“I don’t know,” Jaja said.
I sucked my tongue to unfreeze it, tasting the gritty dust. “Because Papa-Nnukwu is a pagan.” Papa would be proud that I had said that.
“Your Papa-Nnukwu is not a pagan, Kambili, he is a traditionalist,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
I stared at her. Pagan, traditionalist, what did it matter? He was not Catholic, that was all; he was not of the faith. He was one of the people whose conversion we prayed for so that they did not end in the everlasting torment of hellfire.
We sat silently until the gate swung open and Amaka came out, walking close enough to Papa-Nnukwu to support him if he needed it. The boys walked behind them. Papa-Nnukwu wore a loose print shirt and a pair of knee-length khaki shorts. I had never seen him in anything but the threadbare wrappers that were wound around his body when we visited him.
“I got him those shorts,” Aunty Ifeoma said, with a laugh. “See how he looks so youthful, who would believe he is eighty?”
Amaka helped Papa-Nnukwu get into the front seat, and then she got in the middle with us.
“Papa-Nnukwu, good afternoon sir,” Jaja and I greeted.
“Kambili, Jaja, I see you again before you go back to the city? Ehye, it is a sign that I am going soon to meet the ancestors.”
“Nna anyi, are you not tired of predicting your death?” Aunty Ifeoma said, starting the engine. “Let us hear something new!” She called him nna anyi, our father. I wondered if Papa used to call him that and what Papa would call him now if they spoke to each other.
“He likes to talk about dying soon,” Amaka said, in amused English. “He thinks that will get us to do things for him,”
“Dying soon indeed. He’ll be here when we are as old as he is now,” Obiora said, in equally amused English.
“What are those children saying, gbo, I
feoma?” Papa-Nnukwu asked. “Are they conspiring to share my gold and many lands? Will they not wait for me to go first?”
“If you had gold and lands, we would have killed you ourselves years ago,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
My cousins laughed, and Amaka glanced at Jaja and me, perhaps wondering why we did not laugh, too. I wanted to smile, but we were driving past our house just then, and the sight of the looming black gates and white walls stiffened my lips.
“This is what our people say to the High God, the Chukwu,” Papa-Nnukwu said. “Give me both wealth and a child, but if I must choose one, give me a child because when my child grows, so will my wealth.” Papa-Nnukwu stopped, turned to look back toward our house. “Nekenem, look at me. My son owns that house that can fit in every man in Abba, and yet many times I have nothing to put on my plate. I should not have let him follow those missionaries.”
“Nna anyi,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “It was not the missionaries. Did I not go to the missionary school, too?”
“But you are a woman. You do not count.”
“Eh? So I don’t count? Has Eugene ever asked about your aching leg? If I do not count, then I will stop asking if you rose well in the morning.”
Papa-Nnukwu chuckled. “Then my spirit will haunt you when I join the ancestors.”
“It will haunt Eugene first.”
“I joke with you, nwa m. Where would I be today if my chi had not given me a daughter?” Papa Nnukwu paused. “My spirit will intercede for you, so that Chukwu will send a good man to take care of you and the children.”
“Let your spirit ask Chukwu to hasten my promotion to senior lecturer, that is all I ask,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
Papa-Nnukwu did not reply for a while, and I wondered if the mix of high life music from the car radio and the rattling of the loose screws and the harmattan haze had eased him into sleep.
“Still, I say it was the missionaries that misled my son,” he said, startling me.
“We have heard this many times. Tell us something else,” Aunty Ifeoma said. But Papa-Nnukwu kept talking as though he had not heard her.
“I remember the first one that came to Abba, the one they called Fada John. His face was red like palm oil; they say our type of sun does not shine in the white man’s land. He had a helper, a man from Nimo called Jude. In the afternoon they gathered the children under the ukwa tree in the mission and taught them their religion. I did not join them, kpa, but I went sometimes to see what they were doing. One day I said to them, Where is this god you worship? They said he was like Chukwu, that he was in the sky. I asked then, Who is the person that was killed, the person that hangs on the wood outside the mission? They said he was the son, but that the son and the father are equal. It was then that I knew that the white man was mad. The father and the son are equal? Tufia! Do you not see? That is why Eugene can disregard me, because he thinks we are equal.”
My cousins chuckled. So did Aunty Ifeoma, who soon stopped and said to Papa-Nnukwu, “It is enough, close your mouth and rest. We are almost there and you will need your energy to tell the children about the mmuo.”
“Papa-Nnukwu, are you comfortable?” Amaka asked, leaning across toward the front seat. “Do you want me to adjust your seat, to make more room for you?”