Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The man puts his toothpick down and grabs the bag. It disappears behind the desk. Then he leads Mama and me to an airless room with benches on both sides of a low table. “One hour,” he mutters before leaving.
We sit on the same side of the table, not close enough to touch. I know that Jaja will appear soon, and I try to prepare myself. It has not become any easier for me, seeing him here, even after so long. It will be even harder with Mama sitting next to me. It will be hardest because we finally have good news, because the emotions we used to hold back are dissolving and new ones are forming. I take a deep breath and hold it.
Jaja will come home soon, Father Amadi wrote in his last letter, which is tucked in my bag. You must believe this. And I believed it, I believed him, even though we had not heard from the lawyers and were not sure. I believe what Father Amadi says; I believe the firm slant of his handwriting. Because he has said it and his word is true.
I always carry his latest letter with me until a new one comes. When I told Amaka that I do this, she teased me in her reply about being lovey-dovey with Father Amadi and then drew a smiling face. But I don’t carry his letters around because of anything lovey-dovey; there is very little lovey-dovey, anyway. He signs off with nothing more than “as always.” He never responds with a yes or a no when I ask if he is happy. His answer is that he will go where the Lord sends him. He hardly even writes about his new life, except for brief anecdotes, such as the old German lady who refuses to shake his hand because she does not think a black man should be her priest, or the wealthy widow who insists he have dinner with her every night.
His letters dwell on me. I carry them around because they are long and detailed, because they remind me of my worthiness, because they tug at my feelings. Some months ago, he wrote that he did not want me to seek the whys, because there are some things that happen for which we can formulate no whys, for which whys simply do not exist and, perhaps, are not necessary. He did not mention Papa—he hardly mentions Papa in his letters—but I knew what he meant, I understood that he was stirring what I was afraid to stir myself.
And I carry them with me, also, because they give me grace. Amaka says people love priests because they want to compete with God, they want God as a rival. But we are not rivals, God and I, we are simply sharing. I no longer wonder if I have a right to love Father Amadi; I simply go ahead and love him. I no longer wonder if the checks I have been writing to the Missionary Fathers of the Blessed Way are bribes to God; I just go ahead and write them. I no longer wonder if I chose St. Andrew’s church in Enugu as my new church because the priest there is a Blessed Way Missionary Father as Father Amadi is; I just go.
“Did we bring the knives?” Mama asks. Her voice is loud. She is setting out the cylindrical food flask full of jollof rice and chicken. She places a pretty china plate down, as if she were setting a fancy table, the kind Sisi used to set.
“Mama, Jaja doesn’t need knives,” I say. She knows Jaja always eats right from the flask, yet she takes a dinner plate with her every time, changes the colors and patterns weekly.
“We should have brought them, so he can cut the meat.”
“He doesn’t cut the meat, he just eats it.” I smile at Mama and reach out to touch her arm, to calm her. She places a gleaming silver spoon and fork on the dirt-encrusted table and leans back to survey it. The door opens, and Jaja comes in. I brought his T-shirt, new, only two weeks ago, but already it has brown patches like stains from cashew juice, which never come off. As children, we ate cashews bent over so that the gushing sweet juices did not get on our clothes. His shorts end a long way above his knees, and I look away from the scabs on his thighs. We do not rise to hug him, because he does not like us to.
“Mama, good afternoon. Kambili, ke kwanu?” he says. He opens the food flask and starts to eat. I feel Mama trembling next to me, and because I don’t want her to break down, I speak quickly. The sound of my voice may stop her tears. “The lawyers will get you out next week.”
Jaja shrugs. Even the skin of his neck is covered with scabs that look dry until he scratches them and the yellowish pus underneath seeps out. Mama has bribed all kinds of ointments in and none seem to work.
“This cell has many interesting characters,” Jaja says. He spoons the rice into his mouth as quickly as he can. His cheeks bulge as though he has stuffed them with whole, unripe guavas.
“I mean out of prison, Jaja. Not to a different cell,” I say.
He stops chewing and stares at me silently with those eyes that have hardened a little every month he has spent here; now they look like the bark of a palm tree, unyielding. I even wonder if we ever really had an asusu anya, a language of the eyes, or if I imagined it all.
“You’ll be out of here next week,” I say. “You’re coming home next week.”
I want to hold his hand, but I know he will shake it free. His eyes are too full of guilt to really see me, to see his reflection in my eyes, the reflection of my hero, the brother who tried always to protect me the best he could. He will never think that he did enough, and he will never understand that I do not think he should have done more.
“You are not eating,” Mama says. Jaja picks up the spoon and starts to wolf the rice down again. Silence hangs over us, but it is a different kind of silence, one that lets me breathe. I have nightmares about the other kind, the silence of when Papa was alive. In my nightmares, it mixes with shame and grief and so many other things that I cannot name, and forms blue tongues of fire that rest above my head, like Pentecost, until I wake up screaming and sweating. I have not told Jaja that I offer Masses for Papa every Sunday, that I want to see him in my dreams, that I want it so much I sometimes make my own dreams, when I am neither asleep nor awake: I see Papa, he reaches out to hug me, I reach out, too, but our bodies never touch before something jerks me up and I realize that I cannot control even the dreams that I have made. There is so much that is still silent between Jaja and me. Perhaps we will talk more with time, or perhaps we never will be able to say it all, to clothe things in words, things that have long been naked.
“You did not tie your scarf well,” Jaja says to Mama.
I stare in amazement. Jaja has never noticed what anybody wears. Mama hastily unties and reties her scarf—and this time, she knots it twice and tight at the back of her head.
“Time is up!” The guard comes in the room. Jaja says a brief, distant “Ka o di,” not making eye contact with either of us, before he lets the guard lead him away.
“We should go to Nsukka when Jaja comes out,” I say to Mama as we walk out of the room. I can talk about the future now.
Mama shrugs and says nothing. She is walking slowly; her limp has become more noticeable, her body moving sideways with each step. We are close to the car when she turns to me and says, “Thank you, nne.” It is one of the few times in the past three years that she has spoken without being first spoken to. I do not want to think about why she is thanking me or what it means. I only know that, all of a sudden, I no longer smell the damp and urine of the prison yard.
“We will take Jaja to Nsukka first, and then we’ll go to America to visit Aunty Ifeoma,” I say. “We’ll plant new orange trees in Abba when we come back, and Jaja will plant purple hibiscus, too, and I’ll plant ixora so we can suck the juices of the flowers.” I am laughing. I reach out and place my arm around Mama’s shoulder and she leans toward me and smiles.
Above, clouds like dyed cotton wool hang low, so low I feel I can reach out and squeeze the moisture from them. The new rains will come down soon.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Kenechukwu Adichie, “baby” brother and best friend, draft reader and story mailer—for sharing each early “no,” for making me laugh.
Tokunbo Oremule, Chisom and Amaka Sony-Afoekelu, Chinedum Adichie, Kamsiyonna Adichie, Arinze Maduka, Ijeoma and Obinna Maduka, Uche and Sony Afoekelu, Chukwunwike and Tinuke Adichie, Okechukwu Adichie, Nneka Adichie Okeke, Bee and Wasp, all the Odigwes, all the Adichies—for being my p
Charles Methot—for being so solidly there.
Ada Echetebu, Binyavanga Wainaina, Arinze Ufoeze, Austin Nwosu, Ikechukwu Okorie, Carolyn DeChristopher, Nnake Nweke, Amaechi Awurum, Ebele Nwala—for beating my drums.
Antonia Fusco—for editing so wisely and so warmly, for that phone call that nearly had me doing cartwheels.
Djana Pearson Morris, my agent—for believing.
The people and spirit of Stonecoast Writers’ Conference, Summer 2001—for that loud ovation, complete with whistles.
Friends all—for pretending to understand when I did not return phone calls.
Thank you. Dalu nu.
P.S.
Ideas, interviews & features…
About the Author
CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE won the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2007 with her novel Half of a Yellow Sun. Purple Hibiscus is her first novel and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize 2004 and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, longlisted for the Booker Prize and was winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy award for debut fiction.
Adichie was born in Nigeria in 1977. She is from Abba, in Anambra State, but grew up in the university town of Nsukka, where she attended primary and secondary schools. Her short fiction has been published in literary journals including Granta, and won the International PEN/David Wong award in 2003. She was a Hodder fellow at Princeton University for the 2005–06 academic year. She lives in Nigeria.
Profile of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
by Clare Garner
FOR AS LONG AS she can remember, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s hero has been the internationally acclaimed Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. She grew up in the house previously occupied by him and first read his novels at the precocious age of ten. Arrow of God is still her favourite book and, to this day, she returns to his work whenever she wants to rekindle her writing spirit.
So, picture the thrill when she received an e-mail saying that he admired Purple Hibiscus. It was early September and Adichie was sitting in a dusty cyber cafe in Nsukka, where she grew up. She was becoming impatient with the mountain of e-mails and nearly passed over what turned out to be the highest accolade of her life. It read: ‘Just a short note to let you know that our family has been following your career and rejoice with you on every success! Dad has read Purple Hibiscus and liked it very much. Give him a call at…’ It was signed by Achebe’s son. ‘It was the best e-mail of my life,’ Adichie delights. ‘My idol was telling me I was doing a good job. I was so ecstatic. I went slightly crazy.’
With wisdom beyond her years, Adichie forbids herself to read reviews. It is not that she fears criticism; besides, reviewers rave about her work. She simply does not want to be distracted by what they say. ‘It would get in the way of my being true to myself,’ she says. But feedback from Achebe is another story. So far she has been too shy to call, but she will do soon.
‘Reading Achebe gave me permission to write about my world.’
Adichie has been writing since the age of six. At first she crafted stories for her mother, complete with illustrations, which were inspired by the English children’s classics on which she was reared. ‘I didn’t visit England until I was older, so before then I was very much writing fantasy. Reading Achebe gave me permission to write about my world. He transported me to a past that was both familiar and unfamiliar, a past I imagined my great grandfather lived. Looking back, I realize that what he did for me at the time was validate my history, make it seem worthy in some way.’
Adichie has spent most of her life on a university campus, first in Nigeria and then in America. Her parents both worked at the University of Nigeria, in Nsukka: her father as Professor of Statistics and her mother as the institution’s first female registrar. They raised Adichie and her five siblings in a university-owned house and sent them to school on campus. Adichie started out reading medicine there but, after a year, realized she was only training to be a doctor because that was the done thing for high achievers like herself. She transferred to Connecticut State University to read Communication. ‘I love the American sense of “can do” and will always be grateful for the fact that you can come here and feel suffused with this sense of possibility. I couldn’t have published my novel in Nigeria without the money to pay the publisher.’
But her heart longs for home. Indeed, Purple Hibiscus was born out of such longing. ‘I was living in Connecticut and hadn’t been back to Nigeria for four years. I was intensely homesick. It was winter here and terribly cold. I looked out and saw this blanket of white and thought: “I want home.”
‘I wanted to write about colonialism, which I think every African writer does without meaning to. The way we are is very much the result of colonialism – the fact that I think in English, for example.’ Her vehicle was religion, an abiding obsession since her early teens. As a child she went to Mass and Benediction every Sunday and loved the drama of it all: the incense, the vibrant singing in Latin, the big hugs after the services. Theology became her thing. ‘I feel sorry for my parents. I really wasn’t your average teenager. Until about 19 I was in my intense period of God searching. I read the writings of St Augustine and fat books about Church history. I was always asking questions. I wanted to know why some people had car accidents and some didn’t. I wanted to capture God in a bottle.’
In Eugene Achike – or Papa – Adichie created a character who tries to prove how Christian he is by condemning his past. ‘This is very much a theme in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God. I wanted to write the modern take. I wanted Papa to be a man who did horrible things but who, ultimately, wasn’t a monster. Unless he was complex it would be easy to dismiss him. There are lots of people who are kind and generous and thoughtful but, in the name of religion, do all sorts of awful things.’
Now Adichie is working on her next novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, set during the civil war of 1967-70. She is planning to move back to Nigeria, with a possible semester of teaching in America each year. ‘I’m definitely going to live in Nigeria,’ she says. ‘I belong there and the reason I care about it is that I belong. It’s very important for me to matter in Nigeria, to make some sort of difference. I want people back home to read my books, for women to feel empowered by them, and for people to be inspired to be writers.’ This does not seem an unrealistic ambition. It is easy to imagine that one day it will be Adichie who is making a young Nigerian writer’s heart leap with an e-mail congratulating them on their work. She knows how good that feels.
LIFE at a Glance
BORN
September 1977, in Abba, Anambra State, Nigeria.
EDUCATED
University Primary School, Nsukka; University Secondary School, Nsukka; Eastern Connecticut State University (BS summa cum laude, Communication); Johns Hopkins University (MA, Creative Writing).
FAMILY
Adichie is the fifth of six children. She has two older sisters, two older brothers, and a younger brother. At the age of 19 she moved to the United States to live with her eldest sister, Ijeoma, who has become as much a friend as sister.
CAREER
While studying for her Creative Writing masters degree, from which she graduated in 2004, Adichie had a teaching assistant post in Expository Writing at the university. Over the past few years she has written extensively. Besides Purple Hibiscus, she has had short stories published in anthologies as well as in British and American journals.
AWARDS AND PRIZES
Purple Hibiscus was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2004, and shortlisted for the Orange Prize 2004. It also received the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award 2004. Her short story ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ won the PEN/David Wong shortstory award 2003.
PREVIOUS WORKS
‘Transition to Glory’, cited as Distinguished Story, in Lorrie Moore (ed.), The Best American Short Stories, 2004 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004).
‘Half of a Yellow Sun’, in David Eggers (ed.), The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2004 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004).
‘American Embassy’, in Laura Furman (ed.), Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards 2003 (New York: Anchor Books, 2003).
‘Women Here Drive Buses’, in Tracy Price-Thompson and Taressa Stovall (eds), Proverbs for the People, an anthology of African-American fiction (New York: Kensington, 2003).
Top Ten
Favourite Books
1. Arrow of God
Chinua Achebe
2. Woman at Point Zero
Nawal El Saadawi
3. The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
Ayi Kwei Armah
4. Efuru
Flora Nwapa
5. Reef
Romesh Gunesekera
6. Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert
7. The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison
8. Reading in the Dark
Seamus Deane
9. A Strange and Sublime Address
Amit Chaudhuri
10. One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
About the book