Transcendent Kingdom

This short chapter consists of two more of Gifty’s journal entries addressed to God. The first asks God whether Nana’s contention that Christianity is a cult started over a thousand years ago is true. The second says, “Dear God / Would you show me that you’re real” (147)?

Gifty returns home from work to find her mother cooking fried plantains. She criticizes Gifty for not being able to cook for herself, but Gifty is just happy that her mother is out of bed and active. The smell of oil reminds her of an incident from her childhood, when her mother was throwing a party for the Ghanaian association, composed of nearby immigrants from Ghana. This was after the Chin Chin Man left. Following a food fight with the other children at the party, Nana puts his foot through a loose nail on the couch. The other parents encourage their mother to pour hot oil on the wound to prevent tetanus, although he has already been immunized.

Gifty tells Han, in a conversation in the laboratory, that her brother died earlier in her life. However, she does not mention the cause of his death. As she says, “I would have been embarrassed to talk about Nana’s addiction with Han” (158). This event prompts Gifty to reminisce about another stage in her brother’s life, after Nana tries out for the basketball team. He excels on the team, and their mother buys a hoop for the garage outside their house so that Nana can practice shots. Beside the hoop, Nana reveals he no longer cares what their father thinks.

Gifty asks herself, “what’s the point” (175)? She reflects on the reason for her experiments on mice, and particularly on the mouse that has become severely addicted to Ensure. It has pressed the lever, which dispenses both the supplement and a random shock, so many times that it has developed a psycho-somatic limp. Gifty suggests that the ability to ask the question “why” is what separates human beings from animals and is the spur for philosophy, science, and religion.

Gifty discusses a 2014 study that compared schizophrenics in Ghana and India with schizophrenics in the United States. In the former cases, the voices were experienced as more positive and less intrusive than in the latter. The American participants “described experiences of being bombarded by harsh, hate filled voices” (177).

Gifty connects this contrast to her mother’s belief in ghosts and to her claims that she experienced a benign ghost when staying with her cousin when first in America. Her mother also starts to respond positively to being touched and stroked by Gifty before she goes to work.

Gifty buys a bible for her mother to read and leaves it by her bed, but her mother does not touch it. Gifty recalls how she used to memorize bible verses as a girl. She also remembers how she was proud of her journal since she had heard that “the word” was connected to God in the bible. Pastor Tom, however, informs them in one sermon that “the word” in scripture does not literally mean “word” but, as a translation from “logos” in Greek, something closer to “premise” or “question.” Gifty is disappointed to discover this but changes the nature of her journal entries accordingly. They go from being mere retellings of daily events to more philosophical meditations about things that she does not understand.

When Gifty is a teenager, several girls in her church become pregnant. In response, the church holds an intervention in which the girls are given a day of lectures on the virtues of chastity and the dangers of sex before marriage. The talks involve scare tactics, including pictures of genitalia affected with sexually transmitted diseases. This experience has the effect of putting Gifty off sex until she gets to college. In addition to this recollection, Gifty also recalls befriending a woman called Anne, who was very open about sex.

When Gifty is nine, her brother’s basketball playing is going from strength to strength, and he is permitted to miss church because of this success. He is being scouted by many top universities for a sports scholarship and is in the process of deciding which one to choose. However, in a relatively unimportant match, Nana is injured. He is taken to the emergency room, where it is discovered that he has torn ligaments in his ankle. The doctor prescribes him OxyContin, an opioid-based painkiller, and says he will have to miss a few games. No one suspects at the time that this is the beginning of a tragic demise.