After Palm Sunday, “everything came tumbling down” (257). Kambili wants it to be a dream because “[i]t was too new, too foreign, and [she does] not know what to be” (258). Jaja barricades himself in his room; Papa doesn’t try to force his way in.

Papa has funded Ade Coker’s child’s treatment abroad since; the child couldn’t talk after the bombing. She can talk now, but later, when Kambili tells Jaja about her condition, he says she’ll never heal.

The university fires Aunty Ifeoma. She applies for an American visa. Kambili and Jaja leave for Nsukka the next day. Life there is hard. Kambili discovers Father Amadi will go to Germany. She walks to the garden, picks flowers still wet with “clean rain” (266), and informs him she wants to remain with Aunty Ifeoma and Father and never return to Papa’s house.

Content with her Igbo name, Amaka is not confirmed when she refuses to adopt a new name—a rule enforced by the white missionaries who initially established the church and rejected Igbo ways.

Aunty Ifeoma, Father Amadi, Amaka, and Kambili finally make the pilgrimage to Aokpe.