Under the Udala Trees

In 1980, a pregnant Ijeoma and Chibundu are living in Port Harcourt. Since a boy was born with a harelip in their neighborhood, Ijeoma has been praying daily at a church that her child will not be born deformed. The mother abandoned her harelip son, considering him cursed.

Ijeoma fears she is cursed for her past homosexual acts and her continuing homosexual desires for Ndidi. In church, she wonders why she can’t love men the way she loves women, and prays for her unborn child. Heterosexual marriage is the “daily attempt to pour out a basinful of hopeless desires. And yet the basin refuses to be emptied” (229).

Chibundu meets her at the church unexpectedly and asks about the recent frequency of her visits. She deflects by asking him about work, and can only say she is an “abomination” (231). He thinks the church is simply a big business trying to drum up customers and control them with notions of sin. Chibundu doesn’t want to know what her abomination is because he believes she’s a good person.

When he hugs her, she thinks about how Ndidi’s embraces are better. After a half hour, Chibundu has to go back to work.