60 pages • 2 hours read
Lesley Nneka ArimahWhat It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Beta“Redemption”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
“Redemption” Summary
The narrator of “Redemption” is a teenage girl who becomes enamored with the neighbors’ 13-year-old house girl, Mayowa. Mayowa’s nerve and boldness attract the narrator; for example, Mayowa throws a bundle of feces at the narrator’s house after the narrator’s mother openly tells Mrs. Ajayi, Mayowa’s employer, that she will be trouble. The narrator starts to spend more time outside and at Mrs. Ajayi’s in hopes of seeing Mayowa. The narrator enjoys Mrs. Ajayi’s stories, and those about Mayowa’s mischief make her like Mayowa even more. She tries to figure out how Mayowa is brave enough to stand up to her mother.
The narrator’s mother criticizes her for not wanting to join youth pastor Brother Benni for Sunday school. A few years earlier, Brother Benni molested the narrator. She told her parents, who informed the pastor. However, when Benni said that she was a liar, the adults believed him, and the narrator’s mother cites this as the reason her father left to live with his lover.
The church periodically takes donations for a fund for widows and orphans; in a show of trust, a member always takes this money home in a red bag to return the next week. The narrator’s mother is chosen to do so for the sixth time. The narrator explains this to Mayowa, who comes over one day when the mother and their house girl, Grace, are out. The narrator shows Mayowa around the house, including the bag, and they look at old fashion magazines. The narrator wants to tell Mayowa all about herself, including how Brother Benni attacked her and why she started wetting the bed. When Grace and the narrator’s mother return home, the narrator gives Mayowa the magazine and rushes her out.
The narrator begins to suspect that Grace and Mayowa are planning something. She sees Grace eyeing the church bag, and Mayowa invents excuses to stop by. Grace and Mayowa steal the money but are caught one town away. Mayowa disappears, but Grace’s mother pleads with the narrator’s mother to take her back. The mother will only do so if Grace tells the truth, but she doesn’t believe that Mayowa, six years her junior, came up with the plan, so Grace claims responsibility to avoid being taken to the police.
Mayowa shows up at the Ajayis’ house three days later, but she refuses to speak to the narrator because she believes she told people about the theft. The narrator feels jilted, and her anger leads her to tell lies about Mayowa to Mrs. Ajayi, hoping they will beat her. Instead, Mayowa is sent to Brother Benni. One night during Bible study, people hear him wailing. They discover Mayowa holding a razor blade and Benni clutching a wound on his upper thigh. After Mrs. Ajayi hears Mayowa’s story of what happened, she points out to the angry crowd that Brother Benni’s trousers are unbuckled. Someone calls the police, but the church is vacant when they eventually arrive. Though people understand that Mayowa acted in self-defense, Mrs. Ajayi plans to send her away, supposedly to keep her safe. The narrator runs over to her house and sees Mayowa frantically scrubbing the floor. She is crying, which makes the narrator realize that she is not her champion but just another young girl subject to the whims of society. The narrator steps forward and throws something.
“Redemption” Analysis
Though the narrator claims she fell in love with Mayowa, it becomes increasingly evident that she wants to be like Mayowa or to be respected by someone like her, possibly more than she actually desires a romance with her. From the beginning, it is Mayowa’s brashness and reluctance to show deference to the narrator’s mother that appeal to the narrator. She declares her love after relating how Mayowa threw newspaper-wrapped feces at the side of their house in retaliation for the narrator’s mother having been rude to her. In doing so, Mayowa behaved as the narrator would like to, which introduces her fraught relationship with her mother.
The strain in the relationship stems partly from the mother blaming the narrator for the departure of the narrator’s father—something that clearly affected the mother deeply, as the narrator calls her “a different person” than she was before he left. However, the primary source of tension centers on the church, which is the site of the story’s most crucial emotional events. Church life is important to the mother; she receives validation from her church community—particularly from receiving the Widows and Orphans Fund to hold for a week. The narrator describes her as “preening” because she’s “the most trusted woman in our church” (220). Her pride in receiving this nomination compensates for the wounded ego and heart caused by her husband’s infidelity. The narrator, however, does not share her mother’s warm feelings toward the church, as she was molested there by Brother Benni years earlier. This event created a schism between mother and daughter that lies at the heart of this story: “The stink that was raised was what must have driven my father away, my mother occasionally reminded me. The humiliating stench of a daughter who bore false tales” (220). Whether the mother truly didn’t believe her daughter or simply didn’t want to cause problems that could end in her having to leave the church—an even more important source of support after her husband’s departure—her failure to stand up for the narrator left the latter deeply bitter.
The narrator’s fascination with Mayowa is inextricably connected to this resentment toward her mother and the need to feel seen and heard. When Mayowa visits her house, the narrator finds herself “wanting to tell her everything that had happened to [her], why [she] started wetting the bed and why [her] father left. How Brother Benni had fisted [her] hair so tightly braids popped off my temple, leaving a bald spot that gleamed in certain lights” (223-24). Later, she states, “I wanted her to teach me to throw things” (225). This develops the theme of How Privilege and Suffering Shape Perception. Because the narrator sees Mayowa as a type of champion, she fails to recognize the exploitative dynamics of their own relationship—i.e., the fact that Mayowa is a servant—or the desire Mayowa might have to escape her circumstances by stealing the church money. It is only at the end of the story that the narrator’s projections crumble and she sees Mayowa as she is: “She wasn’t my friend. She wasn’t here to fight for me. Or love me. She was just as powerless, another daughter being sent back to her mother in disgrace” (230). Even then, the effect of this realization is unclear: The ending is ambiguous, leaving the reader to decide whether the narrator acts in disappointment, anger, or sympathy and thus whether the class divide between the girls can truly be bridged.
