Purple Hibiscus Read Online Free PDF Page B

three shelves of delicate glass, and each one held beige ballet-dancing figurines. Mama started at the lowest layer, polishing both the shelf and the figurines. I sat down on the leather sofa closest to her, close enough to reach out and straighten her wrapper.
    â€œ
Nne
, this is your study time. Go upstairs,” she said.
    â€œI want to stay here.”
    She slowly ran the cloth over a figurine, one of its matchstick-size legs raised high in the air, before she spoke. “
Nne
, go.”
    I went upstairs then and sat staring at my textbook. The black type blurred, the letters swimming into one another, and then changed to a bright red, the red of fresh blood. The blood was watery, flowing from Mama, flowing from my eyes.
    Later, at dinner, Papa said we would recite sixteen different novenas. For Mama’s forgiveness. And on Sunday, the first Sunday of Trinity, we stayed back after Mass and started the novenas. Father Benedict sprinkled us with holy water. Someof the holy water landed on my lips, and I tasted the stale saltiness of it as we prayed. If Papa felt Jaja or me beginning to drift off at the thirteenth recitation of the Plea to St. Jude, he suggested we start all over. We had to get it right. I did not think, I did not even think to think, what Mama needed to be forgiven for.

    The words in my textbooks kept turning into blood each time I read them. Even as my first-term exams approached, even when we started to do class reviews, the words still made no sense.
    A few days before my first exam, I was in my room studying, trying to focus on one word at a time, when the doorbell rang. It was Yewande Coker, the wife of Papa’s editor. She was crying. I could hear her because my room was directly above the living room and because I had never heard crying that loud before.
    â€œThey have taken him! They have taken him!” she said, between throaty sobs.
    â€œYewande, Yewande,” Papa said, his voice much lower than hers.
    â€œWhat will I do, sir? I have three children! One is still sucking my breast! How will I raise them alone?” I could hardlyhear her words; instead, what I heard clearly was the sound of something catching in her throat. Then Papa said, “Yewande, don’t talk that way. Ade will be fine, I promise you. Ade will be fine.”
    I heard Jaja leave his room. He would walk downstairs and pretend that he was going to the kitchen to drink water and stand close to the living room door for a while, listening. When he came back up, he told me soldiers had arrested Ade Coker as he drove out of the editorial offices of the
Standard
. His car was abandoned on the roadside, the front door left open. I imagined Ade Coker being pulled out of his car, being squashed into another car, perhaps a black station wagon filled with soldiers, their guns hanging out of the windows. I imagined his hands quivering with fear, a wet patch spreading on his trousers.
    I knew his arrest was because of the big cover story in the last
Standard
, a story about how the Head of State and his wife had paid people to transport heroin abroad, a story that questioned the recent execution of three men and who the real drug barons were.
    Jaja said that when he looked through the keyhole, Papa was holding Yewande’s hand and praying, telling her to repeat “none of those who trust in Him shall be left desolate.”
    Those were the words I said to myself as I took my exams the following week. And I repeated them, too, as Kevin drove me home on the last day of school, my report card tightly pressed to my chest. The Reverend Sisters gave us our cards unsealed. I came second in my class. It was written in figures: “2/25.” My form mistress, Sister Clara, had written, “Kambili is intelligent beyond her years, quiet and responsible.” Theprincipal, Mother Lucy, wrote, “A brilliant, obedient student and a daughter to be proud of.” But I knew Papa would not be proud. He had