Under the Udala Trees

by Chinelo Okparanta

  “If you’re not careful, that’s exactly what will happen, only worse than Ozioma—you won’t even know which man is the father of your child.”

  She laughed and said, “You know, sha, I have decided to do away with all those man friends and try a few younger boys. You know, secondary school boys my age. The men are good for money, but they are not looking to marry. All they want is a sweetheart on the side. I have to begin thinking of my future sooner or later.”

  “So you were with one of the younger boys today?”

  Out of the blue there was a timid look on her face.

  “Since when are you shy?” I asked.

  She giggled. “The young ones do have their pluses. He’s a really good one, you know,” she said quietly. I’d never seen her act like this before. If she had been light-complexioned, her face would have glowed a shade of red.

  “You like him that much?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I really like am o.”

  “Enough to marry him if he asked?”

  She laughed. “Marriage is still a long way off. Didn’t you hear me? I said ‘try a few younger boys.’ Boys. Plural. Why must I choose one, and so early?”

  There was a faraway look in her eyes. She said, “Anyway, boys and men do it all the time—they have many girls on the side. Why can’t I?”

  She stayed sitting on her chair but her arms were now folded at the elbows and resting on her desk. “And even if I must choose, it’s not as if I would know where to begin. I like this one, yes. But there are others too. The one who hardly talks, or the one who talks a bit too much? The very tall one, or the one not quite my height? She wore a look of mock confusion. “Tough decisions. This kain life. E no easy o!”

  “Well, if worse comes to worst,” I said, “you can just line them up in a row and sing tumboko tumboko beskelebe ti ti alaba bust. If your finger lands on him, you eliminate him. Simple. You marry the last man standing.”

  She laughed deeply now, her shoulders heaving. “Tomorrow sef, I will be with another boy. Maybe we will go to the river and borrow the same canoe from today, or maybe we will try something else. The possibilities are endless. But I will say that it’s been very nice spending time with today’s boy. Some secondary school boys really do know how to treat a girl well. It’s too bad so many of them wind up turning into cheating, two-timing men.”

  I would have said that she was well on her way to becoming just like the men she was condemning. But I held my tongue, and instead I pictured her at the river with the secondary school boy. In my mind’s eye, I watched as they climbed into the canoe, as the sunlight caught their bare arms and legs. In my mind’s eye, they had gone prepared with fishing gear, and they were getting ready to cast their lines after some fish—maybe for okpo isiukwu, the big-headed catfish, or afor, the moonfish, or croaker or red snapper. Not that there was any indication that the river had any of these. I pictured it anyway. At last evening would come, and, tired, she and the boy would fall into those things that boys and girls did when alone and in the dark. By the end of it all he would reach into his pocket and pull out a beautiful bracelet for her. I imagined it all this way.

  I kept a journal that year, at first writing on loose leaves of paper, which I folded into fourths and then again into eighths and stored in the wooden chest where I kept my pens and pencils. Eventually I found a small notebook. I kept the notebook also in the chest.

  That night, I took out the notebook, and as Ugochi rambled on about boys, I wrote to Amina in it. Just a pledge of a note. Nothing that I actually intended to give to Amina, not in that moment at least. It was simply for purposes of catharsis.

  I wrote:

  All the things the boy will do, I promise to do better.

  In all the ways he can love you, I promise to love you better.

  40

  ONE DAY, STILL our third year, I went beyond the river, where rocks rose like hills and where the plantain trees grew high. Beyond the rocks was a narrow path. A rope bridge led to more plantain trees, and some banana plants in between. I stood at the entrance of the bridge, in the part of the forest where banana hearts hung, purple flowers dangling from stocky stems. In the distance, grasscutters and other bush animals stirred. A few steps in front of me, the ground plunged. The gorge it formed was deep and narrow and very rocky. I stood there and thought, If I should plummet to my death, would she come for me?

  That day was again a visiting day. The sun had begun to set by the time I returned to the school grounds, and when I got back to my dorm I found that the party I had tried to avoid earlier was still going on on the veranda. Music was playing as it usually did on these days. The boys and girls were moving to the music, their arms and hips swaying like extensions of the beat.

  I squeezed through the first set of students I met with, those standing a few steps in front of the veranda. I cut across the veranda, walked hastily toward the door. There, by the door, I found her. I’d never seen her with makeup on, but now her lips were painted red, her eyes lined in black. Ugochi and a group of other girls stood not far away from her. There she was, Amina in an off-the-shoulder blouse made of a lacy material. Amina in a tight skirt and sequined sandals. Amina with earrings I’d never seen on her before. They dangled like teardrops, bottom side heavy. One had only to turn them upside down and the thin, tapered ends would have been something sharp, like the tip of a knife. There she was, Amina trying to be beautiful, even if she already was.

  I moved closer to her. She was unaware that I was there. I watched as she put her arms around the shoulders of one of the boys. His own arms came around her waist.

  I tapped her on the shoulder. It must have been too light a tap, because she only leaned into the boy, and soon their heads were meeting. Afraid that their lips would soon follow, I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her to me. There was a fragrance coming from her, something sweet and floral, like the scent of a rosebush.

  She looked me in the face, very shocked. The boy’s arms came around her waist again, as if he had not noticed that I was standing there. She turned to him.

  “Amina,” I said, my voice flat and dry.

  She turned back to me. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice was a little more apologetic than the look in her eyes. She repeated it: “Sorry.” And again, she repeated it. If sorry was meat, I could have cooked a pot of soup with it.

  Whether they finally kissed or not, I did not stay to see.

  41

  BY OUR FOURTH and fifth years, Amina and I had drifted even farther apart. We sat in the same classroom for our mock WAECs, not saying a word to each other, not before or after the exams. By the time the real WAECs rolled around, I had resigned myself to hopelessness. The possibility of any kind of relationship between us now felt like a lost cause.

  The grammar school teacher and his wife had continued to remain in contact with Mama, and, through them, I received small, infrequent updates on Amina, nothing significant enough to have held my interest. But then our final year came to an end, and with it, the big announcement.

  It happened on the very last day that it could have happened, at the conclusion of our senior send-off party, when the parents had already arrived to collect their children. Out on the school fields, chairs still stood in rows. But no one was sitting. Instead, parents swarmed around their children like ants around morsels of sweets. Some of them stood along the perimeter of the chairs, swaying alongside their children to the rhythm of some invisible, inaudible drum. Others simply stood around conversing.

  Mama and I had managed to find the grammar school teacher and his wife in the crowd. As Amina was still under their care, she was with them when Mama and I approached.

  The grammar school teacher was smiling mischievously. There was hardly a greeting before he blurted out, “Amina has wonderful news. Have you heard?”

  By his side, his wife stood unsmiling. If she knew the news, it was failing to have the same effect on her as it was having on him.

  He turne
d to Amina. “Go on,” he said. “Tell them.”

  Amina cleared her throat. She looked at me as she spoke. It was a simple declaration: “There is a Hausa boy who wants to marry me.”

  It was not at all characteristic of me, but in that moment, I burst out with one quick ha, the vocalization of my shock.

  Mama glared at me, then turned back to Amina. “Congrats, dear,” she said, but in a way that came off, if not spiteful, then resentful. “He’s Hausa, you say?”

  “Yes, Hausa,” Amina replied.

  “Okay. Very good, then,” Mama said. And now she seemed appeased that Amina had at least known to marry into her own tribe. “You’ll be with your own kind, back where you belong, learn a little about your people. Keep to yourselves.”

  The grammar school teacher nodded with the overenthusiastic effort of a person trying hard to keep things jovial. “Indeed. With her own kind. It couldn’t be better,” he said.

  “So tell me about him,” Mama said to Amina. “Is he a student?”

  Amina nodded. “Yes,” she said. “He finished secondary school last year and passed the JAMB with flying colors. He’ll be entering university up north this year. He wants to study civil engineering.”

  Mama’s eyes had been widening, little by little, as Amina spoke. Now her hands came together, as if to clap, and she turned to look at me. “Did you hear that, Ijeoma? An educated young man! Please-o, better hurry up and find yourself someone like that before you wind up getting left behind. But,” she added, “Igbo, of course.”

  I stood glaring at Amina. She appeared to avoid my gaze.

  “Of course, he’ll do it the proper way, not so?” Mama was asking. “He’ll come to make the formal request?”

  Amina nodded. The grammar school teacher was all smiles still. All the while his wife remained unsmiling.

  “It’s always a good idea to go the traditional way,” Mama said. “Traditional wedding is a must. By that I mean Hausa, of course. White wedding, you can take or leave.” She reached out her hand and patted Amina on the back. “Ah! The lost sheep of the shepherd, strayed from the group, now finding her way back to her people, to her very own pack of sheep.”

  The grammar school teacher nodded. “A true miracle. Certainly a cause for celebration.”

  His wife had been silent this whole time, but now she turned to me. Mama and the teacher were still going on and on about Amina. His wife looked at me. There was something sympathetic in her eyes, and when she spoke, she spoke softly. “It’s just the way things are done,” she said. “You understand, don’t you?”

  My head was a little downturned, but she reached for my chin, lifted my face so that I was looking into her eyes. She said, “Don’t worry. Somehow it all works out.”

  Not long after, while the adults stood chatting among themselves, I found Amina off by herself, leaning on an udala tree behind one of the school buildings.

  I approached her under the tree.

  She was holding her head down, refusing to look at me.

  At first neither of us said a word, but after some time I cleared my throat and asked, “Will you really marry him?”

  She nodded, still not looking at me.

  “You really want to marry him?”

  Again she nodded, still averting her eyes.

  “You and I both know it’s not what you want,” I said.

  She looked at me now, her eyes narrowed. “It is,” she said.

  At this point we seemed to be staring each other down. When I could no longer hold her gaze, I looked away at the ground. There were yellowing weeds growing from the brown earth that circled the trunk of the tree. On the grass around that brown patch, a grasshopper was skipping about. Off in the distance I heard the grammar school teacher’s voice, calling Amina’s name, then Mama’s name, then mine.

  “I want to marry him. I really do,” Amina said.

  A breeze rustled the leaves above us just as the grammar school teacher, his wife, and Mama made their way to us.

  PART V

  42

  ALL AROUND WAS an assortment of colors: bright reds and blues and greens. Oranges and purples. Shades in between. All the storefronts—and all the items in them—sparkled. Colors and more colors, dancing harmoniously under the glow of the brisk afternoon sun. But the roads were still wet from an early morning rain, poto poto everywhere.

  A girl with a tray on her head called out, “Akara oku! Hot akara! Akara oku!”

  There was the heavy scent of fufu and ground crayfish in the air. Above the haggling voices of the market people, radios played music and spouted out news. Some simply hissed with static.

  A shirtless old man, with skin so loose that it appeared to be melting down his body, said: “Fine girl, look how say even sun dey follow you! Even sun sabi say you dey fine! Beauty-beauty. Omalicha! Carry go!”

  “Mineral! Mineral! Come get your mineral,” a hawker cried.

  A middle-aged woman sang, “Agidi, Agidi, Agidi, Agidi jollof!”

  I walked up the road until I arrived at the bole stand, where the vendor girl—Nnenna was her name—stood slicing the peels off some plantains.

  “Two plantains,” I said to her. “The usual.”

  Nnenna just stood there, slicing a plantain in the slowest possible way. As she sliced it, she sang out loudly, “Onye ihe m n’ewiwe, ya biko wegbuo ya, osukosu nwa mpi, ya biko sugbuo ya, selense.” Each time she got to selense, she moved her hips sharply from side to side, jutting her face in a pose, as if getting ready for her picture to be taken.

  There was something mocking about the way she did all of it. She had recently begun teasing me about the stupid catcalls of some of the men vendors. “It must be nice to be so beautiful!” If she only knew that all the beauty in the world did not amount to much where many things in life were concerned. All those men shouting out their love as if tossing loose change into a beggar’s can, professing to want to marry me in that careless way that people often tossed out trash. The way life often defied its own logic, the way it often threw us for a loop, a beautiful girl might as well be as ugly as the ugliest of ojuju masks.

  Mama was waiting for me back at the shop. “Biko, make so I fit go!” I said to Nnenna. Did she not realize that if she made me wait any longer, she could altogether lose my business?

  I had just turned nineteen, and Nnenna was a couple of years younger.

  “Ehn-ehn,” she said, shaking her head from side to side. “So you think se you be the only selense around here? I go show you o!” She sang even louder now and did the thing with her face and hips again. The way she held her face, she reminded me of a duck, and so I burst out laughing. But she was so carried away with her dancing that it took her a while to register the sound of my laughter. When she finally did, she put on a look of mock sadness, and immediately her laughter mixed in with mine.

  “Oya, biko, give me plantain make I fit go,” I said.

  Business was booming at Mama’s shop now that it stocked more than the basics. In addition to loaves of bread and meat pies, palm oil and a few crops, we sold wafers, chewing gum, peppermints. Toothpaste and toothbrushes, matchsticks, candles, newspapers, thread. Now there were beverages beyond palm wine. The shop carried crates of soft drinks neatly stacked along the walls. Glass bottles of Fanta and Coke and Sprite, of Guinness and Gulder, Heineken and Star.

  Mama had relegated the stocking and dusting of shelves to me. There was quite a bit of stocking still to be done that day, and so I was in a hurry to get back.

  Finally Nnenna stopped with her playing and she reached for two already roasted plantains. She sliced them open and proceeded to pour palm oil into them, proceeded to sprinkle ground pepper over the palm oil.

  It was a steaming-hot afternoon, and the heat from the coal grill, combined with the mob of people, only made it feel hotter.

  I collected the wrapped-up plantains and rushed back to the store.

  That was the way things played themselves out earlier that afternoon. The whole bu
siness with Nnenna—the surprise teasing followed by our shared laughter. And then, not long after, that same day, there would be another surprise.

  It started with Mama and I munching into our bole. Mama sat in her usual seat, on a stool along the back wall of the store. The cash register sat on the counter in front of her. We had barely begun eating—barely taken three bites—when a customer entered. She was a tall girl, taller than me by several centimeters. She looked to be my age, certainly no more than one or two years older. Her hair was packed high atop her head in a big round puff. A set of bright yellow gold circular links dangled down from her earlobes. She looked somewhat like Amina, the way her face was long and serious-looking, but her skin was darker, something between the color of a brown carton and the color of Guinness. Her lips were red, in a way that reminded me a little of the grammar school teacher’s wife’s, or of Amina’s on that tragic day out on the veranda with the boy. But this girl’s lips were a lighter shade of red. She was wearing an Ankara romper whose bottom came down to mid-calf. Its neckline angled down on one side, revealing a shoulder. On her feet she wore a strappy, flat pair of sandals.

  She walked up to the register. Her eyes seemed to scan my face.

  “Do you carry Mentholatum?” she asked.

  It was the rainy season, and quite a number of people had been coming in asking for Mentholatum, and we had run out. I shook my head. “Sorry,” I said. “We should be getting more in a few days, maybe even by next tomorrow.”

  Mama was now standing beside me, very close to the counter. “If you need something immediately, we have Rub,” she said. “It’s the same thing, maybe a little stronger than Mentholatum. Should work even better.”

  The girl shook her head. “Thanks, but I prefer Mentholatum.”

  My roasted plantain was out on the countertop, on the aluminum foil from which I was eating it. The girl looked down at it and then back up at me. “Mmmm. Bole. I was just on my way to get some.”