Purple Hibiscus Read Online Free PDF

had gotten stuck and Papa was trying to open it. If I imagined it hard enough, then it wouldbe true. I sat down, closed my eyes, and started to count. Counting made it seem not that long, made it seem not that bad. Sometimes it was over before I even got to twenty. I was at nineteen when the sounds stopped. I heard the door open. Papa’s gait on the stairs sounded heavier, more awkward, than usual.
    I stepped out of my room just as Jaja came out of his. We stood at the landing and watched Papa descend. Mama was slung over his shoulder like the jute sacks of rice his factory workers bought in bulk at the Seme Border. He opened the dining room door. Then we heard the front door open, heard him say something to the gate man, Adamu.
    â€œThere’s blood on the floor,” Jaja said. “I’ll get the brush from the bathroom.”
    We cleaned up the trickle of blood, which trailed away as if someone had carried a leaking jar of red watercolor all the way downstairs. Jaja scrubbed while I wiped.
    MAMA DID NOT COME home that night, and Jaja and I had dinner alone. We did not talk about Mama. Instead, we talked about the three men who were publicly executed two days before, for drug trafficking. Jaja had heard some boys talking about it in school. It had been on television. The men were tied to poles, and their bodies kept shuddering even after the bullets were no longer being pumped into them. I told Jaja what a girl in my class had said: that her mother turned their TV off, asking why she should watch fellow human beings die, asking what was wrong with all those people who had gathered at the execution ground.
    After dinner, Jaja said grace, and at the end he added a short prayer for Mama. Papa came home when we were in our roomsstudying, according to our schedules. I was drawing pregnant stick images on the inner flap of my
Introductory Agriculture for Junior Secondary Schools
when he came into my room. His eyes were swollen and red, and somehow that made him look younger, more vulnerable.
    â€œYour mother will be back tomorrow, about the time you get back from school. She will be fine,” he said.
    â€œYes, Papa.” I looked away from his face, back at my books.
    He held my shoulders, rubbing them in gentle circular motions.
    â€œStand up,” he said. I stood up and he hugged me, pressed me close so that I felt the beat of his heart under his soft chest.
    MAMA CAME HOME the next afternoon. Kevin brought her in the Peugeot 505 with the factory name emblazoned on the passenger door, the one that often took us to and from school. Jaja and I stood waiting by the front door, close enough for our shoulders to touch, and we opened the door before she got to it.
    â€œ
Umu m
,” she said, hugging us. “My children.” She wore the same white T-shirt with GOD IS LOVE written on the front. Her green wrapper hung lower than usual on her waist; it had been knotted with a lazy effort at the side. Her eyes were vacant, like the eyes of those mad people who wandered around the roadside garbage dumps in town, pulling grimy, torn canvas bags with their life fragments inside.
    â€œThere was an accident, the baby is gone,” she said.
    I moved back a little, stared at her belly. It still looked big, still pushed at her wrapper in a gentle arc. Was Mama sure thebaby was gone? I was still staring at her belly when Sisi came in. Sisi’s cheekbones were so high they gave her an angular, eerily amused expression, as if she were mocking you, laughing at you, and you would never know why. “Good afternoon, Madam,
nno
,” she said. “Will you eat now or after you bathe?” “Eh?” For a moment Mama looked as though she did not know what Sisi had said. “Not now, Sisi, not now. Get me water and a towel.”
    Mama stood hugging herself in the center of the living room, near the glass table, until Sisi brought a plastic bowl of water and a kitchen towel. The étagère had