“Who is sending you?” Papa-Nnukwu asked, in his sudden way that made me realize he had been following every word spoken in Igbo.
“Father Amadi belongs to a group of priests, ndi missionary, and the
y go to different countries to convert people,” Amaka said. She hardly peppered her speech with English words when she spoke to Papa-Nnukwu, as the rest of us inadvertently did.
“Ezi okwu?” Papa-Nnukwu looked up, his milky eye on Father Amadi. “Is that so? Our own sons now go to be missionaries in the white man’s land?”
“We go to the white man’s land and the black man’s land, sir,” Father Amadi said. “Any place that needs a priest.”
“It is good, my son. But you must never lie to them. Never teach them to disregard their fathers.” Papa-Nnukwu looked away, shaking his head.
“Did you hear that, Father?” Amaka asked. “Don’t lie to those poor ignorant souls.”
“It will be hard not to, but I will try,” Father Amadi said, in English. His eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled.
“You know, Father, it’s like making okpa,” Obiora said. “You mix the cowpea flour and palm oil, then you steam-cook for hours. You think you can ever get just the cowpea flour? Or just the palm oil?”
“What are you talking about?” Father Amadi asked.
“Religion and oppression,” Obiora said.
“You know there is a saying that it is not just the naked men in the market who are mad?” Father Amadi asked. “That streak of madness has returned and is disturbing you again, okwia?”
Obiora laughed, and so did Amaka, in that loud way it seemed only Father Amadi could get out of her.
“Spoken like the true missionary priest, Father,” Amaka said. “When people challenge you, label them mad.”
“See how your cousin sits quiet and watches?” Father Amadi asked, gesturing to me. “She does not waste her energy in picking never-ending arguments. But there is a lot going on in her mind, I can tell.”
I stared at him. Round, wet patches of sweat encircled his underarms, darkening the white of his soutane. His eyes rested on my face and I looked away. It was too disturbing, locking eyes with him; it made me forget who was nearby, where I was sitting, what color my skirt was. “Kambili, you did not want to come out with us the last time.”
“I…I…I was asleep.”
“Well, today, you’re coming with me. Just you,” Father Amadi said. “I will come and pick you up on my way back from town. We’re going to the stadium for football. You can play or watch.”
Amaka started to laugh. “Kambili looks frightened to death.” She was looking at me, but it was not the look I was used to, the one where her eyes held me guilty of things I did not know. It was a different, softer look.
“There is nothing to be frightened about, nne. You will have fun at the stadium,” Aunty Ifeoma said, and I turned to stare blankly at her, too. Tiny beads of sweat, like pimples, covered her nose. She seemed so happy, so at peace, and I wondered how anybody around me could feel that way when liquid fire was raging inside me, when fear was mingling with hope and clutching itself around my ankles.
After Father Amadi left, Aunty Ifeoma said, “Go and get ready so you don’t keep him waiting when he gets back. Shorts are best because even if you don’t play, it will get hotter before the sun falls and most of the spectator stands don’t have roofs.”
“Because they have spent ten years building that stadium. The money has gone into peoples’ pockets,” Amaka muttered.
“I don’t have shorts, Aunty,” I said.
Aunty Ifeoma did not ask why, perhaps because she already knew. She asked Amaka to lend me a pair of shorts. I expected Amaka to sneer, but she gave me a pair of yellow shorts as if it were normal that I did not have any. I took my time putting on the shorts, but I did not stand in front of the mirror for too long, as Amaka did, because guilt would nibble at me. Vanity was a sin. Jaja and I looked in the mirror just long enough to make sure our buttons were done right.
I heard the Toyota drive up to the front of the flat awhile later. I took Amaka’s lipstick from the top of the dresser and ran it over my lips. It looked strange, not as glamorous as it did on Amaka; it did not even have the same bronze shimmer. I wiped it off. My lips looked pale, a dour brown. I ran the lipstick over my lips again, and my hands shook.
“Kambili! Father Amadi is horning outside for you,” Aunty Ifeoma called. I wiped the lipstick away with the back of my hand and left the room.
FATHER AMADI’S CAR smelled like him, a clean scent that made me think of a clear azure sky. His shorts had seemed longer the last time I saw him in them, well past his knees. But now they climbed up to expose a muscular thigh sprinkled with dark hair. The space between us was too small, too tight. I was always a penitent when I was close to a priest at confession. But it was hard to feel penitent now, with Father Amadi’s cologne deep in my lungs. I felt guilty instead because I could not focus on my sins, could not think of anything except how near he was. “I sleep in the same room as my grandfather. He is a heathen,” I blurted out.
He turned to me briefly, and before he looked away, I wondered if the light in his eyes was amusement. “Why do you say that?”
“It is a sin.”
“Why is it a sin?”