wall, and I knew that I would always remember that bag of rice, the brown interweaving of jute, the words ADADA LONG GRAIN on it, the way it slumped against the wall, near the table. I had never considered the possibility that Papa would die, that Papa could die. He was different from Ade Coker, from all the other people they had killed. He had seemed immortal.

I sat with Jaja in our living room, staring at the space where the étagère had been, where the ballet-dancing figurines had been. Mama was upstairs, packing Papa’s things. I had gone up to help and saw her kneeling on the plush rug, holding his red pajamas pressed to her face. She did not look up when I came in; she said, “Go, nne, go and stay with Jaja,” the silk muffling her voice.

Outside, the rain came down in slants, hitting the closed windows with a furious rhythm. It would hurl down cashews and mangoes from the trees and they would start to rot in the humid earth, giving out that sweet-and-sour scent.

The compound gates were locked. Mama had told Adamu not to open the gates to all the people who wanted to throng in for mgbalu, to commiserate with us. Even members of our umunna who had come from Abba were turned away. Adamu said it was unheard of, to turn sympathizers away. But Mama told him we wished to mourn privately, that they could go to offer Masses for the repose of Papa’s soul. I had never heard Mama talk to Adamu that way; I had never even heard Mama talk to Adamu at all.

“Madam said you should drink some Bournvita,” Sisi said, coming into the living room. She was carrying a tray that held the same cups Papa had always used to drink his tea. I could smell the thyme and curry that clung to her. Even after she had a bath, she still smelled like that. It was only Sisi who had cried in the household, loud sobs that had quickly quieted in the face of our bewildered silence.

I turned to Jaja after she left and tried speaking with my eyes. But Jaja’s eyes were blank, like a window with its shutter drawn across.

“Won’t you drink some Bournvita?” I asked, finally.

He shook his head. “Not with those cups.” He shifted on his seat and added, “I should have taken care of Mama. Look how Obiora balances Aunty Ifeoma’s family on his head, and I am older than he is. I should have taken care of Mama.”

“God knows best,” I said. “God works in mysterious ways.” And I thought how Papa would be proud that I had said that, how he would approve of my saying that.

Jaja laughed. It sounded like a series of snorts strung together. “Of course God does. Look what He did to his faithful servant Job, even to His own son. But have you ever wondered why? Why did He have to murder his own son so we would be saved? Why didn’t He just go ahead and save us?”

I took off my slippers. The cold marble floor drew the heat from my feet. I wanted to tell Jaja that my eyes tingled with unshed tears, that I still listened for, wanted to hear, Papa’s footsteps on the stairs. That there were painfully scattered bits inside me that I could never put back because the places they fit into were gone. Instead, I said, “St. Agnes will be full for Papa’s funeral Mass.”

Jaja did not respond.

The phone started to ring. It rang for a long time; the caller must have dialed a few times before Mama finally answered it. She came into the living room a short while later. The wrapper casually tied across her chest hung low, exposing the birthmark, a little black bulb, above her left breast.

“They did an autopsy,” she said. “They have found the poison in your father’s body.” She sounded as though the poison in Papa’s body was something we all had known about, something we had put in there to be found, the way it was done in the books I read where white people hid Easter eggs for their children to find.

“Poison?” I said.

Mama tightened her wrapper, then went to the windows; she pushed the drapes aside, checking that the louvers were shut to keep the rain from splashing into the house. Her movements were calm and slow. When she spoke, her voice was just as calm and slow. “I started putting the poison in his tea before I came to Nsukka. Sisi got it for me; her uncle is a powerful witch doctor.”

For a long, silent moment I could think of nothing. My mind was blank, I was blank. Then I thought of taking sips of Papa’s tea, love sips, the scalding liquid that burned his love onto my tongue. “Why did you put it in his tea?” I asked Mama, rising. My voice was loud. I was almost screaming. “Why in his tea?”

But Mama did not answer. Not even when I stood up and shook her until Jaja yanked me away. Not even when Jaja wrapped his arms around me and turned to include her but she moved away.

THE POLICEMEN CAME a few hours later. They said they wanted to ask some questions. Somebody at St. Agnes Hospital had contacted them, and they had a copy of the autopsy report with them. Jaja did not wait for their questions; he told them he had used rat poison, that he put it in Papa’s tea. They allowed him to change his shirt before they took him away.