'Fine,' we said.
Papa looked bright-eyed; he must have been awake for hours. He was flipping through his Bible, the Catholic version with the deuterocanonical books, bound in shiny black leather. Mama looked sleepy. She rubbed her crusty eyes as she asked if we had slept well.
I could hear voices from the main living room. Guests arrived with dawn here. When we had made the sign of the cross and gotten down on our knees, around the table, someone knocked on the door. A middle-aged man in a threadbare T-shirt peeked in.
'Omelora!' the man said in the forceful tone people used when they called others by their titles. 'I am leaving now. I want to see if I can buy a few Christmas things for my children at Oye Abagana.' He spoke English with an Igbo accent so strong it decorated even the shortest words with extra vowels. Papa liked it when the villagers made an effort to speak English around him. He said it showed they had good sense.
'Ogbunambala!' Papa said. 'Wait for me, I am praying with my family. I want to give you a little something for the children. You will also share my tea and bread with me.'
'Hei! Omelora! Thank sir. I have not drank milk this year!'
The man still hovered at the door. Perhaps he imagined that leaving would make Papa's promise of tea with milk disappear.
'Ogbunambala! Go and sit down and wait for me.'
The man retreated. Papa read from the psalms before saying the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be, and the Apostles Creed. Although we spoke aloud after Papa said the first few words alone, an outer silence enveloped us all, shrouding us. But when he said, 'We will now pray to the spirit in our own words, for the spirit intercedes for us in accordance with His will,' the silence was broken. Our voices sounded loud, discordant. Mama started with a prayer for peace and for the rulers of our country. Jaja prayed for priests and for the religious. I prayed for the Pope. Finally, for twenty minutes, Papa prayed for our protection from ungodly people and forces, for Nigeria and the Godless men ruling it, and for us to continue to grow in righteousness. Finally, he prayed for the conversion of our Papa-Nnukwu, so that Papa-Nnukwu would be saved from hell. Papa spent some time describing hell, as if God did not know that the flames were eternal and raging and fierce. At the end we raised our voices and said, 'Amen!'
Papa closed the Bible. 'Kambili and Jaja, you will go this afternoon to your grandfather's house and greet him. Kevin will take you. Remember, don't touch any food, don't drink anything. And, as usual, you will stay not longer than fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes.'
'Yes, Papa.' We had heard this every Christmas for the past few years, ever since we had started to visit Papa-Nnukwu. Papa-Nnukwu had called an umunna meeting to complain to the extended family that he did not know his grandchildren and that we did not know him. Papa-Nnukwu had told Jaja and me this, as Papa did not tell us such things. Papa-Nnukwu had told the umunna how Papa had offered to build him a house, buy him a car, and hire him a driver, as long as he converted and threw away the chi in the thatch shrine in his yard. Papa-Nnukwu laughed and said he simply wanted to see his grandchildren when he could. He would not throw away his chi; he had already told Papa this many times. The members of our umunna sided with Papa, they always did, but they urged him to let us visit Papa-Nnukwu, to greet him, because every man who was old enough to be called grandfather deserved to be greeted by his grandchildren. Papa himself never greeted 1111 Papa-Nnukwu, never visited him, but he sent slim wads of naira through Kevin or through one of our umunna members, slimmer wads than he gave Kevin as a Christmas bonus.
'I don't like to send you to the home of a heathen, but Goc will protect you,' Papa said. He put the Bible in a drawer and then pulled Jaja and me to his side, gently rubbed the sides of our arms.
'Yes, Papa.'
He went into the large living room. I could hear more voices, more people coming in to say 'Nno nu' and complain about how hard life was, how they could not buy new clothes for their children this Christmas.
'You and Jaja can have breakfast upstairs. I will bring the things up. Your father will eat with the guests,' Mama said.
'Let me help you,' I offered.
'No, nne, go upstairs. Stay with your brother.'
I watched Mama walk toward the kitchen, in her limping gait. Her braided hair was piled into a net that tapered to a golf-ball-like lump at the end, like a Father Christmas hat. She looked tired.
'Papa-Nnukwu lives close by, we can walk there in five minutes, we don't need Kevin to take us,' Jaja said, as we went back upstairs. He said that every year, but we always climbed into the car so that Kevin could take us, so that he could watch us.
As Kevin drove us out of the compound later that morning, I turned to allow my eyes to stroke, once again, the gleaming white walls and pillars of our house, the perfect silver-colored water arch the fountain made. Papa- Nnukwu had never set foot in it, because when Papa had decreed that heathens were not allowed in his compound, he had not made an exception for his father.
'Your father said you are to stay fifteen minutes,' Kevin said, as he parked on the roadside, near Papa- Nnukwu's thatch enclosed compound.
I stared at the scar on Kevin's neck before I got out of the car. He had fallen from a palm tree in his hometown in the Niger Delta area, a few years ago while on vacation. The scar ran from the center of his head to the nape of his neck. It was shaped like a dagger.
'We know,' Jaja said. Jaja swung open Papa-Nnukwu's creaking wooden gate, which was so narrow that Papa might have to enter sideways if he ever were to visit. The compound was barely a quarter of the size of our backyard in Enugu. Two goats and a few chickens sauntered around, nibbling and pecking at drying stems of grass. The house that stood in the middle of the compound was small, compact like dice, and it was hard to imagine Papa and Aunty Ifeoma growing up here. It looked just like the pictures of houses I used to draw in kindergarten: a square house with a square door at the center and two square windows on each side. The only difference was that Papa-Nnukwu's house had a verandah, which was bounded by rusty metal bars. The first time Jaja and I visited, I had walked in looking for the bathroom, and Papa-Nnukwu had laughed and pointed at the outhouse, a closet-size building of unpainted cement blocks with a mat of entwined palm fronds pulled across the gaping entrance. I had examined him that day, too, looking away when his eyes met mine, for signs of difference, of Godlessness. I didn't see any, but I was sure they were there somewhere. They had to be.
Papa-Nnukwu was sitting on a low stool on the verandahj bowls of food on a raffia mat before him. He rose as we came in. A wrapper was slung across his body and tied behind his neck, over a once white singlet now browned by age and yeU lowed at the armpits. 'Neke! Neke! Neke! Kambili and Jaja have come to greet their old father!' he said. Although he was stooped with age, it was easy to see how tall he once had been. He shook Jaja'S hand and hugged me. I pressed myself to him just a moment longer, gently, holding my breath because of the strong, unpleasant smell of cassava that clung to him.
'Come and eat,' he said, gesturing to the raffia mat. The enamel bowls contained flaky fufu and watery soup bereft of chunks of fish or meat. It was custom to ask, but Papa Nnukwu expected us to say no-his eyes twinkled with mischief.
'No, thank sir,' we said. We sat on the wooden bench next to him. I leaned back and rested my head on the wooden window shutters, which had parallel openings running across them.
'I hear that you came in yesterday,' he said. His lower lip quivered, as did his voice, and sometimes I understood him a moment or two after he spoke because his dialect was ancient; his speech had none of the anglicized inflections that ours had.
'Yes,' Jaja said.
'Kambili, you are so grown up now, a ripe agbogho. Soon the suitors will start to come,' he said, teasing. His left eye was going blind and was covered by a film the color and consistency of diluted milk. I smiled as he stretched out to pat my shoulder; the age spots that dotted his hand stood out because they were so much lighter than his soil-colored complexion.
'Papa-Nnukwu, are you well? How is your body?' Jaja asked.
Papa-Nnukwu shrugged as if to say there was a lot that was wrong but he had no choice. 'I am well, my son. What can an old man do but be well until he joins his ancestors?' He paused to mold a lump of fufu with his fingers. I watched him, the smile on his face, the easy way he threw the molded morsel out toward the garden, where parched herbs swayed in the light breeze, asking Ani, the god of the land, to eat with him. 'My legs ache often.
