A few days go by—Thursday, Friday and the weekend. I’ve almost forgotten the crying incident by Monday when I step into the lecture hall for my Old Testament class. The class itself is a different demographic than other graduate courses I’ve taught, say, Chaucer, or Milton, or even my Greek Mythology class. These students are more zealous than any I’ve had before. I figure that maybe it’s the Bible’s effect on things. Or maybe it’s a consequence of age, because from the look of things, most of these students are in their thirties and forties, older than my typical set of students. And, unlike former students, these ones are quite fond of scheduling meetings with me. They do it with such alarming frequency that at certain points in the semester, I go back and forth about whether to put a cap on the number of visits allowed per student. Not because I don’t want to meet with them, but because after a while, I get tired of hearing the same questions over and over again, questions like why the books of the Old Testament are organized the way they are, or why it is that in Leviticus God bans cripples from approaching his altar. Often enough, my answer is that it’s a good question, but that there are several possibilities, all of which are subject to debate.
In any case, I step into the lecture hall, and a group of my students walks in the door with me, making small talk about God and the weather. I nod and smile at the things they say, and after we enter, I head directly to the front of the room, the way I always do. I jot down some Bible verses on the board, write some notes about apodictic law versus casuistic law, about Hammurabi’s Code versus the Ten Commandments, about goodness for goodness’ sake versus goodness with an eye to some type of reward or punishment. I wipe the chalk off my hands and turn around to face the class, and I catch a glimpse of her, the girl with the long black braids, sitting in the corner at the very back of the room. I smile. She looks down. I figure she’s still a bit embarrassed about the crying, so I go on with the lecture, and I try not to look her way again.
After class, I’m packing up my notes, stuffing my Bible into my bag, when I hear her.
‘Excuse me,’ she says. ‘I’m Grace.’
She asks me when my office hours are. I tell her. Thursday mornings, 9 a.m. to 12 noon. She nods. I smile. She doesn’t smile back. She says, ‘I’d like to come in and talk to you about the Bible.’
‘Sure,’ I say. No surprise there. That’s all they’re coming in to talk to me about this semester.
Before she turns around, I notice the seriousness of her face. There is something tragic and vulnerable about her look. I think how such seriousness should be accompanied by a fine set of wrinkles across the forehead, or around the eyes and mouth. But she is young.
She turns to leave, and I notice the way her braids hang down past her shoulders. Something about the way they move as she walks makes me want to reach out and touch them, but I remain where I am and watch her walk out of the room. And I think that there couldn’t be a more fitting name for her.
On Thursday, I’m sitting in my office with my door cracked open, flipping through my stack of mail, when she knocks on the door. I invite her in, and she shuts the door behind her. They sometimes do, when what they have to talk to me about is personal.
I take in her face again—that startling combination of youth and old age. Her clothes are even an extension of that paradox: a white dress shirt, buttoned almost to the very top, prudishly, though I can see the outline of her bra from the white, diaphanous cotton. She has tucked the bottom of the blouse into the waistline of her greyish skirt. On her feet, she wears a pair of simple leather slippers. The only jewellery she wears is a pair of pearl earrings. A very neat presentation, which makes me aware of my own not-so-tidy look. I tug the hem of my untucked shirt, as if tugging will straighten out the wrinkles on it. I fuss with my earrings, and I’m grateful that I even remembered them today. I run my fingers through my hair and hope that I catch and put back into place any stray hairs. I cross my legs under the table and ask her to take a seat.
She is holding her Bible, a small King James with a maroon cover, and all over the inside are pink and yellow Post-it notes, as if she’s been doing some very serious research.
She tells me that she only has a few questions. That they are probably silly questions, but that she would like to see what I think, since I’m the only Bible researcher she knows from a strictly academic background. I’ll probably give her a different take on things than she’s used to getting, she says. I notice that she speaks with a bit of an accent, barely perceptible, just enough that I know she’s probably from somewhere as unique as her looks. I nod.
She quotes me 2 Timothy: ‘All scripture is given inspiration by God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.’ She asks me, how exactly do we know that God has inspired the Bible? Because the Bible has caused quite a bit of destruction in the world, she says. How do we really know that God even approves of some of the things in the Bible?
I smile and tell her, ‘Sorry, I’m only dealing with the Old Testament this semester. Timothy is the New Testament.’ I start to laugh, because it’s meant to be a joke, but her face is thoughtful and disappointed, so I clear my throat, and I apologize for the joke.
I tell her that religion is all about faith. And one’s faith is a very personal thing.
She tells me that there are things in the Bible that could not possibly be from God, contradictions like the whole idea of God being a god of peace, but also a god of war. ‘Which one is it?’ she asks. And what about love your neighbour as yourself, and yet God forbids the cripples from approaching his altar? What kind of God bans the very creatures he created from coming to him just because of imperfections out of their control?
I tell her that she needs to keep in mind that the Bible was written under a certain cultural context. It is inspired by God in many ways, but it was still written by humans, with human biases, all based on the existing cultural norms of the time.
She nods and says, ‘So if humans are making their own rules, and writing the rules down in the Bible, where exactly does the Godly inspiration come into play?’
‘Well,’ I say, ‘God inspired them to set down the rules in the first place. And when you look at all the ancient books in the world, none have lasted as long and have had as much influence as the Bible. That in itself is an attestation to some kind of divine inspiration, I think.’
‘I suppose,’ she says. ‘But then how do we know what rules are God’s and what rules are man’s? I need to know,’ she says.
‘Give an example,’ I say. ‘Are you worried about any particular rule?’
‘Like divorce,’ she says. ‘Is it adultery to divorce and remarry, or is it permissible? And shouldn’t it at least depend on the specific circumstance? What about in the case of an abusive husband? Must the woman stay?’
I hesitate a bit. I wonder if she’s contemplating divorce, or if she’s just picking out an example. Then I think of my own divorce, nearly fifteen years ago now. I remember the loneliness of it all, the disappointment in failing at something as important as marriage. ‘Marriage is a sacred union,’ I say, even as I’m reminiscing about my own marriage. ‘When something happens that makes the union no longer sacred, I believe that is grounds enough for divorce.’
‘But is the Bible okay with that?’ she asks. ‘Is God okay with that?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘It’s difficult to know.’
We stay quiet for a while. Then I look up at her. There is a trail of tears coming down one side of her face. The other side is still winning the battle, resisting the tears.
‘I’m sorry my class is upsetting you this much,’ I say.
‘No,’ she says. ‘It’s not your class.’ She wipes her tears away. ‘I’m sorry about all this crying,’ she says.
‘Don’t be sorry,’ I say.
She looks up at me, then she looks down at her Bible, flips it open. ‘Thou shall not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is an abomination.’ She pauses.
‘If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death.’
I’m intrigued by the verses she reads. All of a sudden the conversation is taking a different turn. I remain quiet and simply listen to see where it’ll go.
‘Does this also apply to females?’ she asks. ‘Is it also an abomination for women to lie with women?’
Aha, I think. ‘It’s a tricky one,’ I say. ‘Try not to take it all so literally. There are things in the Bible that should not be taken literally.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she says.
‘Like the word “abomination”,’ I say. ‘It’s hard to even know what that meant back then. Meanings change over time. It’s hard to know.’
She looks down at her Bible, and I know that she’s seriously considering everything that I’ve said. She says, ‘It’s hard to know right from wrong, especially when some things feel right, and yet there are so many people telling you how wrong they are.’
I nod. Usually I’m listening to questions that don’t have to do with anything personal. Just demonstrations of intellect and scholarship. I want to hug her and tell her that one day she’ll figure it out for herself. But I’m not so sure of that, and so I don’t move. Instead I say, ‘The greatest commandments, according to Jesus, are, first, love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind. And second, love your neighbour as yourself.’
She looks up at me, and I smile at her. She smiles back. On her way out she tells me thank you for the talk.
‘Any time,’ I say.
Two weeks later, I’m sitting in my office, my back to the door, when I think I hear a knock so soft that I have to turn around to check if someone is really there. From the opening, I can see a bit of her face, standing by, waiting for me to answer.
I pull open the door, invite her in. She is holding a white paper bag in one hand and a card and envelope in another. She tells me she’s brought something for me. She sits down, signs the card in front of me, and as she’s signing it, she’s muttering something about my having to excuse her cursive, because she never really learned how to write in cursive. I ask her why. She looks up at me, all thoughtful, and says, ‘They didn’t teach cursive in Nigeria.’ She puts her head back down and continues to write.
I say, ‘Oh, I would have thought maybe it’s because of your age or something. I don’t believe they’re still teaching it in schools these days. I don’t believe they’ve taught it for at least a couple of decades now. Probably they wouldn’t have been teaching it for people your age, even if you were in America.’
She looks back up at me and smiles. ‘I’m not so young,’ she says, handing me the card.
‘Does it say something sweet?’ I ask, and immediately I’m embarrassed by the question, because I realize that I’m not only hoping that it does, but that I’m also voicing my desire to her.
‘Not really,’ she says. ‘But what it says should be good enough.’
I feel the heat rise in my face. I tell her thank you. She gets up, tells me to have a good day. She leaves the room.
In class the next week, I keep from looking her way and I’m not sure exactly why.
Another week passes by, and then she comes back to my office. It’s the same routine each time, and it repeats every other week or so. She knocks on my door, peeks in and asks me how I am. I tell her fine. She says, ‘Good.’ And then she wishes me a good rest of the day and leaves.
Thanksgiving comes and goes, and we all start to wrap ourselves up with thick scarves and wool mittens.
The last week before Christmas break she knocks on my door, and I tell her to come in. She is wearing a brown hat, some kind of knit, and half her face is wrapped up with a matching scarf. She enters the room, closes the door behind her, raises her hands to her face to remove the scarf, and it’s only then that I realize she’s upset—and quite a bit angry even, which results in a look that I’ve not until then seen on her face.
I stand up and wrap my arms around her. ‘Somehow it all works out,’ I say. I used to tell this to myself during my divorce, and weeks afterwards. Then the weeks turned into months, and months into years. And I found myself chanting it less.
She mumbles something about letters, about her mother. Then she stays silent for a while, and I feel her body gently relax into mine.
‘It’ll be all right,’ I say, my arms still wrapped around her. She exhales.
We stay like that for some time, and then I loosen my hold on her, allow my hands to drop to her waist. Her hands also make their way down to my waist.
She tells me then, her voice faint and contemplative, that she was the one who signed for the packet the day the first batch of letters came, nearly a year ago now. She starts to laugh, softly, as if she’s suddenly in a trance, but then she stops with the laugh and continues to speak. She tells me that the forecasts that day called for snow, but the delivery man only wore a shirt—the standard yellow-and-red polo, with its red collar and red hem around the sleeves. She tells me that the colour pattern of the shirt matched that of his van, yellow and red all over again. He wore a hat, she says, which, when he removed it, revealed a head of greying hair. She looks at me. ‘Salt and pepper like yours,’ she says. ‘He had blue eyes, too,’ she continues. ‘Only not as beautiful as yours.’ She stops awkwardly then and looks down as if suddenly embarrassed or shy.
Our hands are still around each other’s waists, and there is only a little space between us, and suddenly I have this image in my head of John Rosenberg making out in his office with that female student of his. I don’t remember who it was that walked in on them, but I know he lost his tenure that way, created a scandal in the department that lasted quite a while.
It occurs to me that if someone were to walk into my office at that very moment, things between Grace and me would appear inappropriate. I’ve never consoled a student like this before. And with my closest family members half the country away, in Massachusetts, it’s been a while since I stood this close to anyone, excepting a few cursory hugs with friends and coworkers. It occurs to me that I should take my hands off her waist, but I don’t, and, thinking back now, the reason I don’t is quite clear. But at that very moment, all I am thinking is that I prefer to leave my hands where they are, and that, anyway, it couldn’t possibly be inappropriate, being that I’m a woman, and she’s a woman, and I’m probably older than her mother.
She continues to tell me about the DHL man. How he handed her the yellow package with a smile on his face. Always the same delivery man, she tells me, with the same truck, DHL printed on it and Worldwide Express underneath the DHL. She tells me that she thought she knew what the package was, some silly correspondence for her mother from Nigeria, because silly correspondences were often coming for her mother from Nigeria.
‘Did I tell you I have a brother?’ she asks suddenly, her hands letting go of my waist.
‘No,’ I say, also letting go.
She nods. ‘Arinze,’ she says. ‘Five years older than I am. When we were little, he and I used to take turns climbing a stool that my mother kept in the attic. It was our playroom, that attic room,’ she says. I wonder why she is telling me this, but I don’t ask. Instead, I pull out a seat for her and then one for me. We both sit.
‘It only had one window,’ she continues, ‘which was so near the ceiling that we had to climb on the stool to open it up.’
She tells me that my office reminds her a bit of the attic room, with its exposed brick walls, with the tiny holes between the bricks. She says something about millipedes and centipedes crawling out of the holes in the summer and the spring. It all comes out like something in between a statement and a question, and I wonder if she’s asking me about my office or telling me about her mama’s attic.
‘But it’s been years since either of us used the stool,’ she says. ‘Years since either of us opened or closed the window. Which explains the smell,’ she says. ‘Building up and then sett
ling into every corner, into every item in every corner of the room. The scent of mothballs, and of Mentholatum.’ She laughs softly again, shaking her head as she does. Then she tells me that she’s wrong. That my office is nothing like the attic, because even though there are the brick walls and the tiny holes, the scent is missing. ‘It’s a good thing,’ she says.
I nod and say, ‘Okay.’
‘I handed the envelope to Mama,’ she says. And she tells me everything in so much detail that I can see their kitchen in my head and I can see her mama sitting on the short stool, her legs wrapped around the circumference of the mortar, pounding yam with the pestle. ‘All this time in America,’ she says. ‘And still, Mama must pound her yam in the mortar, the good old-fashioned way.’
‘How long have you been in America?’ I ask.
‘Years,’ she says. ‘Just over twelve years now.’ She came around age eleven, she tells me. I do the math and am a bit disappointed to find out that she’s barely in her mid-twenties.
She breathes deeply and continues. ‘I walk into the kitchen and hand the envelope to Mama,’ she says. ‘Meanwhile Arinze is downstairs, I can hear the hammering and the drilling. He is putting together a shelf for Mama. Always stopping by, helping Mama around the house, fixing or putting together something for her. A perfect son, really,’ she says. ‘Which is why Mama put him in charge of managing her stores, coordinating the shipments of the products from Nigeria, that sort of thing.’
I nod, trying to follow along. But mostly I suppose that I nod just out of gratitude that she is still there by my side, gratitude that she is sitting so close to me.
‘There was a whole batch of letters in the envelope,’ she says. ‘And this time they weren’t for Mama,’ she says. ‘They were all for me.’
‘From whom?’ I ask.
‘Men,’ she says. ‘Marriage proposals.’ Her voice begins to break, and something in my stomach takes a plunge. I tell myself that it’s because I don’t want to watch her cry again.
Happiness, Like Water Page 12