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Summary: Speaking with Our Spirits: Before Palm Sunday—Part 6
“I looked out the window as we drove . . .”
Kevin drives Kambili and Jaja to Aunty Ifeoma’s home in Nsukka. Kevin bribes a policeman to get through a roadblock—an act Papa would never allow. They reach Nsukka and drive through crowded, potholed streets into the university district. Aunt Ifeoma lives in a flat on the ground floor of a dingy apartment block that features a small garden bursting with flowers. Aunty Ifeoma’s small, crowded flat has none of the luxuries Kambili is used to. Kambili and Jaja must learn to haul water and use buckets to flush the toilet and bathe. Jaja soon fits in with Obiora, Chima, and the neighborhood boys, but Kambili has trouble getting along with Amaka, who makes snide comments about rich people. Aunty Ifeoma uses her last fuel to drive them around the university district. She shows them where students recently rioted over the lack of lights and water. Father Amadi, an attractive young priest, comes to dinner. Kambili remembers him speaking at St. Agnes on Pentecost. Father Amadi discovers that Aunty Ifeoma’s brother—Papa—is the great Eugene Achike, and Kambili feels her usual pride in Papa. Father Amadi leads prayers after dinner and sings Igbo praise songs, and Kambili remembers his musical voice as she falls asleep that night.
Summary: Speaking with Our Spirits: Before Palm Sunday—Part 7
“Laughter always rang out in Aunty Ifeoma’s house . . .”
Laughter and music fill Aunty Ifeoma’s house. Amaka’s girlfriends come over after school, but Kambili can’t join their conversation. She overhears Amaka asking Aunty Ifeoma if Kambili is abnormal. Jaja fits in more easily. He likes watching TV and helping Aunty Ifeoma in her garden. Sisi phones from Enugu to tell them how soldiers ransacked the Standard’s offices and arrested Ade Coker again. Aunty Ifeoma fears for Papa. Another phone call, this time from Abba, brings the news that Papa-Nnukwu is sick. Father Amadi loans Ifeoma a gallon of gas so that she can get her father and bring him to Nsukka. At Aunty Ifeoma’s, Papa-Nnukwu sleeps on the floor in Amaka and Kambili’s tiny bedroom. Kambili and Jaja don’t tell Papa that Papa-Nnukwu is now staying at Aunty Ifeoma’s house. They help care for Papa-Nnukwu. Aunty Ifeoma gets him what medical care she can, although most university medical personnel are on strike. When the electricity goes off one night, Obiora begs Papa-Nnukwu for a story. Kambili and Jaja hear Papa-Nnukwu recount an Igbo folktale. Kambili wishes she had joined her cousins in the traditional response.
Analysis
The contrast between the world that Kambili’s family lives in and the world that most other people live in is apparent when Kambili and Jaja go to visit Aunty Ifeoma. As they approach Nsukka, the stores carry fewer goods and there are more potholes in the road. The school that Chima attends is in disrepair, while Kambili and Jaja’s school is in good condition thanks to donations from Papa. Ifeoma’s small home is filled with well-used books. The tiles are chipped, the curtains are threadbare, the floors are rough concrete, and the dining chairs are mismatched. Kambili remembers the soft rugs and furry toilet seat covers at home in contrast to Ifeoma’s toilet which often doesn’t have running water. The home is full of laughter and love, unlike Kambili’s home which is full of silence, order, and violence. The prayers in Ifeoma’s home are shorter than the oppressively long prayers at Papa’s home. Kambili is shocked that one of the things Ifeoma prays for is laughter. While Kambili’s home is opulent, silent, and sterile, Aunty Ifeoma’s house is modest, sonorous, and intimate.
The silence that symbolizes Papa’s control over Kambili and Jaja still hangs over them, but it begins to wane in Aunty Ifeoma’s home. When the Kambili first arrives, Amaka points out that she speaks in whispers. This is very different from the way people speak in Ifeoma’s home. Kambili notices that at Ifeoma’s dinner table, everyone speaks and speaks and speaks. In contrast, Kambili and her family only speak carefully and with purpose at the dinner table. When Father Amadi comes to visit, he tries to speak with Kambili. But she is not able to form words properly, a product of the nervous silence that grips her parents’ home. Amaka’s friends also try to speak with Kambili, but once again she is too nervous to speak. Later, Jaja tells Kambili that he told Aunty Ifeoma about how Papa deformed his finger as a punishment when he was younger, and Kambili can’t believe that Jaja has broken their family code of silence. While Kambili struggles to find her voice, Jaja’s begins to expand. His steps forward serve as a model Kambili wishes to emulate but still struggles under the conditioning of her father’s oppression.
The tension between colonialism and traditional ways continues to be apparent while the children visit Aunty Ifeoma. Amaka has a painting that is reminiscent of a Christian Virgin and Child painting that Papa displays in his bedroom, but the people in Amaka’s painting have brown skin, symbolizing the intermingling of traditional religion and Christianity, and the people in Papa’s painting are white, symbolizing Papa’s allegiance to European superiority. When Ifeoma shows Kambili and Jaja the university, she points out the relics of European colonialism on campus, such as the unnecessary chimneys and fireplaces on white professors’ homes and the larger tall walls around the area where the professors lived. Later, Ifeoma tells Chima the story of Jaja of Opobo, the stubborn king who refused to let the British colonialists control trade in Opobo, and in turn was punished by being exiled to the West Indies. When Chima wonders if maybe the king should not have defied the colonialists, Ifeoma counters that defiance is not a bad thing when it is used right. The story shows that colonial European ways are often unjust and worthy of challenging.
