“Are you sure you don’t want me to drop you off at church?”
“It’s too late anyway.”
“Come with me to my church then.”
“You know I don’t like the Catholic Church, all that unnecessary kneeling and standing and worshiping idols.”
“Just this once. I’ll go to yours with you next week.”
Finally he got up and washed his face and changed into a clean sweater. They walked to the car in silence. She had never thought to tell him about her shivering as he prayed on that first day, but because she longed now for a significant gesture that would show him that he was not alone; that she understood what it must be like to feel so uncertain of a future, to lack control about what would happen to him tomorrow—because she did not, in fact, know what else to say—she told him about the shivering.
“It was strange,” she said. “Maybe it was just my suppressed anxiety about Udenna.”
“It was a sign from God,” Chinedu said firmly.
“What was the point of my shivering as a sign from God?”
“You have to stop thinking that God is a person. God is God.”
“Your faith, it’s almost like fighting.” She looked at him. “Why can’t God reveal himself in an unambiguous way and clear things up once and for all? What’s the point of God being a puzzle?”
“Because it is the nature of God. If you understand the basic idea of God’s nature being different from human nature, then it will make sense,” Chinedu said, and opened the door to climb out of the car. What a luxury to have a faith like his, Ukamaka thought, so uncritical, so forceful, so impatient. And yet there was something about it that was exceedingly fragile; it was as if Chinedu could conceive of faith only in extremes, as if an acknowledgment of a middle ground would mean the risk of losing everything.
“I see what you mean,” she said, although she did not see at all, although it was answers like his that, years back, had made her decide to stop going to church, and kept her away until the Sunday Udenna used “staid” in an ice-cream shop on Nassau Street.
Outside the gray stone church, Father Patrick was greeting people, his hair a gleaming silver in the late morning light.
“I’m bringing a new person into the dungeon of Catholicism, Father P.,” Ukamaka said.
“There’s always room in the dungeon,” Father Patrick said, warmly shaking Chinedu’s hand, saying welcome.
The church was dim, full of echoes and mysteries and the faint scent of candles. They sat side by side in the middle row, next to a woman holding a baby.
“Did you like him?” Ukamaka whispered.
“The priest? He seemed okay.”
“I mean like like.”
“Oh, Jehova God! Of course not.”
She had made him smile. “You are not going to be deported, Chinedu. We will find a way. We will.” She squeezed his hand and knew he was amused by her stressing of the “we.”
He leaned close. “You know, I had a crush on Thomas Sankara, too.”
“No!” Laughter was bubbling up in her chest.
“I didn’t even know that there was a country called Burkina Faso in West Africa until my teacher in secondary school talked about him and brought in a picture. I will never forget how crazy in love I fell with a newspaper photograph.”
“Don’t tell me Abidemi sort of looks like him.”
“Actually he does.”
At first they stifled their laughter and then they let it out, joyously leaning against each other, while next to them, the woman holding the baby watched.
The choir had begun to sing. It was one of those Sundays when the priest blessed the congregation with holy water at the beginning of Mass, and Father Patrick was walking up and down, flicking water on the people with something that looked like a big saltshaker. Ukamaka watched him and thought how much more subdued Catholic Masses were in America; how in Nigeria it would have been a vibrant green branch from a mango tree that the priest would dip in a bucket of holy water held by a hurrying, sweating Mass-server; how he would have stridden up and down, splashing and swirling, holy water raining down; how the people would have been drenched; and how, smiling and making the sign of the cross, they would have felt blessed.
THE ARRANGERS OF MARRIAGE