Chinelo Okparanta - Under the Udala Trees

Outside, in the distance, an engine was revving, and I thought I heard a goat bleating loudly. I circled my arm around her, but I could not get myself to fall into the embrace. I stood there, rigid as a post.

When she finally let go of me, she pulled out a handkerchief from the waist folds of her wrapper and dabbed her eyes with it. “If you need anything, I’ll be at the shop. Don’t be afraid to stop by. Just walk in.”

I nodded.

She turned around and headed for the back door. There, she stopped, turned once more to face me, and appeared to study me for a moment.

She said, “Don’t forget that this evening we will be continuing our Bible study.”

I had already forgotten, but I said, “I won’t forget, Mama.”

On my way back from the market, I stopped by the church. It was a Friday; not a Sunday had passed since my return, so I had not yet been to the church for worship. It made sense to familiarize myself with the place, seeing that I was in the vicinity.

I entered and found a seat on one of the pews facing the altar, from where I could take in all the little decorations on the shelves that lined the wall behind: red and yellow flowers, clay and glass bottles, a pile of Bibles and books.

At the grammar school teacher’s, Amina and I had only intermittently followed him and his wife to church. Our chores had always taken precedence over Sunday service.

Sitting in the Aba church that day, I couldn’t help noting how much I had missed Sunday worship, how much I had missed just being in a church, even without worship.

There was no one else around. The place felt extra holy: a hollow sort of holiness, the kind of hollowness that caused me to think of an echoing voice. It brought to mind those Bible passages in which God was said to have spoken. I thought, If He were to speak to me now, what would He say?

Whatever it was He did say, His voice would surely echo. Perhaps that was the point of the hollowness of the church. So that it heightened the voice of God in our ears, and in us. So that His voice echoed in our hearts.

Suddenly I felt an urge to pray. I wanted to ask for forgiveness for the things I had done in Nnewi. Not a day had passed when I did not remember those things. Not a day had passed when I did not crave those things, when I did not find myself wanting to repeat them. But now, I sat in church and for the first time I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. I wanted to ask God to help me turn my thoughts away from Amina, to turn me instead onto the path of righteousness. I wanted to ask Him to guide me, to allow His word to echo in my heart. I opened my mouth to pray, but somehow the words of prayer would not come. It was as if they had become stuck in my throat. I tried over and over again. Still no luck. After a while, I stood up and took myself back home.

That evening, we read the Bible as we had done the night before, Mama reading aloud and me following along in my own Bible.

We had not prayed the previous session, but this time, when we were done reading, Mama said, “Let us pray.”

She rose from her seat and knelt in front of her chair. I followed her lead, knelt on the floor in front of my chair. She rested her elbows on the chair seat, and I did the same.

“Almighty God in heaven,” she began, “protect this my child from the devil that has come to take her innocent soul away. Zoputa ya n’ajo ihe. Protect her from the demons that are trying to send her to hell. Lead her not into temptation. E kwela ka o kwenye na nlanye. Give her the strength to resist and do Your will. May her heart remember the lessons You have given, the lesson of our beginning, of Adam and of Eve.”

I faded in and out of the prayer, my thoughts of what we had read, of Genesis and of Adam and Eve, and of me and Amina, distracting me.

She continued on like that, pleading with God, asking for His mercy and His protection. Finally she said, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Ka e mee uche Gi n’uwa ka e si eme ya n’eluigwe. ”

She exhaled. I exhaled with her.

“Amen!” she said, very firmly, like a vow.

In that moment, I felt a weakness come over me. I opened my mouth to say “Amen,” but it was a struggle for me to speak, a struggle for me to utter that tiny word along with her.

“DON’T YOU SEE?” Mama asked. “It’s that same behavior that led to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the very same behavior that you and that girl — what’s her name again? — engaged in.”

We were still in Genesis. Mama was lingering on the story of Sodom and Gomorrah:

Two angels had come to visit Sodom, and Lot had persuaded them to lodge with him. But then came the men of the city, knocking on Lot’s door, demanding to see the guests. Bring them out to us, that we may know them. But Lot refused. Instead, he offered the men his two virgin daughters, for them to do to the daughters as they wished, so long as they did not harm the guests, so long as they did not do as they wished unto the guests.

“Lot was a good man,” Mama said. “Hospitable. Was willing to protect his guests from sin.”

“But he offered up his own daughters to be done with as the Sodomites wished,” I replied. “How did that make him a good man?”

“The point is that Lot protected his guests from being handled in that terrible way that the Bible warns against.”

“What terrible way?” I asked.

“Man lying with man,” she said, sighing with irritation.

“And that is the lesson we are to take from the story?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes at me but remained silent.

“Maybe it was a lesson on hospitality,” I said in a soft voice, though she had clearly struck a nerve in me. Still, I did not want to provoke her any more than I already had. “The idea that he was willing to put in danger his own belongings, and that he was willing to risk the welfare of his own family members in order to safeguard his guests. It could simply have been a lesson on hospitality,” I said.

“It isn’t,” Mama said. “Everybody knows what lesson we should take from that story. Man must not lie with man, and if man does, man will be destroyed. Which is why God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.”

“It couldn’t have been because they were selfish and inhospitable and violent?” I asked. “It has to be that other thing?”

“Yes,” Mama said. “It had to be that other thing. It couldn’t have been anything other than that other thing.”

LEVITICUS 18.

22Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

OUR LESSONS HAD by now moved from the kitchen to the parlor. We were sitting on the floor between the pale green sofa and the short wooden center table, holding our Bibles in our hands.

“What is the meaning of ‘abomination’?” I asked.

“Simple: something disgusting, disgraceful, a scandal.”

“But what exactly is disgusting or disgraceful or scandalous about lying with mankind as with womankind? Does the Bible explain?”

“The fact that the Bible says it’s bad is all the reason you need,” Mama said. “Besides, how can people be fruitful and multiply if they carry on in that way? Even that is scandal enough — the fact that it does not allow for procreation.”

I knew enough to know that the grammar school teacher and his wife could not have children. I knew enough to know that there were other men and women, husbands and wives like them, who also could not have children. “But even with a man and a woman, procreation is not always possible. Is that an abomination too?” I asked. “What if there’s nothing they can do about it?”