Your Aunty Ifeoma brings me medicine when she can put the money together. But I am an old man; if it is not my legs that ache, it will be my hands.'
'Will Aunty Ifeoma and her children come back this year?' I asked.
Papa-Nnukwu scratched at the stubborn white tufts that clung to his bald head. 'Ehye, I expect them tomorrow.'
'They did not come last year,' Jaja said. 'Ifeoma could not afford it.'
Papa-Nnukwu shook his head. 'Since the father of her children died, she has seen hard times. But she will bring them this year. You will see them. It is not right that you don't know them well, your cousins. It is not right.'
Jaja and I said nothing. We did not know Aunty Ifeoma or her children very well because she and Papa had quarreled about Papa-Nnukwu. Mama had told us. Aunty Ifeoma stopped speaking to Papa after he barred Papa- Nnukwu from coming to his house, and a few years passed before they finally started speaking to each other.
'If I had meat in my soup,' Papa Nnukwu said, 'I would offer it to you.'
'It's all right, Papa-Nnukwu,' Jaja said.
Papa-Nnukwu took his time swallowing his food. I watched the food slide down his throat, struggling to get past his sagging Adam's apple, which pushed out of his neck like a wrinkled nut. There was no drink beside him, not even water.
'That child that helps me, Chinyelu, will come in soon. I will send her to go and buy soft drinks for you two, from Ichie's shop,' he said.
'No, Papa-Nnukwu. Thank sir,' Jaja said.
'Ezi okwu? I know your father will not let you eat here because I offer my food to our ancestors, but soft drinks also? Do I not buy that from the store as everyone else does?'
'Papa-Nnukwu, we just ate before we came here,' Jaja said. 'If we're thirsty, we will drink in your house.'
Papa-Nnukwu smiled. His teeth were yellowed and widely spaced because of the many he had lost. 'You have spoken well, my son. You are my father, Ogbuefi Olioke, come back. He spoke with wisdom.'
I stared at the fufu on the enamel plate, which was chipped of its leaf-green color at the edges. I imagined the fufu, dried to crusts by the harmattan winds, scratching the inside of Papa-Nnukwu's throat as he swallowed.
Jaja nudged me. But I did not want to leave; I wanted to stay so that if the fufu clung to Papa-Nnukwu's throat and choked him, I could run and get him water. I did not know where the water was, though.
Jaja nudged me again and I still could not get up. The bench held me back, sucked me in. I watched a gray rooster walk into the shrine at the corner of the yard, where Papa-Nnukwu's god was, where Papa said Jaja and I were never to go near. The shrine was a low, open shed, its mud roof and walls covered with dried palm fronds. It looked like the grotto behind St. Agnes, the one dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes.
'Let us go, Papa-Nnukwu,' Jaja said, finally, rising.
'All right, my son,' Papa-Nnukwu said. He did not say 'What, so soon?' or 'Does my house chase you away?' He was used to our leaving moments after we arrived. When he walked us to the car, balancing on his crooked walking stick made from a tree branch, Kevin came out of the car and greeted him, then handed him a slim wad of cash.
'Oh? Thank Eugene for me,' Papa-Nnukwu said, smiling. 'Thank him.'
He waved as we drove off. I waved back and kept my eyes on him while he shuffled back into his compound. If Papa-Nnukwu minded that his son sent him impersonal, paltry amounts of money through a driver, he didn't show it. He hadn't shown it last Christmas, or the Christmas before. He had never shown it.
It was so different from the way Papa had treated my maternal grandfather until he died five years ago. When we arrived at Abba every Christmas, Papa would stop by Grandfather's house at our ikwu nne, Mother's maiden home, before we even drove to our own compound. Grandfather was very light-skinned, almost albino, and it was said to be one of the reasons the missionaries had liked him. He determinedly spoke English, always, in a heavy Igbo accent. He knew Latin, too, often quoted the articles of Vatican I, and spent most of his time at St. Paul's, where he had been the first catechist. He had insisted that we call him Grandfather, in English, rather than Papa-Nnukwu or Nna-Ochie. Papa still talked about him often, his eyes proud, as if Grandfather were his own father. He opened his eyes before many of our people did, Papa would say; he was one of the few who welcomed the missionaries. Do you know how quickly he learned English? When he became an interpreter, do you know how many converts he helped win? Why, he converted most of Abba himself! He did things the right way, the way the white people did, not what our people do now!
Papa had a photo of Grandfather, in the full regalia of the Knights of St. John, framed in deep mahogany and hung on our wall back in Enugu. I did not need that photo to remember Grandfather, though. I was only ten when he died, but I remembered his almost-green albino eyes, the way he seemed to use the word sinner in every sentence.
'Papa-Nnukwu does not look as healthy as last year,' I whispered close to Jaja's ear as we drove off. I did not want Kevin to hear.
'He is an old man,' Jaja said.
When we got home, Sisi brought up our lunch, rice and fried beef, on fawn-colored elegant plates, and Jaja and I ate alone. The church council meeting had started, and we heard the male voices rise sometimes in argument, just as we heard the up-down cadence of the female voices in the backyard, the wives of our umunna who were oiling pots to make them easier to wash later and grinding spices in wooden mortars and starting fires underneath the tripods.
'Will you confess it?' I asked Jaja, as we ate.
'What?'
'What you said today, that if we were thirsty, we would drink in Papa-Nnukwu's house. You know we can't drink in Papa-Nnukwu's house,' I said.
'I just wanted to say something to make him feel better.'
'He takes it well.'
'He hides it well,' Jaja said.
Papa opened the door then and came in. I had not heard him come up the stairs, and besides, I did not think he would come up because the church council meeting was still going on downstairs.
'Good afternoon, Papa,' Jaja and I said.
'Kevin said you stayed up to twenty-five minutes with your grandfather. Is that what I told you?' Papa's voice was low.
'I wasted time, it was my fault,' Jaja said.
'What did you do there? Did you eat food sacrificed to idols? Did you desecrate your Christian tongue?'
I sat frozen; I did not know that tongues could be Christian, too. 'No,' Jaja said.
Papa was walking toward Jaja. He spoke entirely in Igbo now. I thought he would pull at Jaja's ears, that he would tug and yank at the same pace as he spoke, that he would slap Jaja's face and his palm would make that sound, like a heavy book falling from a library shelf in school. And then he would reach across and slap me on the face with the casualness of reaching for the pepper shaker. But he said, 'I want you to finish that food and go to your rooms and pray for forgiveness,' before turning to go back downstairs.
The silence he left was heavy but comfortable, like a well-worn, prickly cardigan on a bitter morning. 'You still have rice on your plate,' Jaja said, finally.
I nodded and picked up my fork. Then I heard Papa's raised voice just outside the window and put the fork down.
'What is he doing in my house? What is Anikwenwa doing in my house?' The enraged timber in Papa's voice made my fingers cold at the tips.
Jaja and I dashed to the window, and because we could see nothing, we dashed out to the veranda and stood by the pillars. Papa was standing in the front yard, near an orange tree, screaming at a wrinkled old man in a torn white singlet and a wrapper wound round his waist. A few other men stood around Papa. 'What is Anikwenwa doing in my house? What is a worshiper of idols doing in my house? Leave my house!'
'Do you know that I am in your father's age group, gbo?' the old man asked. The finger he waved in the air was meant for Papa's face, but it only hovered around his chest. 'Do you know that I sucked my mother's breast
