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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. ‘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 face down 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 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.
    ‘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.
    ‘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.’
    Finally he got up and washed his face and changed. 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. ‘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.
     
    Outside the grey 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