“It’s unfortunate,” she said, looking forlornly into her cup of tea. “If only I had finished setting things up a little earlier, I might have prevented . . .” Her voice tapered into silence.
I stared silently at her.
She lifted her head from her cup and, with a forced sprightliness in her voice, she said, “I was thinking of making okra soup for supper tonight. I don’t sell okra at the shop. Would you mind picking up some okra at the market for me?”
I nodded.
“The market is not far from here,” she said. “Out our own road, a right onto the main road, and you will see the church steeple. Walk in the direction of the steeple, and not a couple of kilometers beyond that you will start to see signs of the market—the open umbrellas and zinc sheds, the items hanging out of the vendor stands.”
We were done with our tea and bread by now.
“Oya, I’m off to the shop,” she said, rising from her seat. Her handbag was on the countertop near where we sat. She reached for it.
I stood up along with her and cleared the table, collecting our saucers and teacups and placing them in the sink.
I had not yet begun to wash the dishes when Mama said, “I meant to say earlier how sorry I am that I left you there for all that time.”
I turned to face her. She was holding her handbag and fumbling in it for the okra money. When she found the money, she stood there holding her bag in one hand and the money in the other. Finally, instead of just giving me the money, she took some steps closer and pulled me into an embrace. “I’m really, really sorry,” she said.
My first thought was that it was strange to be in Mama’s arms like this. There was a distance between us that had not existed before, not even in her initial embrace when she had come to collect me from the grammar school teacher’s. There was a strain. She was my mother, and I should have leaned into her embrace, should have relished it like I did the day she had come to pick me up from the grammar school teacher’s—and like all the days before she sent me off there. But things were different now. In this moment, she felt more like another warden than my own mother, more like a husk—more an emblem of motherhood than motherhood itself.
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.
15
“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.”
16
LEVITICUS 18.
22 Thou 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?”
“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.
19 Ye 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.
17
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:
1 And 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.
2 And 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.
3 And 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.
4 And 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 don
key 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.
I thought, What if all of these stories were actually only allegories for something else, something more than we could easily put our fingers on?
In addition to our studies, I had now begun to accompany Mama to church on Sundays. Why was it that these questions never came up at church? Why was it that people never asked any questions at church? Instead, everyone nodded, and cried “Amen” after everything Father Godfrey said, and clapped, no one asking him to explain anything. I wished that Papa were here so that I could have asked him what he thought. I wondered what Father Godfrey would say if I confronted him with these questions. Would he even know the answers? How much did pastors pretend to know?
Under the Udala Trees Page 7
