AUNTY IFEOMA SAID I would not help fetch water just yet, until she was sure I was strong enough. So I woke up after everyone else, when the sun’s rays streamed steadily into the room, making the mirror glitter. Amaka was standing at the living room window when I came out. I went over and stood by her. She was looking at the verandah, where Aunty Ifeoma sat on a stool, talking. The woman seated next to Aunty Ifeoma had piercing academic eyes and humorless lips and wore no makeup.
“We cannot sit back and let it happen, mba. Where else have you heard of such a thing as a sole administrator in a university?” Aunty Ifeoma said, leaning forward on the stool. Tiny cracks appeared in her bronze lipstick when she pursed her lips. “A governing council votes for a vice chancellor. That is the way it has worked since this university was built, that is the way it is supposed to work, oburia?”
The woman looked off into the distance, nodding continuously in the way that people do when searching for the right words to use. When she finally spoke, she did so slowly, like someone addressing a stubborn child. “They said there is a list circulating, Ifeoma, of lecturers who are disloyal to the university. They said they might be fired. They said your name is on it.”
“I am not paid to be loyal. When I speak the truth, it becomes disloyalty.”
“Ifeoma, do you think you are the only one who knows the truth? Do you think we do not all know the truth, eh? But, gwakenem, will the truth feed your children? Will the truth pay their school fees and buy their clothes?”
“When do we speak out, eh? When soldiers are appointed lecturers and students attend lectures with guns to their heads? When do we speak out?” Aunty Ifeoma’s voice was raised. But the blaze in her eyes was not focused on the woman; she was angry at something that was bigger than the woman before her.
The woman got up. She smoothed her yellow-and-blue abada skirt that barely let her brown slippers show. “We should go. What time is your lecture?”
“Two.”
“Do you have fuel?”
“Ebekwanu? No.”
“Let me drop you. I have a little fuel.”
I watched Aunty Ifeoma and the woman walk slowly to the door, as though weighed down by both what they had said and what they had not said. Amaka waited for Aunty Ifeoma to shut the door behind them before she left the window and sat down on a chair.
“Mom said you should remember to take your painkiller, Kambili,” she said.
“What was Aunty Ifeoma talking about with her friend?” I asked. I knew I would not have asked before. I would have wondered about it, but I would not have asked.
“The sole administrator,” Amaka said, shortly, as if I would immediately understand all that they had been talking about. She was running her hand down the length of the cane chair, over and over.
“The university’s equivalent of a head of state,” Obiora said. “The university becomes a microcosm of the country.” I had not realized that he was there, reading a book on the living room floor. I had never heard anyone use the word microcosm.
“They are telling Mom to shut up,” Amaka said. “Shut up if you do not want to lose your job because you can be fired fiam, just like that.” Amaka snapped her fingers to show how fast Aunty Ifeoma could be fired.
“They should fire her, eh, so we can go to America,” Obiora said.
“Mechie onu,” Amaka said. Shut up.
“America?” I looked from Amaka to Obiora.
“Aunty Phillipa is asking Mom to come over. At least people there get paid when they are supposed to,” Amaka said, bitterly, as though she were accusing someone of something.
“And Mom will have her work recognized in America, without any nonsense politics,” Obiora said, nodding, agreeing with himself in case nobody else did.
“Did Mom tell you she is going anywhere, gbo?” Amaka jabbed the chair now, with fast motions.
“Do you know how long they have been sitting on her file?” Obiora asked. “She should have been senior lecturer years ago.”
“Aunty Ifeoma told you that?” I asked, stupidly, not even sure what I meant, because I could think of nothing else to say, because I could no longer imagine life without Aunty Ifeoma’s family, without Nsukka.
Neither Obiora nor Amaka responded. They were glaring at each other silently, and I felt that they had not really been talking to me. I went outside and stood by the verandah railings. It had rained all night. Jaja was kneeling in the garden, weeding. He did not have to water anymore because the sky did it. Anthills had risen in the newly softened red soil in the yard, like miniature castles. I took a deep breath and held it, to savor the smell of green leaves washed clean by rain, the way I imagined a smoker would do to savor the last of a cigarette. The allamanda bushes bordering the garden bloomed heavily with yellow, cylindrical flowers. Chima was pulling the flowers down and sticking his fingers in them, one after the other. I watched as he examined flower after flower, looking for a suitable small bloom that would fit onto his pinky.
THAT EVENING, FATHER AMADI stopped by on his way to the stadium. He wanted us all to go with him. He was coaching some boys from Ugwu Agidi for the local government high-jump championships. Obiora had borrowed a video game from the flat upstairs, and the boys were clustered in front of the TV in the living room. They didn’t want to go to the stadium because they would have to return the game soon.
Amaka laughed when Father Amadi asked her to come. “Don’t try to be nice, Father, you know you would rather be alone with your sweetheart,” she said. And Father Amadi smiled and said nothing.
I went alone with him. My mouth felt tight from embarrassment as he drove us to the stadium. I was grateful that he did not say anything about Amaka’s statement, that he talked about the sweet-smelling rains instead and sang along with the robust Igbo choruses coming from his cassette player. The boys from Ugwu Agidi were already there when we got to the stadium. They were taller, older versions of the boys I had seen the last time; their hole-ridden shorts were just as worn and their faded shirts just as threadbare. Father Amadi raised his voice—it lost most of its music when he did—as he gave encouragement and pointed out the boys’ weaknesses. When they were not looking, he took the rod up a notch, then yelled, “One more time: set, go!” and they jumped over it, one after the other. He raised it a few more times before the boys caught on and said, “Ah! Ah! Fada!” He laughed and said he believed they could jump higher than they thought they could. And that they had just proved him right.
It was what Aunty Ifeoma did to my cousins, I realized then, setting higher and higher jumps for them in the way she talked to them, in what she expected of them. She did it all the time believing they would scale the rod. And they did. It was different for Jaja and me. We did not scale the rod because we believed we could, we scaled it because we were terrified that we couldn’t.