Chinelo Okparanta - Under the Udala Trees

“God intended for it to be man and woman. And God intended also for man and woman to bear children. It is the way it should be, so yes, it is an abomination if it is not man and woman. And it is an abomination if man and woman cannot bear a child.”

My head felt as if it were about to explode. Did she not realize what she was saying about the grammar school teacher and his wife and couples like them? I felt a million questions churning in my mind, the sorts of questions that might only have exasperated Mama more. I could have gone ahead and asked them, but the questions were like tiny bubbles in my head. I could feel them floating around, but they were either too small to amount yet to anything or too busy floating this way and that; I could not quite settle on them.

Mama carried on. Leviticus 19.

19Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woolen come upon thee.

“Can you see how this applies to you and that girl?”

I shook my head.

“Okay. Why don’t we read it one more time and see if you can’t figure it out on your own.”

She read it again.

“Any thoughts now?”

“Mama, I have no thoughts,” I said.

“I’ll give you a hint. You’re Igbo. That girl is Hausa. Even if she were to be a boy, don’t you see that Igbo and Hausa would mean the mingling of seeds? Don’t you see? It would be against God’s statutes.” She paused. “Besides, are you forgetting what they did to us during the war? Have you forgotten what they did to Biafra? Have you forgotten that it was her people who killed your father?”

She placed her open Bible on the center table and stood up. She walked in the direction of the kitchen, entered.

I looked at her Bible as it lay open on the center table. There were notes written all over its margins, both in Igbo and in English. There were small sheets of paper tucked between the pages. I saw that she had also written notes on these tiny sheets of paper. The notes around the margins of her Bible might have been old notes, but I could tell that those notes on the pieces of paper were new notes, which were to serve as her guide. All of them for my benefit.

She returned from the kitchen holding two glasses of water. She placed them on the center table near where her Bible lay. She took a seat and then a sip from her glass and offered me my own.

BEFORE THE WAR came, Papa told candlelight stories, folktales about talking animals and old kingdoms. In his nighttime voice, gruff from hours of silence at his drawing table, he told of kings and queens, of magic drums, of scheming tortoises and hares.

Once when I asked about the tortoises and the hares — why they did not speak or appear to behave in real life the way they did in his stories — he slipped into a mellow state of consciousness; his face became meditative. But his eyes were sharp and lustrous, reflecting in them all the passion and energy that his face withheld. He spoke of allegories, and of the literal versus the figurative. He explained that certain things were symbols of other things, and that certain folktales were only allegories of certain situations in life.

“What is an allegory?” I asked.

The look on his face became even more reflective than before. He was a man who liked to wallow in his thoughts. Sometimes he seemed to get lost in the wanderings of his mind. That day, he said, “A dove can be quite literally just a bird. Or it can be a symbol of peace, and sometimes a symbol of more than peace. An allegory is a symbol. Something that represents something else. Maybe it is something small, a simple thing like the dove. But always, it is used to represent something very big, a larger idea, something so big that often we don’t fully grasp the scope of its meaning.”

We arrived at the book of Judges. Chapter 19.

Mama read the words quietly, as if God were physically there with us in the room, as if she were paying obeisance to Him:

1And it came to pass in those days, when there was no king in Israel, that there was a certain Levite sojourning on the side of mount E’phra-im, who took to him a concubine out of Beth-lehem-judah.

2And his concubine played the whore against him, and went away from him unto her father’s house to Beth-lehem-judah, and was there four whole months.

3And her husband arose, and went after her, to speak friendly unto her, and to bring her again, having his servant with him, and a couple of asses: and she brought him into her father’s house: and when the father of the damsel saw him, he rejoiced to meet him.

4And his father-in-law, the damsel’s father, retained him; and he abode with him three days: so they did eat and drink, and lodged there.

The father and the Levite went on to bargain over a price for the damsel, and the damsel was forced to return with the Levite. On their way back to his home, they passed the town of Gibeah, where most of the citizens were up to no good. One of the noble townspeople, in order to protect the travelers, offered them shelter at his home. But before the night was over, the other men of the city showed up at the kind man’s door and demanded to rape the Levite. The kind man pleaded with his fellow townspeople, even offering up his own daughter to be raped instead.

Rather than offer up himself to the townsmen, the Levite offered up the damsel to be raped. The men of the town defiled her all through the night before finally letting her go. When they were done, she collapsed in front of the door. In the morning the Levite came out, prodding her to get up so that they could be on their way. She did not respond. Annoyed, he threw her over his donkey and took her with him that way. Back at home he cut her into pieces, limb by limb, which he then sent out to all the territories of Israel.

We were in the parlor, settled on the floor around the center table.

“Think about it,” Mama said when she was done reading.

It was a mess of a story. I was not sure what she wanted me to think about. “Think about what?” I asked.

“Don’t you see how this applies to you?”

I did not, but just for the sake of trying to see things from her point of view, I forced myself to think deeper of it. I imagined the whole thing in my head. The terrible image of the rape, of the poor damsel lying unconscious at the doorstep, and then being flung over the donkey by the Levite. The terrible image of the Levite cutting up her body into twelve pieces. These were what came to my mind. What part of that could possibly apply to me?

I stretched out my legs under the center table and said, “Mama, I don’t understand what you’re asking. A ghotaghi m. ”

“What is there not to understand?” she said. “Do you not see why the men offered up the women instead of the man?”

I said, “No, I don’t see why.”

After a moment I realized that I did know why. The reason was suddenly obvious to me. I said, “Actually, Mama, yes, I do see why. The men offered up the women because they were cowards and the worst kind of men possible. What kind of men offer up their daughters and wives to be raped in place of themselves?”

Mama stared wide-eyed at me, then, very calmly, she said, “Ijeoma, you’re missing the point.”

“What point?”

“Don’t you see? If the men had offered themselves, it would have been an abomination. They offered up the girls so that things would be as God intended: man and woman instead of man and man. Do you see now?”

A headache was rising in my temples. My heart was racing from bewilderment at what Mama was saying. It was the same thing she had said with the story of Lot. It was as if she were obsessed with this issue of abomination. How could she really believe that that was the lesson to be taken out of this horrible story? What about all the violence and all the rape? Surely she realized that the story was even more complex than just violence and rape. To me, the story didn’t make sense.