In the same breath, without pausing, she said to Papa, 'Your tea is getting cold,' and to Jaja, 'Come and help me, biko.'
Papa sat down at the table and poured his tea from the china tea set with pink flowers on the edges. I waited for him to ask Jaja and me to take a sip, as he always did. A love sip, he called it, because you shared the little things you loved with the people you loved. Have a love sip, he would say, and Jaja would go first. Then I would hold the cup with both hands and raise it to my lips. One sip. The tea was always too hot, always burned my tongue, and if lunch was something peppery, my raw tongue suffered.
But it didn't matter, because I knew that when the tea burned my tongue, it burned Papa's love into me. But Papa didn't say, 'Have a love sip'; he didn't say anything as I watched him raise the cup to his lips.
Jaja knelt beside Mama, flattened the church bulletin he held into a dustpan, and placed a jagged ceramic piece on it. 'Careful, Mama, or those pieces will cut your fingers,' he said.
I pulled at one of the cornrows underneath my black church scarf to make sure I was not dreaming. Why were they acting so normal, Jaja and Mama, as if they did not know what had just happened? And why was Papa drinking his tea quietly, as if Jaja had not just talked back to him?
Slowly, I turned and headed upstairs to change out of my red Sunday dress. I sat at my bedroom window after I changed; the cashew tree was so close I could reach out and pluck a leaf if it were not for the silver-colored crisscross of mosquito netting. The bell-shaped yellow fruits hung lazily, drawing buzzing bees that bumped against my windows netting. I heard Papa walk upstairs to his room for his afternoon siesta. I closed my eyes, sat still, waiting to hear him call Jaja, to hear Jaja go into his room. But after long, silent minutes, I opened my eyes and pressed my forehead against the window louvers to look outside.
Our yard was wide enough to hold a hundred people dancing atilogu, spacious enough for each dancer to do the usual somersaults and land on the next dancer's shoulders. The compound walls, topped by coiled electric wires, were so high I could not see the cars driving by on our street. It was early rainy season, and the frangipani trees planted next to the walls already filled the yard with the sickly-sweet scent of their flowers. A row of purple bougainvillea, cut smooth and straight as a buffet table, separated the gnarled trees from the driveway. Closer to the house, vibrant bushes of hibiscus reached out and touched one another as if they were exchanging their petals. The purple plants had started to push out sleepy buds, but most of the flowers were still on the red ones. They seemed to bloom so fast, those red hibiscuses, considering how often Mama cut them to decorate the church altar and how often visitors plucked them as they walked past to their parked cars. It was mostly Mama's prayer group members who plucked flowers; a woman tucked one behind her ear once-I saw her clearly from my window. But even the government agents, two men in black jackets who came some time ago, yanked at the hibiscus as they left. They came in a pickup truck with Federal Government plates and parked close to the hibiscus bushes. They didn't stay long. Later, Jaja said they came to bribe Papa, that he had heard them say that their pickup was full of dollars. I was not sure Jaja had heard correctly. But even now I thought about it sometimes. I imagined the truck full of stacks and stacks of foreign money, wondered if they had put the money in many cartons or in one huge carton, the size our fridge came in.
I was still at the window when Mama came into my room. Every Sunday before lunch, in between telling Sisi to put a little more palm oil in the soup, a little less curry in the coconut rice, and while Papa took his siesta, Mama plaited my hair. She would sit on an armchair near the kitchen door and I on the floor with my head cradled between her thighs. Although the kitchen was airy, with the windows always open, my hair would still manage to absorb the spices, and afterward, when I brought the end of a braid to my nose, I would smell egusi soup, utazi, curry.
But Mama did not come into my room with the bag that held combs and hair oils and ask me to come downstairs. Instead, she said, 'Lunch is ready, nne.' I meant to say I am sorry Papa broke your figurines, but the words that came out were, 'I'm sorry your figurines broke, Mama.'
She nodded quickly, then shook her head to show that the figurines did not matter. They did, though. Years ago, before I understood, I used to wonder why she polished them each time I heard the sounds from their room, like something being banged against the door. Her rubber slippers never made a sound on the stairs, but I knew she went downstairs when I heard the dining room door open. I would go down to see her standing by the etagere with a kitchen towel soaked in soapy water. She spent at least a quarter of an hour on each ballet dancing figurine. There were never tears on her face. The last time, only two weeks ago, when her swollen eye was still the black- purple color of an overripe avocado, she had rearranged them after she polished them.
'I will plait your hair after lunch,' she said, turning to leave.
'Yes, Mama.' I followed her downstairs. She limped slightly, as though one leg were shorter than the other, a gait that made her seem even smaller than she was.
The stairs curved elegantly in an S shape, and I was halfway down when I saw Jaja standing in the hallway. Usually he went to his room to read before lunch, but he had not come upstairs today; he had been in the kitchen the whole time, with Mama and Sisi.
'He kwanu?' I asked, although I did not need to ask how he was doing. I had only to look at him. His seventeen-year-old face had grown lines; they zigzagged across his forehead, and inside each line a dark tension had crawled in. I reached out and clasped his hand shortly before we went into the dining room.
Papa and Mama were already seated, and Papa was washing his hands in the bowl of water Sisi held before him. He waited until Jaja and I sat down opposite him, and started the grace. For twenty minutes he asked God to bless the food. Afterward, he intoned the Blessed Virgin in several different titles while we responded, 'Pray for us.' His favorite title was Our Lady, Shield of the Nigerian People. He had made it up himself. If only people would use it every day, he told us, Nigeria would not totter like a Big Man with the spindly legs of a child.
Lunch was fufu and onugbu soup. The fufu was smooth and fluffy. Sisi made it well; she pounded the yam energetically, adding drops of water into the mortar, her cheeks contracting with the thump-thump-thump of the pestle. The soup was thick with chunks of boiled beef and dried fish and dark green onugbu leaves. We ate silently. I molded my fufu into small balls with my fingers, dipped it in the soup, making sure to scoop up fish chunks, and then brought it to my mouth. I was certain the soup was good, but I did not taste it, could not taste it. My tongue felt like paper.
'Pass the salt, please,' Papa said.
We all reached for the salt at the same time. Jaja and I touched the crystal shaker, my finger brushed his gently, then he let go. I passed it to Papa. The silence stretched out even longer.
'They brought the cashew juice this afternoon. It tastes good. I am sure it will sell,' Mama finally said.
'Ask that girl to bring it,' Papa said.
Mama pressed the ringer that dangled above the table on a transparent wire from the ceiling, and Sisi appeared. 'Yes, Madam?'
'Bring two bottles of the drink they brought from the factory.'
'Yes, Madam.'
I wished Sisi had said 'What bottles, Madam?' or 'Where are they, Madam?' Just something to keep her and Mama talking, to veil the nervous movements of Jaja molding his fufu.
Sisi was back shortly and placed the bottles next to Papa. They had the same faded-looking labels as every other thing Papa's factories made-the wafers and cream biscuits and bottled juice and banana chips. Papa poured the yellow juice for everyone.
I reached out quickly for my glass and took a sip. It tasted watery. I wanted to seem eager; maybe if I talked about how good it tasted, Papa might forget that he had not yet punished Jaja.
'It's very good, Papa,' I said.
Papa swirled it around his bulging cheeks. 'Yes, yes.'
'It tastes like fresh cashew,' Mama said.
Say something, please, I wanted to say to Jaja. He was supposed to say something now, to contribute, to compliment Papa's new product. We always did, each time an employee from one of his factories brought a product sample for us.
'Just like white wine,' Mama added. She was nervous, I could tell-not just because a fresh cashew tasted nothing like white wine but also because her voice was lower than usual. 'White wine,' Mama said again, closing her eyes to better savor the taste. 'Fruity white wine.'
'Yes,' I said. A ball of fufu slipped from my fingers and into the soup.
Papa was staring pointedly at Jaja. 'Jaja, have you not shared a drink with us, gbo? Have you no words in
