The Shivering Read online

  “I’m busy,” he said, shortly, and closed the door in her face.

  She stood there for a while before going back to her apartment. She would never speak to him again, she told herself; he was a crude and rude person from the bush. But Sunday came and she had become used to driving him to his church in Lawrenceville before going to hers on Nassau Street. She hoped he would knock on her door and yet knew that he would not. She felt a sudden fear that he would ask somebody else on his floor to drop him off at church, and because she felt her fear becoming a panic, she went up and knocked on his door. It took him a while to open. He looked drawn and tired; his face was unwashed and ashy.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “That question about whether you are working on a dissertation was just my stupid way of saying I’m sorry.”

  “Next time if you want to say you’re sorry just say you’re sorry.”

  “Do you want me to drop you off at church?”

  “No.” He gestured for her to come in. The apartment was sparsely furnished with a couch, a table, and a TV; books were piled one on top of the other along the walls.

  “Look, Ukamaka, I have to tell you what’s happening. Sit down.”

  She sat down. A cartoon show was on TV, a Bible open facedown on the table, a cup of what looked like coffee next to it.

  “I am out of status. My visa expired three years ago. This apartment belongs to a friend. He is in Peru for a semester and he said I should come and stay while I try to sort myself out.”

  “You’re not here at Princeton?”

  “I never said I was.” He turned away and closed the Bible. “I’m going to get a deportation notice from Immigration anytime soon. Nobody at home knows my real situation. I haven’t been able to send them much since I lost my construction job. My boss was a nice man and was paying me under the table but he said he did not want trouble now that they are talking about raiding workplaces.”

  “Have you tried finding a lawyer?” she asked.

  “A lawyer for what? I don’t have a case.” He was biting his lower lip, and she had not seen him look so unattractive before, with his flaking facial skin and his shadowed eyes. She would not ask for more details because she knew he was unwilling to tell her more.

  “You look terrible. You haven’t eaten much since I last saw you,” she said, thinking of all the weeks that she had spent talking about Udenna while Chinedu worried about being deported.

  “I’m fasting.”

  “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.

  ALSO BY

  CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE

  AMERICANAH

  As teenagers in a Lagos secondary school, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are leaving the country if they can. Ifemelu—beautiful, self-assured—departs for America to study. She suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships and friendships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze—the quiet, thoughtful son of a professor—had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a writer of an eye-opening blog about race in America. But when Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, and she and Obinze reignite their shared passion—for their homeland and for each other—they will face the toughest decisions of their lives. Fearless, gripping, at once darkly funny and tender, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story set in today’s globalized world.

  Fiction/Literature

  HALF OF A YELLOW SUN

  With effortless grace, celebrated author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie illuminates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establi
sh an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s. We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters: Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old houseboy who works for Odenigbo, a university professor full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor’s beautiful young mistress who has abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover’s charm; and Richard, a shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna’s willful twin sister Kainene. Half of a Yellow Sun is a tremendously evocative novel of the promise, hope, and disappointment of the Biafran war.

  Fiction/Literature

  THE THING AROUND YOUR NECK

  In these twelve dazzling stories, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explores the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Africa and the United States. Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow, and longing, these stories map, with Adichie’s signature emotional wisdom, the collision of two cultures and the deeply human struggle to reconcile them.

  Short Stories/Literature

  WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS

  In this personal, eloquently-argued essay—adapted from her much-admired TEDx talk of the same name—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author’s exploration of what it means to be a woman now—and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.

  Essay

  ANCHOR BOOKS

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  HIGHLIGHTS FROM VINTAGE SHORTS

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