Chinelo Okparanta - Under the Udala Trees

There is the story of a man who was so distracted while driving his car that he drove it straight into his neighbor’s yard, killing the neighbor’s little daughter who was playing there in the yard. The neighbor came out screaming, shouting at the man, “Look what you have done! You have gone and killed my child! How could you do this to me? I will not let you get away with it! You’ve gone and killed my innocent little child!”

The driver got out of his car, and upon hearing his neighbor’s words, he immediately took offense. He said, “How dare you talk to me this way! Why are you shouting at me? You have no right to shout at me! Do you not see that I’ve had a lot on my mind? I’m sorry, but I am a businessman and I’ve been traveling so much, taking care of so many things. I’m sorry, but do you even know how stressful life has been for me? Do you even know?” He went on and on in this vein, screaming at his neighbor whose child he had just killed, making excuses for why he drove into the yard, making excuses for the tragic accident, how terribly hectic his life was. How unfair it was for the neighbor to shout at him that way. I’m sorry but this, I’m sorry but that , and on and on and on. To him, he was the victim; he was the one to whom wrong had been done.

I suppose it’s the way we are, humans that we are. Always finding it easier to make ourselves the victim in someone else’s tragedy.

Though it is true, too, that sometimes it is hard to know to whom the tragedy really belongs.

Chidinma must have been thirteen or fourteen at the time that I revealed to her that Ndidi and I were more than friends. It turned out to be an underwhelming kind of revelation, almost a nonrevelation, because unbeknownst to me, the girl already knew. And somehow it did not matter to her.

As for Ndidi, looking back on it, it seems almost inevitable that I would return to her, and that we would try and salvage what was left of our relationship.

These days, I think a lot about something Mama used to say: that a bicycle has two wheels. And, of course, it does. Ndidi is one, and I am the other. We have now shared decades together, and though there can be no marriage between us (a relationship like ours is still too dangerous a thing, let alone a marriage), we feel ourselves every bit a couple.

Outside of Mama and Chibundu and Chidinma, Ndidi and I have done our best to keep the whole thing a clandestine affair, a little like it used to be. We keep separate quarters, but we do spend many of our nights together. Sometimes I go to her flat, and other times she comes to mine, which is not far from Mama’s bungalow, the same one in which, with help from Mama, I wound up raising Chidinma.

Some of those nights when we are together and in bed, Ndidi wraps her arms around me. She molds her body around mine and whispers in my ear about a town where love is allowed to be love, between men and women, and men and men, and women and women, just as between Yoruba and Igbo and Hausa and Fulani. Ndidi describes the town, all its trees and all the colors of its sand. She tells me in great detail about the roads, the directions in which they run, from where and to where they lead.

“What is the name of the town?” I ask.

Sleep threatens to overtake her, and sometimes she forgets that she does not want to say a name. One night, she mumbles that it is Aba. The next night it is Umuahia. With each passing night she names more towns: Ojoto and Nnewi, Onitsha and Nsukka, Port Harcourt and Lagos, Uyo and Oba, Kaduna and Sokoto. She names and names, so that eventually I have to laugh and say, “How is it that this town can be so many places at once?”

Her voice is soft like a hum, and the words come out quiet like a prayer. She is older now. Both of us are. The years have flown by, and there is an aged roughness to her voice. She says, “All of them are here in Nigeria. You see, this place will be all of Nigeria.”

Hebrews 8: God made a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that He made with their fathers. If that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been made for the second. With that new covenant, He made the first old. And that first one was allowed to vanish away.

It is this verse that fills my mind these days. This, it seems to me, is the lesson of the Bible: this affirmation of the importance of reflection, and of revision, enough revision to do away with tired, old, even faulty laws.

Sometimes I sit with my Bible in my hands, and I think to myself that God is nothing but an artist, and the world is His canvas. And I reason that if the Old and New Testaments are any indication, then change is in fact a major part of His aesthetic, a major part of His vision for the world. The Bible itself is an endorsement of change. Even biblical covenants change: In the New Testament, no longer the need for animal sacrifices. Change. No longer the covenant of law, but rather the covenant of grace. Change. A focus on all mankind rather than a focus on the Jews. Change. So many other changes, if a person were the list-making type.

Many days I reason to myself that change is the point of it all. And that everything we do should be a reflection of that vision of change.

Maybe the rules of the Bible will always be in flux. Maybe God is still speaking and will continue to do so for always. Maybe He is still creating new covenants, only we were too deaf, too headstrong, too set in old ways to hear. Yes, there are the ways of God that have already been made known to us, but maybe there are also those ways in the process of being made known. Maybe we have only to open our ears and hearts and minds to hear.

It is a comforting thought when I reason it like that.

At the door, I had knocked, Chidinma in my arms. Mama opened, a questioning look on her face.

“Mama, I can’t. I can’t anymore,” I blurted out.

She stood there just looking at me. Finally she lowered her eyelids, out of what seemed to be disappointment. Her questioning look was no longer questioning.

“Mama, I can’t,” I said again.

A soft breeze blew from behind me, entering through the door and stirring the tip of the white headscarf that Mama was wearing on her head. Causing it to quiver as if it were a miniature flag.

Chidinma was now awake, her head upright, but she was quiet, her face turning back and forth as she looked between Mama and me.

“Mama, please let me in. I can’t anymore with Chibundu.”

Mama lifted her eyes. She took Chidinma from my arms, carried her with one arm. I did not expect it when her other arm came around my shoulders. We walked together into the parlor and toward the sofa. The baby was making a valiant attempt at speaking — a series of babbling words — and Mama said, “It makes no sense to send you back this late at night.” We had been standing side by side, but she turned to look directly at me now.

“All right,” she said. “All right.” This was an understanding. Discernment like tepid light, very understated, but an understanding nonetheless.

And now she began muttering to herself. “God, who created you, must have known what He did. Enough is enough.”

Who knows how long she’d been deliberating it this way.

She cleared her throat, and she finished: “ Ka udo di, ka ndu di. ”

Let peace be. Let life be.

On January 7, 2014, Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, signed into law a bill criminalizing same-sex relationships and the support of such relationships, making these offenses punishable by up to fourteen years in prison. In the northern states, the punishment is death by stoning. This novel attempts to give Nigeria’s marginalized LGBTQ citizens a more powerful voice, and a place in our nation’s history.