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Papa sat down at the table and poured his tea froes I waited for him to ask Jaja and me to take a sip, as he always did A love sip, he called it, because you shared the little things you loved with the people you loved Have a love sip, he would say, and Jaja would go first Then I would hold the cup with both hands and raise it to my lips One sip The tea was always too hot, always burned ue suffered But it didn’t ue, it burned Papa’s love into me But Papa didn’t say, “Have a love sip”; he didn’t say anything as I watched him raise the cup to his lips

Jaja knelt beside Mama, flattened the church bulletin he held into a dustpan, and placed a jagged ceramic piece on it “Careful, Maers,” he said

I pulled at one of the cornrows underneathWhy were they acting so normal, Jaja and Mama, as if they did not knohat had just happened? And as Papa drinking his tea quietly, as if Jaja had not just talked back to hie out of my red Sunday dress

I sat at ed; the cashew tree was so close I could reach out and pluck a leaf if it were not for the silver-colored crisscross oflazily, drawing buzzing bees that bu I heard Papa walk upstairs to his room for his afternoon siesta I closedto hear hi, silent ainst thelouvers to look outside Our yard ide enough to hold a hundred people dancing atilogu, spacious enough for each dancer to do the usual somersaults and land on the next dancer’s shoulders The coh I could not see the cars driving by on our street It was early rainy season, and the frangipani trees planted next to the walls already filled the yard with the sickly-sweet scent of their flowers A row of purple bougainvillea, cut snarled trees from the driveway Closer to the house, vibrant bushes of hibiscus reached out and touched one another as if they were exchanging their petals The purple plants had started to push out sleepy buds, but most of the floere still on the red ones They see how often Mama cut them to decorate the church altar and how often visitors plucked them as they walked past to their parked cars

It was roup members who plucked flowers; a woman tucked one behind her ear once—I saw her clearly froents, two o, yanked at the hibiscus as they left They came in a pickup truck with Federal Government plates and parked close to the hibiscus bushes They didn’t stay long Later, Jaja said they came to bribe Papa, that he had heard them say that their pickup was full of dollars I was not sure Jaja had heard correctly But even now I thought about it soined the truck full of stacks and stacks of foreign money, wondered if they had put the e carton, the size our fridge came in

I was still at the hen Mama ca Sisi to put a little more palm oil in the soup, a little less curry in the coconut rice, and while Papa took his siesta, Mama plaited my hair She would sit on an armchair near the kitchen door and I on the floor with h the kitchen was airy, with the ays open, e to absorb the spices, and afterward, when I brought the end of a braid to usi soup, utazi, curry But Ma that held combs and hair oils and ask me to come downstairs Instead, she said, “Lunch is ready, nne”

I urines, but the words that caurines broke, Mama”

She nodded quickly, then shook her head to show that the figurines did not o, before I understood, I used to wonder why she polished the being banged against the door Her rubber slippers never made a sound on the stairs, but I knew she went downstairs when I heard the dining rooère with a kitchen towel soaked in soapy water She spent at least a quarter of an hour on each ballet-dancing figurine There were never tears on her face The last tio, when her swollen eye was still the black-purple color of an overripe avocado, she had rearranged them after she polished them

“I will plait your hair after lunch,” she said, turning to leave

“Yes, Mama”

I followed her downstairs She li were shorter than the other, a gait that made her seeantly in an S shape, and I was halfway dohen I saw Jaja standing in the hallway Usually he went to his room to read before lunch, but he had not come upstairs today; he had been in the kitchen the whole time, with Mama and Sisi

“Ke kwanu?” I asked, although I did not need to ask hoas doing I had only to look at hied across his forehead, and inside each line a dark tension had crawled in I reached out and clasped his hand shortly before ent into the dining roo his hands in the bowl of water Sisi held before him He waited until Jaja and I sat down opposite hirace For twenty minutes he asked God to bless the food Afterward, he intoned the Blessed Virgin in several different titles while we responded, “Pray for us” His favorite title was Our Lady, Shield of the Nigerian People He had made it up hieria would not totter like a Big Man with the spindly legs of a child

Lunch was fufu and onugbu soup The fufu was setically, adding drops of water into thewith the thump-thump-thump of the pestle The soup was thick with chunks of boiled beef and dried fish and dark green onugbu leaves We ate silently I ers, dipped it in the soup, ht it to ood, but I did not taste it, could not taste it My tongue felt like paper

“Pass the salt, please,” Papa said

We all reached for the salt at the saer brushed his gently, then he let go I passed it to Papa The silence stretched out even longer

“They brought the cashew juice this afternoon It tastes good I am sure it will sell,” Mama finally said

“Ask that girl to bring it,” Papa said Maled above the table on a transparent wire fro, and Sisi appeared