Chinelo Okparanta - Under the Udala Trees

But if I were to go back to the Bible — to the New Testament specifically — what exactly were the consequences if we failed to do His will? Would God really carry out His will by way of punishment? Was not all our punishment taken care of by Jesus on the cross? What to make of God’s grace in combination with His punishment?

Beyond welcoming thoughts of Ndidi, there was the matter of adultery. I acknowledged to myself that for all intents and purposes, I was an adulterer. Though I was not currently engaging in any physical acts with Ndidi, I knew well that, according to Matthew, everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. According to Matthew, I was in fact an adulterer.

And so, the visits to church. Prayer would be the tool if I were to dominate my thoughts and desires. Prayer as a method of dousing my desires. Prayer, like water on fire.

Prayer as a way to show God that He need not curse my child the way He had cursed the newborn at the clinic. If I could only pray enough, especially this last month of my pregnancy, perhaps all would be solved, done away with: the desires for Ndidi as well as the possibility of a harelip child.

Now the sunlight was making its way inside the church through the slats of the wooden shutters, sun rays spreading out in long, tapering lines across the cement floor.

I thought: So this is what it means to be married: to sit tensely in church, watching the sunlight spread itself all around me, with this constant fear of punishment. This must be married life: the daily attempt to pour out a basinful of hopeless desires. And yet the basin refuses to be emptied, as if the desires were wet cement that is already turning into concrete.

This must be married life: to sit in church with so much unrest, but at home carry on the pretense that all is just as it should be.

The clock inside the church was chiming half past the hour, playing a fragment of a tune, like a music box.

I saw a shadow on the cement floor at the periphery of my eye, a gray silhouette of a person, elongated and approaching from the center aisle of the church.

I was wearing my prayer scarf around my head. I tugged at it, out of a feeling of unease and apprehension over who it could possibly be.

To my surprise, Chibundu approached. It was rare that he attended services on Sundays, let alone visit the church on a weekday. Long gone was the churchgoing child he used to be. And yet here he was.

He took a seat next to me. We sat quietly on the bench for a while, then he said, “What is it? What’s making you come here so often? Ngozi from next door tells me that she’s seen you walking here quite a few times now.”

“It’s nothing,” I said.

“How can it be nothing?”

“You should be at work,” I said. I had been thinking of telling him for all the time since we were married, but I could never quite get myself to do it. Now I reasoned again that he’d been nothing but kind to me, so perhaps I could just tell him. In fact, maybe it was best I told him, in case the baby should come out cursed, a harelip or such. I should tell him and apologize. So that he would know that I was sorry for it.

“What are you doing away from work? Don’t tell me they’ve sacked you,” I said.

He shook his head. “No, they haven’t sacked me. I had a consulting appointment in the area that finished early. I decided to stop home. You weren’t there. Ngozi said maybe I could find you here.”

Silence.

He said, “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”

I had only been taking sideways glances at him. I turned now to look him square in the face. “It’s bad enough,” I said.

Another silence.

“Sometimes in Aba I used to catch Mama praying for me,” I said finally. “I would walk in on her accidentally as she knelt in the parlor, praying over me.”

He was moving one foot across the cement floor, swinging it gently back and forth like a pendulum. His shoe against the coarse floor made a scraping sound. I closed my eyes and listened to the sound. Then I whispered, “An abomination.” I opened my eyes to catch the word’s effect on him.

His eyes appeared to narrow. He looked suddenly deep in thought.

“An abomination?” he repeated, a question.

I nodded.

Surely he must already have had his suspicions. But there was no way I could have known this at the time. And he was not yet ready to let me know that he knew. He did not bring it up. Maybe he simply felt a need to avoid the truth. Or maybe his silence on the topic was, at that point, something he wanted to do as a favor to me, for my sake, by virtue of his love. Because he did love me, or at least he had loved me as a boy, that former boyish sort of love.

Or maybe his refusal to bring it up that day was a thing he did as a favor to himself, in order to allow himself the opportunity to continue to live out that old childhood love. Maybe he had, at some point before that day, decided that he could spend his whole life trying to fulfill a dream despite the unpromising circumstances.

Whatever the case, he appeared to think about the word “abomination,” and then he said, “I myself, I’m no longer very much into church these days, as you know. See, I’m a businessman. And if you’re a businessman, then one thing you know is that business is all about gathering as many customers as possible and retaining them. Religion is basically a business, a very large corporation. Take the Anglican or Catholic Church, for instance. You have all these doctrines that are set up, and we are told that God is the reason for all of them.”

“Isn’t He?” I asked.

Chibundu shook his head. “No. I don’t think He is.”

“Why not?”

“Because if you look deeply enough into those doctrines, you begin to see that the Church just wants to do whatever it can to get as many followers as possible and to keep them under control. This is the way business works. So the Catholic Church tells us that ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ means ‘Don’t use contraceptives.’ And people actually soak it up and wind up having twelve children that they can’t possibly take care of. And they continue to have more children for fear of using contraceptives and angering God. And really, it’s not even God who’s making them do it. It’s the Church that has interpreted God’s words to its own benefit. Because the Church wants as many members as possible, as many followers as possible.”

“But that’s not us. We’re not even Catholics. What’s your point?”

“My point is that business is the reason for things like doctrines. Business is the reason for words like ‘abomination.’ The Church is the oldest and most successful business known to man, because it knows not only how to recruit customers but also how to control them with things like doctrines and words like ‘abomination.’ Bottom line is, take your abomination with a grain of salt. My sense of it is that some things are called abominations that really aren’t. And anyway, like you said, your mama is praying over you. And here you are, praying for yourself. If I were God, and if it turned out that you were actually committing an abomination, then I’d forgive you.”

“Don’t you want to know what my abomination is?”

His face had been solemn as he spoke, very serious, but now his lips curved into a slight smile, and he said, “Actually, no. I guess I don’t see the use in knowing. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter to me. I’m your husband, and I know you well enough to know that you are a good person, and that’s enough for me.” His arms came around me, a quick embrace and then two soft pats, a little stiff. I closed my eyes and imagined a less stiff embrace. Something soft and gentle, and indulgent even in its hesitation. There he was, hard and manly, offering me a reassuring embrace, and all I could think was that it was just a bit lacking. All I could think was that his embrace fell quite a bit short of what Ndidi’s could have been.