Papa changed his accent when he spoke, sounding British, just as he did when he spoke to Father Benedict. He was gracious, in the eager-to-please way that he always assumed with the religious, especially with the white religious. As gracious as when he presented the check for refurbishing the Daughters of the Immaculate Heart library. He said he had just come to see my class, and Sister Margaret told him to let her know if he needed anything.
“Where is Chinwe Jideze?” Papa asked, when we got to the front of my class. A group of girls stood at the door, talking. I looked around, feeling a weight around my temples. What would Papa do? Chinwe’s light-skinned face was at the center of the group, as usual.
“She is the girl in the middle,” I said. Was Papa going to talk to her? Yank at her ears for coming first? I wanted the ground to open up and swallow the whole compound.
“Look at her,” Papa said. “How many heads does she have?”
“One.” I did not need to look at her to know that, but I looked at her, anyway.
Papa pulled a small mirror, the size of a powder compact, from his pocket. “Look in the mirror.”
I stared at him.
“Look in the mirror.”
I took the mirror, peered at it.
“How many heads do you have, gbo?” Papa asked, speaking Igbo for the first time.
“One.”
“The girl has one head, too, she does not have two. So why did you let her come first?”
“It will not happen again, Papa.” A light dust lkuku was blowing, in brown spirals like uncoiling spr
ings, and I could taste the sand that settled on my lips.
“Why do you think I work so hard to give you and Jaja the best? You have to do something with all these privileges. Because God has given you much, he expects much from you. He expects perfection. I didn’t have a father who sent me to the best schools. My father spent his time worshiping gods of wood and stone. I would be nothing today but for the priests and sisters at the mission. I was a houseboy for the parish priest for two years. Yes, a houseboy. Nobody dropped me off at school. I walked eight miles every day to Nimo until I finished elementary school. I was a gardener for the priests while I attended St. Gregory’s Secondary School.”
I had heard this all before, how hard he had worked, how much the missionary Reverend Sisters and priests had taught him, things he would never have learned from his idol-worshiping father, my Papa-Nnukwu. But I nodded and looked alert. I hoped my class girls were not wondering why my father and I had chosen to come to school to have a long conversation in front of the classroom building. Finally, Papa stopped talking and took the mirror back.
“Kevin will be here to pick you up,” he said.
“Yes, Papa.”
“Bye. Read well.” He hugged me, a brief side hug.
“Bye, Papa.” I was watching him walk down the path bordered by flowerless green bushes when the assembly bell rang.
Assembly was raucous, and Mother Lucy had to say, “Now, girls, may we have silence!” a few times. I stood in the front of the line as always, because the back was for the girls who belonged to cliques, girls who giggled and whispered to one another, shielded from the teachers. The teachers stood on an elevated podium, tall statues in their white-and-blue habits. After we sang a welcoming song from the Catholic Hymnal, Mother Lucy read Matthew chapter five up to verse eleven, and then we sang the national anthem. Singing the national anthem was relatively new at Daughters of the Immaculate Heart. It had started last year, because some parents were concerned that their children did not know the national anthem or the pledge. I watched the sisters as we sang. Only the Nigerian Reverend Sisters sang, teeth flashing against their dark skins. The white Reverend Sisters stood with arms folded, or lightly touching the glass rosary beads that dangled at their waists, carefully watching to see that every student’s lips moved. Afterward, Mother Lucy narrowed her eyes behind her thick lenses and scanned the lines. She always picked one student to start the pledge before the others joined in.
“Kambili Achike, please start the pledge,” she said.
Mother Lucy had never chosen me before. I opened my mouth, but the words would not come out.
“Kambili Achike?” Mother Lucy and the rest of the school had turned to stare at me.
I cleared my throat, willed the words to come. I knew them, thought them. But they would not come. The sweat was warm and wet under my arms.
“Kambili?”
Finally, stuttering, I said, “I pledge to Nigeria, my country/To be faithful, loyal, and honest…”
The rest of the school joined in, and while I mouthed along, I tried to slow my breathing. After assembly, we filed to our classrooms. My class went through the routine of settling down, scraping chairs, dusting desks, copying the new term timetable written on the board.
“How was your holiday, Kambili?” Ezinne leaned over and asked.
“Fine.”