Under the Udala Trees

by Chinelo Okparanta

  “We won’t stay out that late,” she said. “Just a couple of hours or so.”

  We were seated together on her sofa. She reached out and slid her fingers up and down my arm. There was a clear attraction by now between us, and therein lay my struggle. My mind was a mess. First there was the issue of Amina. Each time I allowed myself to acknowledge my attraction to Ndidi, I felt wretched about the fact that she was not Amina, and that by beginning to have feelings for someone other than Amina, I was somehow betraying her. Never mind that she was the one who betrayed me. I felt it all the same.

  And then there was the matter of Mama. To be living so close to her while carrying on an affair with Ndidi was not something I could quite stomach. There’s a way in which distance represses one’s sense of obligation, or rather, a way in which closeness intensifies one’s sense of duty. Now that I was living with Mama, I felt—in a way I never felt while I was away at Obodoañuli Academy—a strong obligation to meet her expectations of me. Especially after the thing with Amina had anyway gone and backfired on me. Would this one backfire too? Would I go through all that emotional investment just for Ndidi to end up betraying me the way that Amina had done?

  “So, what do you think?” Ndidi asked. “Shall we go?” The look on her face told me that she already knew my answer, but I replied anyway. “Yes,” I said. “I’d like to go with you.” Despite my inner turmoil about the whole situation, it was the truth. Wherever it was she was going to take me, I wanted still to be with her.

  “Good,” she said. Her bottle of Fanta was in her hand, at her lips. She held it there as she scrutinized my face. “You’re sure?”

  I nodded and said that I was sure.

  As we freshened up, brushed our hair, and retouched our makeup, Ndidi said to me, “Now, there’s one more thing I have to tell you.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s about the place where we’re going.”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s not the kind of place you want to go around talking about. In fact, you have to promise me that you won’t go talking to anyone about it.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “What kind of place is it??”

  “You’ll find out. But for now you’ll have to promise me that you won’t. You can’t let your mother know of it. No mentioning it to her. I can’t take you to it if you don’t promise.”

  “I wasn’t planning on mentioning it to Mama,” I said.

  “Good,” she replied. “Because mentioning it to anyone can cost some of us, if not all of us, our lives.”

  I laughed at the gravity of what she was saying. “Now you’re being ridiculous,” I said. “What kind of place is it you’re taking me to that can result in people dying?”

  She laughed back. “It sounds more serious than I meant it to sound. But it is serious still. So, like I said, just promise me that you will not breathe a word about any of it to anyone at all.”

  “I promise you,” I said.

  The place was a small, dimly lit church-like structure at the end of a dirt road, which we got to from the main Aba road. To the side of it, above a giant white cross, hung a sign that read FRIEND IN JESUS CHURCH OF GOD. Another sign, a banner stretched across the blue and white columns that led to the carved wooden door, announced, in deep purple print, FOUNTAIN OF LOVE.

  “You brought me to church?” I whispered to Ndidi as we stood beneath the awning at the entrance, about to enter.

  “Wait and be surprised,” she said.

  We entered. Inside, strobe lights flashed softly. Heavy, deep purple drapes hung at the windows. Tables lined the perimeter of the room with decorative candles lit up at their centers. Each table was flanked by two or three chairs, most of which were occupied by people who appeared to be engaged in conversation.

  The music was toned-down, very restrained, in an almost indulgent sort of way. In the middle of the room couples were dancing slowly. The scent of whiskey and beer was strong in the air.

  We took a seat at one of the tables with two chairs. A plain-faced woman walked up to us, wearing a white oxford shirt tucked in at the waist of a pair of khaki bell-bottoms. Her hair was long, in thin dreadlocks, and silver hoops dangled from her earlobes.

  “Ah, Ndidi, we thought you had forgotten us!” the woman said.

  Ndidi rose from her seat and greeted the woman with a hug. “I’ve been busy with school,” she said.

  “You can’t mean it!” the woman replied teasingly. “You can’t have been that busy! Looks to me that you’ve had plenty of time to be taking care of yourself. You’re looking very fine,” she said.

  Ndidi brushed off the compliment and said, “This is my friend Ijeoma. Ijeoma, this is Adanna.”

  Adanna’s face appeared pinched now, impish. “Soooo.” She dragged out the word. “So this is who has been keeping you busy?” she asked, extending her hand to shake mine.

  Ndidi ignored the comment. She said, “It’s Ijeoma’s first time here. I’m hoping you behave so that you don’t chase her away.”

  Adanna laughed. “Okay, okay,” she said. “I’ll be on best behavior.” She turned to me. “Welcome, Ijeoma. I hope you enjoy yourself. We have a good-sized dance floor. Feel free to make use of it. All I ask is you save at least one dance for me.” She winked at me.

  Another woman, in a short white skirt and a thick afro, had come to Adanna’s side, linking arms with her and then leaning in and kissing Adanna on the cheek. Adanna turned to Ndidi and said, “Lucky there’s no shortage of women tonight.”

  She winked at Ndidi, and as she did, she allowed herself to be coaxed away.

  “How long have they been using the church this way?” I asked later, on the dance floor.

  “A long time,” Ndidi said. “Several years by now. This one is not even the first. The last one was destroyed by fire some years ago. It was just outside of town. Somehow, someone got wind that it was not a real church, and then a group of people got together and set fire to it. Luckily they set the fire in broad daylight and no one was there, so no one was killed. But this one is different. It’s a real church during the day. People go to it to worship, which makes it an even stronger camouflage than that previous church. So far, so good. We are yet to be found out.”

  We continued to dance. After some time, I asked, “So, who is Adanna to you?”

  Ndidi laughed. “No one at all,” she said.

  “She sounded to me like more than no one.”

  Ndidi began to protest, but then she seemed to think better of it. She said, “Well, we’re friends. We teach together at the school. She’s the one who first brought me here. She might be a little interested in me.”

  “You’re not interested back?”

  She shook her head. “She’s a wonderful friend. But there’s somebody else who is taking up my attention for now.”

  I knew that she was talking about me. And again I thought of Amina. A surge of anxiety came over me: why was it that I was having such strong emotions for this other woman who was not Amina? Again I felt myself the betrayer, equally as the betrayed.

  My thoughts of Amina faded into thoughts of Mama, and of her Bible studies, and of the grammar school teacher’s scolding, and of all those threats of stoning. Though I had not been convinced by any of Mama’s interpretations of the Bible, I could not help the anxiety that was building in me, frantic and questioning thoughts: Just what are you doing in a place like this? What business does a respectable young woman have in an underground place like this?

  The music grew loud then, overpowering my thoughts. Ndidi held me tighter, pressed her body into mine, and there was a reassurance in it. Never before had I danced this way with a woman, never before so freely. I banished all thoughts of Amina, and of Mama’s Bible studies, and of the grammar school teacher’s scolding, and of stonings. I told myself to enjoy, just enjoy. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy!

  We danced together for a long time, Ndidi and I, and I felt a sense of liberation that I had not until then known.
/>   She walked me almost all the way to the bungalow, stopping a short distance from the gate. There, she said, “Now, I hope I can trust you to keep quiet about tonight. No one at all must know.”

  “Of course you can trust me,” I replied.

  She took my hand briefly. “Thanks for the good company,” she said.

  “Thanks for taking me,” I replied.

  “I’ll be going home to Obigbo to see my parents and little brother this weekend. But maybe we can go out again next week when I get back.”

  “That would be nice,” I said.

  We stood there awkwardly staring into each other’s eyes for a few seconds. In a different world, we might have leaned in and kissed each other on the lips. We might have held each other tightly the way that lovers do. But there was the matter of Mama being so close. She might suddenly appear and all hell would break loose. Anyone at all might suddenly appear, to the same effect.

  “See you next week,” Ndidi simply said.

  “See you,” I replied.

  Watching her walk away that night, I felt more happiness than I had felt in a long time. If I could have sped up the hands of time, I would have done so, so that next week would be tomorrow.

  46

  “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” Mama hollered.

  “I was just with Ndidi,” I replied.

  “Just with Ndidi? So why did it take you this long to come back? Do you know how late it is?”

  It was not yet eleven, which was not very late in the grand scheme of things. But I did not bother to tell Mama that. Instead, I said, “I’m sorry, Mama. I just lost track of time.”

  “You lost track of time?” she scolded. “You lost track of time? One day, if you’re not careful, time will lose track of you! And I hope you know what that means!”

  Under her breath, she said, “Well, at least you were just with Ndidi. At least that one has a good head on her shoulders. I suppose it could have been worse.”

  Alone in my bedroom, I was full of thoughts of Ndidi. As I changed into my nightgown and climbed into bed, there she was, taking up all the spaces, right down to the cracks and crevices of my mind. I could not help myself, even with Mama in the next room over. I found myself having a physical reaction to her in my thoughts. I became so engorged, so swollen with desire, that the only relief I could think of was to pleasure myself, a thing that I had hardly ever done before—only once or twice in our secondary school in Oraifite. Never mind what Mama had said about Onan and the wasting of his seed, that the moral of the story was that any sort of self-pleasure was a sin in the eyes of God.

  Never mind all of that. I did it anyway. I went about it very quietly, slowly at first and then faster and faster. Before long my throat was catching with fulfillment and relief, and there was not an ounce of guilt accompanying it.

  I fell asleep with a sense of satisfaction, but I had slept only a couple of hours when I woke up with a start.

  Memories of my Bible studies with Mama rushed back to me yet again, no matter how much I tried to put them away from my mind. Condemning words falling upon my consciousness like a rainstorm, drenching me and threatening to drown me out. I was the happiest I had been in a long time, but suddenly here was this panicked dream, as if to mockingly ask me how I could even presume to think happiness was a thing within my reach.

  In the dream, I had lain curled up in a fetal position on the floor. Mama was hovering above me, waving her index finger like an angry schoolteacher, her eyes glowing with reproach and with tears. She was screaming, “A heedless fly follows the devil to the grave.”

  I woke up with the words reverberating in my mind.

  A heedless fly follows the devil to the grave . . .

  A heedless fly follows the devil to the grave . . .

  A heedless fly follows the devil to the grave . . .

  I forced my eyes to close, forced myself to go back to sleep, but each time, the words returned in my dream and snatched me back awake:

  A heedless fly follows the devil to the grave . . .

  A heedless fly follows the devil to the grave . . .

  A heedless fly follows the devil to the grave . . .

  47

  IF YOU SET OFF on a witch-hunt, you will find a witch.

  When you find her, she will be dressed like any other person. But to you, her skin will glow in stripes of white and black. You will see her broom, and you will hear her witch-cry, and you will feel the effects of her spells on you.

  No matter how unlike a witch she is, there she will be, a witch, before your eyes.

  The period of time after the church visit with Ndidi was the beginning of my witch-hunt against myself. At the moment when I had found a community that should have been a source of support and security, an unexpected sort of self-loathing flared up. In that moment, I began to believe myself a witch under the influence of the devil, and if Mama’s exorcism had not worked, then it seemed that I owed it to myself to find something that would. Self-purification was the goal.

  All night I had listened to Mama’s voice—not her voice in real time, but her voice in the dream—warning me about following the devil to the grave. By the time day rolled around, my mind was infested with images of graves. I had become a little like a coffin: I felt a hollowness in me and a rattling at my seams.

  Mama’s voice was the source of all my turmoil, so I could hardly stand to be around her. At about noon, I asked permission to leave the shop. I could not tell her why. I simply requested an hour away. I carried the handbag I had packed for myself with my Bible and prayer scarf in it and headed to Mama’s and my regular church.

  When I got there it was empty. I sat for some time at the back of the church, my thoughts racing in no particular direction. I must have sat for half an hour before going up to the front. Just before reaching the pulpit, I knelt down, pulled out my Bible and prayer scarf from my bag. I tied the scarf around my head.

  I opened the Bible, placed my palms firmly on its pages. I closed my eyes and prayed:

  Dear God, what is the meaning of all of this?

  Instantly I felt guilt stirring as a result of my daring to ask God this kind of question.

  I tried a different tactic. I pleaded:

  Dear God, I am a sinner, and I come before you to beg you to please show me the path to righteousness.

  But what if I was not, in fact, sinning? What if I was subjecting myself to all this guilt for no reason at all?

  Lord, I am confused. Please give me a sign. If there is any evil in my heart, please give me a sign so that I might recognize it and, in doing so, avoid it.

  My eyes had been closed all along. I had hardly opened them when I caught a flicker of light in the direction of the pulpit, like a piece of jewelry reflecting the sunlight. Then it appeared that the flicker was growing bigger, approaching.

  I grew eager and afraid at once, because this was, after all, the sign that I had asked for.

  I heard the sound of footsteps behind me. I turned around.

  I screamed at the sight, because if this was God’s sign, then Mama was the evil in my heart.

  48

  MAMA RAN TO ME, muffled my screams. “What is the matter with you? This is the house of God, for God’s sake! What is possessing you to scream this way?”

  I collected myself. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was praying. I didn’t expect anyone to come walking in.”

  “I’ve been running around looking for you. Of course I came! Do you realize you’ve been gone over two hours?”

  “Two hours?” I asked, genuinely surprised.

  She nodded. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “I’m just a little sick,” I said. “I think I’ll go back home and sleep. That should help.”

  She placed the back of her palm on my forehead. “Is it stomach trouble or a headache?”

  “Mostly just a headache.”

  “All right. Ngwa. Let’s go. I will walk back with you. I have some Panadol at home you can take. Hopefully it’s
not the onset of malaria. Obiageli down the road just came down with a bad case of malaria.”

  “I don’t think it’s malaria,” I replied. “A small headache, that’s all.”

  49

  DESPITE THE PANICKED dreams, as soon as Monday rolled around, and as soon as we closed up the shop, I went to Ndidi’s. It was like having an addiction to chili peppers, or to beans. You sensed that eating too much of them would overwhelm your system. That afterward there would be consequences. Your mouth would burn; you would surely get the runs. The dreams would come again. But you did it anyway.

  I sat on her sofa listening to Fela Kuti on her record player, and again watching her mark her students’ assignments.

  I peered at her off and on, scrutinizing, because maybe God would give me a different sign where she was concerned, a clearer one, and if I looked closely, maybe I would see.

  After a while, she must have felt the weight of my scrutiny. She lifted her eyes and very softly said, “Ijeoma, what?”

  I allowed my eyes to drop. “Nothing,” I said.

  She went back to the papers in front of her. A few minutes went by.

  She felt my gaze again and said, “Ijeoma, what’s the matter?”

  “I’m just checking to see if you’re done yet,” I replied.

  She put her pen down, rose from the table, and came to me on the sofa. “And if I say I’m done, then what? Do you have special plans for us this evening?”

  I shook my head. “No plans. Was just checking to see if you were done.”

  Now she was the one scrutinizing me, studying me with her eyes. She took my hand, began stroking it. “Well, if you have no plans for us, I might have a plan.”

  My throat was suddenly dry, and I felt heat rising in my cheeks. “What kind of plan?” I asked hoarsely.

  She leaned in so that I could feel the warmth of her breath on my ear and on the side of my face. Her voice was strong even if it was only a whisper. She said, “This kind of plan.”