Father Amadi wore his soutane, long-sleeved and loosefitting, with a loose black rope slanted around his waist. Even in the priestly garb, his loping, comfortable gait pulled my eyes and held them. I turned and dashed into the flat. I could see the front yard clearly from the window in the bedroom, which had a few louvers missing. I pressed my face close to the window, close to the small tear in the mosquito netting that Amaka blamed for letting in every moth that flapped around the light bulb at night. Father Amadi was standing by the window, close enough for me to see the way his hair lay in wavy curls on his head, like the ripples in a stream.
“His recovery has been so swift, Father, Chukwu aluka,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
“Our God is faithful, Ifeoma,” he said happily, as though Papa-Nnukwu were his own relative. Then he told her that he was on his way to Isienu, to visit a friend who had just got back from missionary work in Papua New Guinea. He turned to Jaja and Obiora and said, “I will come by this evening to pick you up. We’ll play in the stadium with some of the boys from the seminary.”
“Okay, Father.” Jaja’s voice was strong.
“Where is Kambili?” he asked.
I looked down at my chest, which was heaving now. I did not know why, but I was grateful that he had said my name, that he remembered my name.
“I think she is inside,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
“Jaja, tell her she can come with us if she likes.”
When he came back that evening, I pretended I was taking a siesta. I waited to hear his car drive off, with Jaja and Obiora inside, before I came out into the living room. I had not wanted to go with them, and yet when I could no longer hear the sound of his car, I wished I could run after it.
Amaka was in the living room with Papa-Nnukwu, slowly oiling the few tufts of hair on his head with Vaseline. Afterward, she smoothed talcum powder on his face and chest.
“Kambili,” Papa-Nnukwu said, when he saw me. “Your cousin paints well. In the old days, she would have been chosen to decorate the shrines of our gods.” He sounded dreamy. Some of his medications probably made him drowsy. Amaka did not look at me; she gave his hair one last pat—a caress, really—and then sat down on the floor in front of him. I followed the swift movements of her hand as she moved the brush from palette to paper and then back again. She painted so quickly that I thought it would all be a muddle on the paper, until I looked and saw the form clearly taking shape—a lean, graceful form. I could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall, the one with the picture of the Pope leaning on his staff. The silence was delicate. Aunty Ifeoma was scraping a burnt pot in the kitchen, and the kroo-kroo-kroo of the metal spoon on the pot seemed intrusive. Amaka and Papa-Nnukwu spoke sometimes, their voices low, twining together. They understood each other, using the sparest words. Watching them, I felt a longing for something I knew I would never have. I wanted to get up and leave, but my legs did not belong to me, did not do what I wanted them to. Finally, I pushed myself up and went into the kitchen; neither Papa-Nnukwu nor Amaka noticed when I left.
Aunty Ifeoma sat on a low stool, pulling the brown skin off hot cocoyams, throwing the sticky, rounded tubers in the wooden mortar and stopping to cool her hands in a bowl of cold water.
“Why do you look that way, o gini?” she asked.
‘What way, Aunty?”
“There are tears in your eyes.”
I felt my wet eyes. “Something must have flown into my eyes.”
Aunty Ifeoma looked doubtful. “Help me with the cocoyams,” she said, finally.
I pulled a low stool close to her and sat down. The skins seemed to slip off easily enough for Aunty Ifeoma, but when I pressed one end of a tuber, the rough brown skin stayed put and the heat stung my palms.
“Soak your hand in water first.” She demonstrated where and how to press, to have the skin come sliding off. I watched her pound the cocoyams, dipping the pestle often into the bowl of water so the cocoyam wouldn’t stick too much to it. Still, the sticky white mash clung to the pestle, to the mortar, to Aunty Ifeoma’s hand. She was pleased, though, because it would thicken the onugbu soup well.
“See how well your Papa-Nnukwu is doing?” she asked. “He has been sitting up so long for Amaka to paint him. It’s a miracle. Our Lady is faithful.”
“How can Our Lady intercede on behalf of a heathen, Aunty?”
Aunty Ifeoma was silent as she ladled the thick cocoyam paste into the soup pot; then she looked up and said Papa-Nnukwu was not a heathen but a traditionalist, that sometimes what was different was just as good as what was familiar, that when Papa-Nnukwu did his itu-nzu, his declaration of innocence, in the morning, it was the same as our saying the rosary. She said a few other things, but I was not really listening, because I heard Amaka laughing in the living room with Papa-Nnukwu, and I wondered what they were laughing about, and whether they would stop laughing if I went in there.
WHEN AUNTY IFEOMA woke me up, the room was dim and the shrills of the night crickets were dying away. A rooster’s crow drifted through the window above my bed.
“Nne.” Aunty Ifeoma patted my shoulder. “Your Papa-Nnukwu is on the verandah. Go and watch him.”
I felt wide awake, although I had to pry my eyes open with my fingers. I remembered Aunty Ifeoma’s words from the day before, about Papa-Nnuwku being a traditionalist and not a heathen. Still, I was not sure why she wanted me to go and watch him on the verandah.
“Nne, remember to be quiet. Just watch him.” Aunty Ifeoma whispered to avoid waking Amaka.
I tied my wrapper around my chest, over my pink-and-white flowered nightgown, and padded out of the room. The door that led to the verandah was half open, and the purplish tinge of early dawn trickled into the living room. I did not want to turn the light on because Papa-N
nukwu would notice, so I stood by the door, against the wall.
Papa-Nnukwu was on a low wooden stool, his legs bent into a triangle. The loose knot of his wrapper had come undone, and the wrapper had slipped off his waist to cover the stool, its faded blue edges grazing the floor. A kerosene lamp, turned to its lowest, was right next to him. The flickering light cast a topaz glow over the narrow verandah, over the stubby gray hairs on Papa-Nnukwu’s chest, over the loose, soil-colored skin on his legs. He leaned down to draw a line on the floor with the nzu in his hand. He was speaking, his face down as if addressing the white chalk line, which now looked yellow. He was talking to the gods or the ancestors; I remembered Aunty Ifeoma saying that the two could be interchanged.
“Chineke! I thank you for this new morning! I thank you for the sun that rises.” His lower lip quivered as he spoke. Perhaps that was why his Igbo words flowed into each other, as if writing his speech would result in a single long word. He bent down to draw another line, quickly, with a fierce determination that shook the flesh on his arm, which was hanging low like a brown leather pouch. “Chineke! I have killed no one, I have taken no one’s land, I have not committed adultery.” He leaned over and drew the third line. The stool squeaked. “Chineke! I have wished others well. I have helped those who have nothing with the little that my hands can spare.”