FIRST CHAPTER, FIRST PARAGRAPH TUESDAY INTROS

I am hoping that with the newly weds more out of the house than in, that I could get on to an even keel now! read more hopefully.

"Things started to fall apart at home when my brother, Jaja, did not go to communion and Papa flung his heavy missal across the room and broke the figurines  on the etagere. We had just returned from church. Mama placed the fresh palm fronds, which were wet with holy water on the dining table and then went upstairs to change. Later she would knot the palm fronds into sagging cross shapes and hang them on the wall beside our gold framed family photo. They would stay there until next Ash Wednesday when we would take the fronds to church, to have them burned for ash. Papa wearing a long gray robe, like the rest of the oblates, helped distribute ash every year. His line moved the slowest because he pressed hard on each forehead to make a perfect cross with his ash-coloured thumb and slowly, meaningfully, enunciated every word of "dust and unto dust you shall return".

Taken from the book PURPLE HIBISCUS by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. My first read of this author.

Joining Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea for this meme.