Outside, the harmatten wind tore across the front yard, ruffling the plants in the circular garden, bending the will and branches of trees, coating the parked cars with more dust. Obiora carried our bags to the Mercedes, where Kevin waited with the boot open. Chima started to cry; I knew he did not want Jaja to leave.
'Chima, o zugo. You will see Jaja again soon. They will come again,' Aunty Ifeoma said, holding him close.
Papa did not say yes to back up what Aunty Ifeoma had said. Instead, to make Chima feel better he said, 'O zugo, it's enough,' hugged Chima, and stuffed a small wad of naira notes into Aunty Ifeoma's hand to buy Chima a present, which made Chima smile. Amaka blinked rapidly as she said good-bye, and I was not sure if it was from the gritty wind or to keep more tears back. The dust coating her eyelashes looked stylish, like cocoa-colored mascara. She pressed something wrapped in black cellophane into my hands, then turned and hurried back into the flat.
I could see through the wrapping: it was the unfinished painting of Papa-Nnukwu. I hid it in my bag, quickly, and climbed into; the car.
Mama was at the door when we drove into our compound. Her face was swollen and the area around her right eye was the black-purple shade of an overripe avocado. She was smiling. 'Umu m, welcome. Welcome.' She hugged us at the same time, burying her head in Jaja's neck and then in mine. 'It seems so long, so much longer than ten days.'
'Ifeoma was busy tending to a heathen,' Papa said, pouring a glass of water from a bottle Sisi placed on the table. 'She did not even take them to Aokpe on pilgrimage.'
'Papa-Nnukwu is dead,' Jaja said.
Mama's hand flew to her chest. 'Chi m! When?'
'This morning,' Jaja said. 'He died in his sleep.'
Mama wrapped her hands around herself. 'Etwuu, so he has gone to rest, etvuu'.
'He has gone to face judgment,' Papa said, putting his glass of water down. 'Ifeoma did not have the sense to call a priest before he died. He might have converted before he died.'
'Maybe he didn't want to convert,' Jaja said.
'May he rest in peace,' Mama said quickly.
Papa looked at Jaja. 'What did you say? Is that what you have learned from living in the same house as a heathen?'
'No,' Jaja said.
Papa stared at Jaja, then at me, shaking his head slowly as if we had somehow changed color. 'Go and bathe and come down for dinner,' he said. As we went upstairs, Jaja walked in front of me and I tried to place my feet on the exact spots where he placed his.
Papa's prayer before dinner was longer than usual: he asked God to cleanse his children, to remove whatever spirit it was that made them lie to him about being in the same house as a heathen. 'It is the sin of omission, Lord,' he said, as though God did not know. I said my 'amen' loudly.
Dinner was beans and rice with chunks of chicken. As I ate, I thought how each chunk of chicken on my plate would be cut into three pieces in Aunty Ifeoma's house.
'Papa, may I have the key to my room, please?' Jaja asked, setting his fork down. We were halfway through dinner. I took a deep breath and held it. Papa had always kept the keys to our rooms.
'What?' Papa asked.
'The key to my room. I would like to have it. Makana, because I would like some privacy.'
Papa's pupils seemed to dart around in the whites of his eyes. 'What? What do you want privacy for? To commit a sin against your own body? Is that what you want to do, masturbate?'
'No,' Jaja said. He moved his hand and knocked his glass of water over.
'See what has happened to my children?' Papa asked the ceiling. 'See how being with a heathen has changed them, has taught them evil?'
We finished dinner in silence. Afterward, Jaja followed Papa upstairs. I sat with Mama in the living room, wondering why Jaja had asked for the key. Of course Papa would never give it to him, he knew that, knew that Papa would never let us lock our doors. For a moment, I wondered if Papa was right, if being with Papa-Nnukwu had made Jaja evil, had made us evil.
'It feels different to be back, okwia?' Mama asked. She was looking through samples of fabric, to pick out a shade for the new curtains. We replaced the curtains every year, toward the end of harmattan. Kevin brought samples for Mama to look at, and she picked some and showed Papa, so he could make the final decision. Papa usually chose her favorite. Dark beige last year. Sand beige the year before. I wanted to tell Mama that it did feel different to be back, that our living room had too much empty space, too much wasted marble floor that gleamed from Sisi's polishing and housed nothing. Our ceilings were too high. Our furniture was lifeless: the glass tables did not shed twisted skin in the harmattan, the leather sofas' greeting was a clammy coldness, the Persian rugs were too lush to have any feeling. But I said, 'You polished the etagere.'
'Yes.'
'When?'
'Yesterday.'
I stared at her eye. It appeared to be opening now; it must have been swollen completely shut yesterday.
'Kambili!' Papa's voice carried clearly from upstairs. I held my breath and sat still. 'Kambili!'
'Nne, go,' Mama said.
I went upstairs slowly. Papa was in the bathroom, with the door ajar. I knocked on the open door and stood by, wondering why he had called me when he was in the bathroom. 'Come in,' he said. He was standing by the tub. 'Climb into the tub.'
I stared at Papa. Why was he asking me to climb into the tub? I looked around the bathroom floor; there was no stick anywhere. Maybe he would keep me in the bathroom and then go downstairs, out through the kitchen, to break a stick off one of the trees in the backyard. When Jaja and I were younger, from elementary two until about elementary five, he asked us to get the stick ourselves. We always chose whistling pine because the branches were malleable, not as painful as the stiffer branches from the gmelina or the avocado. And Jaja soaked the sticks in cold water because he said that made them less painful when they landed on your body. The older we got, though, the smaller the branches we brought, until Papa started to go out himself to get the stick.
'Climb into the tub,' Papa said again. I stepped into the tub and stood looking at him. It didn't seem that he was going to get a stick, and I felt fear, stinging and raw, fill my bladder and my ears. I did not know what he was going to do to me. It was easier when I saw a stick, because I could rub my palms together and tighten the muscles of my calves in preparation. He had never asked me to stand inside a tub. Then I noticed the kettle on the floor, close to Papa's feet, the green kettle Sisi used to boil hot water for tea and garri, the one that whistled when the water started to boil. Papa picked it up. 'You knew your grandfather was coming to Nsukka, did you not?' he asked in Igbo.
'Yes, Papa.'
'Did you pick up the phone and inform me of this, gbo?'
'No.'
'You knew you would be sleeping in the same house as a heathen?'
'Yes, Papa.'
'So you saw the sin clearly and you walked right into it?'
I nodded. 'Yes, Papa.'
'Kambili, you are precious.' His voice quavered now, like someone speaking at a funeral, choked with emotion. 'You should strive for perfection. You should not see sin and walk right into it.' He lowered the kettle into the tub, tilted it toward my feet. He poured the hot water on my feet, slowly, as if he were conducting an experiment and wanted to see what would happen. He was crying now, tears streaming down his face. I saw the moist steam before I saw the water. I watched the water leave the kettle, flowing almost in slow motion in an arc to my feet. The pain of contact was so pure, so scalding, I felt nothing for a second. And then I screamed.
'That is what you do to yourself when you walk into sin. You burn your feet,' he said.
I wanted to say 'Yes, Papa,' because he was right, but the burning on my feet was climbing up, in swift courses of excruciating pain, to my head and lips and eyes. Papa was holding me with one wide hand, pouring the
