Adichie's Writing

SPOILER (Don't read until you have finished the book)    

 I took off my slippers. The cold marble floor drew the heat from my feet. I wanted to tell Jaja that my eyes tingled with unshed tears, that I still listened for, wanted to hear, Papa's footsteps on the stairs. That there were painfully scattered bits inside me that I could never put back because the places they fit into were gone. Instead, I said, "St. Agnes will be full for Papa's funeral Mass."

     Jaja did not respond.

     The phone started to ring. It rang for a long time; the caller must have dialed a few times before Mama finally answered it. She came into the living room a short while later. The wrapper casually tied across her chest hung low, exposing the birthmark, the little black bulb, above her left breast. 

      "They did an autopsy," she said. "They have found the poison in your father's body." She sounded as though the poison in Papa's body was something we all had known about, something we had put in there to be found, the way it was done in the books I read where white people hid Easter eggs for their children to find.

      "Poison?" I said.

      Mama tightened her wrapper, then went to the windows; she pushed the drapes aside, checking that the louvers were shut to keep the rain from splashing into the house. Her movements were calm and slow. When she spoke, her voice was just as calm and slow. "I started putting the poison in his tea before I came to Nsukka. Sisi got it for me; her uncle is a powerful witch doctor."

      For a long, silent moment I could think of nothing. My mind was blank, I was blank. Then I thought of taking sips of Papa's tea, love sips, the scalding liquid that burned his love onto my tongue. "Why did you put it in his tea?" I asked Mama, rising. My voice was loud. I was almost screaming. "Why in his tea?"

      But Mama did not answer. Not even when I stood up and shook her until Jaja yanked me away. Not even when Jaja wrapped his arms around me and turned to include her but she moved away. (pgs289-291)

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    I chose this passage because it so beautifully captures so many things about the family. Kambili really misses her father. She is struggling to put her life together without him. I love the way the mother delivers the line about poison, as Kambili puts it, "as though the poison in Papa's body was something we all had known about..." Kambili is so devastated that the poison was in the tea, the poison was in his love. His love was poison. Jaja's reaction is overwhelming. He pulls Kambili into a hug and tries to hug his mother as well. He is trying to hold his family together, to force them to be OK. This scene moves me, it is so wonderfully narrated.

    I think one of the ways that Adichie achieves this wonderful revelation is by understating it. Mama reveals that she poisoned Papa very nonchalantly so that the reader is allowed to experience Kambili's feelings during the epiphany. It isn't rushed, it doesn't drag, it rolls along at just the right pace for proper understanding. I really do love this scene, the whole end section is just wonderful. I can't praise it enough.