Under the Udala Trees

by Chinelo Okparanta

  A roomful of alarm. Alarm like fog, clouding up the atmosphere.

  I pulled away so that there was at least a forearm’s length of space between us. I folded my hands across my chest, looked up at the ceiling, not wanting to look at him. Uniform tiles formed large squares above, gray, like the paint on the walls.

  Some time passed. A few more minutes. I lowered my folded arms from my chest, took his hand in mine.

  Sometimes a story reminds you of a painting. Each time I tell this story, I see that old painting of a beach. Azure skies melting into a lighter shade of blue, melting into the pastel yellow of the disappearing sun, melting back into a sea-colored blue. A glass-looking slab of wood near the edge of the earth where brown and sea blue meet. There is a mountain range, craggy rocks, peeking in from the right side of the painting, and in the foreground there is the darkness of the cacao-colored earth.

  The painting would be almost unremarkable if not for the rest of the objects in it: a plain-looking brown box, like a trunk. From the trunk, a growth, like a cancer, a stump of a tree, branches and all, but no leaves. And then a scattering of melting clocks, like wilted rags: one hanging from a branch of the stump, one hanging droop­ily from the trunk box, another hanging from an abstract-looking figure, a cross between a duck and a human face. Finally a burnt-orange clock covered in tiny black ants.

  There I was, holding Chibundu’s hand, and as I held it, the words came to me: “Too much ceremony has a way of taking the life, taking the joy, out of what is being celebrated.”

  The next thing I knew, Chibundu was staring at me with a look of shock on his face. I put down his hand and returned my hands to my sides. His eyes were steady on me, careful eyes, as if he was looking at some strange, new, unexpected version of me. And of course, to him, he was.

  I left him where he sat and walked over to the window. I stayed by the window, still in my wedding gown. Every once in a while a breeze blew in through the open space. In the few instances that the breeze was strong, I pushed my face into it, as if it would somehow blow away all my agony.

  Even when I heard Chibundu’s soft snoring, I continued to stand by the window, wide awake.

  Only when the sky turned from black to gray—only when I could hear the distant crowing of the roosters and hens—did sleep come to me.

  I struggled to undo the zipper of my wedding gown, then I stepped out of it.

  The knock came just as I had put on my nightgown.

  I opened the door to Mama, standing with her wrapper tied across her chest, wearing a bright smile.

  “Come, come,” she said, waving me toward her and out of the room. “Come. You must tell me, how was it?”

  “How was what, Mama?”

  “Nwanka!” she said, feigning exasperation. This child! But there was a hint of a smile on her face. “‘How was what, Mama?’” she said, mimicking me. “Of course you know what I’m asking! How was your first night as a wife?”

  I shook my head at her, embarrassed that she should even ask. “Mama, I’ve barely slept.”

  “Of course not!” Her smile widened. “It’s no surprise that you’ve hardly slept. All that happiness!”

  Happiness was what she called it. But I knew that happiness was a word like madness, like sickness, like confusion, like loss, like death. Even like beautiful or pure or angelic or God. Happiness was a word that represented some deeper, unexplainable, heavy idea, the kind of idea that goes back and forth between two different worlds.

  Still, there she was, pulling me by the hand in the name of happiness. She led me that way out of the room, down the corridor, and into the kitchen. The wedding ceremony food had been cleared off the counter. All that remained were empty plates and trays and baskets and bowls.

  She pulled out a stool for me. With a slight nod of her head, she signaled me to sit. She cleared her throat. She had a placid, almost vacant look on her face. “So, you two have already begun, haven’t you?”

  “Begun what?” I asked.

  “You know.” A pause. “It’s never too early to start working on a child.”

  “Mama!”

  Her eyes focused now, her look no longer vacant. “Well, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” she said, staring straight into my eyes. “There’s nothing more meaningful in a marriage than having a precious child of your own.”

  Our second night, Chibundu came again to me, wrapped his arm around me where we sat on the edge of the bed. There was more determination in his gestures, and in his eyes was the look of a man who was expecting to get what was denied him the night before.

  I shifted away instinctively. His eyes turned soft, pleading, just as soon as I did. He began to stroke my shoulders. “It’s not by force,” he said in a whisper. “It’s not something we should do by force. Just let me know when you feel ready.”

  That night, I saw the foolishness of my resistance in his words. Just let me know when you feel ready. I knew in my mind that I might never feel ready. There was no sense prolonging my resistance. Anyway, better to have one person miserable rather than two.

  That night, he moved closer to me, unzipped his pants. That night, I allowed him to make love to me.

  58

  OUR HOUSE IN Port Harcourt was a small, two-bedroom flat. It had peeling paint, leaking ceilings, buzzing fluorescent lights, cracking stone tiles. Holes in the walls, which allowed cockroaches to crawl in. Windows that could not be properly shut.

  I sulked: Out of the way things had taken this unexpected turn. Out of the fact that I had gone and allowed myself to marry Chibundu. Out of the fact that his job had led us away from Aba, away from Ndidi.

  He sulked: Out of the rigidness of his job. Out of the newness of his responsibilities.

  And of course there was, again, the state of our new home. So many things old and falling apart as they were, it was a home that fueled our bad moods. If it could have done as much, the home itself would have sulked with us.

  Our first month in the flat, Chibundu and I had taken time to tape up the peeling walls. We had taken time to seal the holes in the ceilings and the floors. For a while, the rain stopped dripping in and the cockroaches stayed away. But a month later, the problems returned, a crude reminder that patching would not be enough.

  But Chibundu was hopeful too.

  One evening, he came back from work not looking his usual miserable way. I had gone to the market that day, spent hours there, and had returned with only a batch of snails. Snails were what we would have had for dinner, if we had bothered to have dinner that night.

  I rinsed the snails in a bowl and transferred them to a pot. The pot was still on the counter, not yet on the stove, when Chibundu called my name.

  I could see him from the corner of my eye, his tall frame coming toward me. There was a slowness to his movements, as if the room were a pool of water and he was struggling to wade through it. But finally he arrived.

  By the stove, he wrapped his arms around me and said, “One morning, you will look around the flat and see all the things that are wrong with it—the peeling paint on the walls, the cracks, the holes. You will see all those things, and yet everything will feel just fine.”

  “Impossible,” I said, a little annoyed by the stupidity of the statement.

  He removed his arms from around my body. He walked off toward the shelf in the farthest corner of the kitchen. He returned holding a tuber of yam. He reached for a knife and began peeling off the skin of the yam.

  “Broiled or fried?” he asked as he peeled.

  “Broiled,” I said.

  It was not unusual for him to cook. This was one of the things that made Chibundu different from so many other men I knew, even from Papa. Every once in a while he cooked, and even enjoyed doing so.

  He cut up the yam into cubes, scooped them up, rinsed them off, spread them on a tray, and sprinkled some salt and pepper and coconut oil on them. All the while I watched. I watched as he bent over with the tray, sticking it into the oven to broil.
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br />   As he closed the oven, I turned from watching him back to the snails that I had been tending to on the counter. I carried the pot to the stove. I struck a match, lit the fire. Before I turned to leave, I bent over to peek into the oven, just to check that the yams were fine. From the small glass window on the front of the stove, I saw Chibundu’s reflection, his legs crossed, arms folded. He was leaning against the sink watching me.

  “What?” I asked, straightening up and turning to look directly at him.

  “That morning,” he said, “you will make your way out of the bedroom, through the parlor, and straight into the kitchen. You will find me here by the sink, beating some breakfast eggs for you. The fork will be clanking against the bowl. The windows will be open, and a breeze will be entering through it. Music will be flowing from the radio. Everything will be fine.”

  “And just how exactly will everything be fine?”

  His face was earnest and hopeful as he stood there leaning his back on the sink. He said, “You will be somebody’s mother, and I will be somebody’s father.”

  I snickered, pointed to a crack in the wall. “Is that right?” I asked. “Are you sure you want to bring a child into this?”

  “It’s not so bad,” he said.

  By then there was the slight, sandy scent of snails in the air.

  He straightened himself so that he was no longer leaning against the sink. He moved forward and took me once more into his arms. He pressed himself against me, and me against him. What else could he have done?

  I buried my face into the nook between his neck and his shoulder. In that recess, I felt his body tighten. Soon his hands came between us, his fingers tracing the buttons on my blouse. He slipped the buttons out of their holes, one after the other. His hands made their way beneath my blouse, along the upper hem of my bra.

  “Shhh. It’s okay,” he whispered, as I recoiled.

  He planted a kiss on my forehead. The air was humid. The water in the pot of snails had come to a boil, the sound of gently popping bubbles.

  He led me into the parlor. Our clothes trailed the path, my blouse and skirt mixing with his shirt.

  On that tattered old couch, he caressed and kissed me some more, soft kisses, unhurried, even a little slow. All this time he’d been nothing but patient with me. Here he was, a man I wanted badly to be rid of. But I knew full well that he also held the key to my only imaginable escape: Perhaps by making me a mother, he would save me. Maybe motherhood would make me feel more invested in the marriage. Maybe motherhood would cause me to forget Ndidi. All of this I reasoned so that by the time he rooted me to the sofa, I had already relented. He planted a million and one more kisses on me, and when he moved to enter me, I made sure not to turn away.

  59

  WE HAD BEEN married for just over six months now, and living in Port Harcourt for five of those.

  I stood up from the front steps, lifted myself from the weeds I had been picking.

  What was it?

  The headache was now beyond persistent. I could no longer continue. I marched into the kitchen, short of breath.

  Something was changing in me. New qualities, a new restlessness.

  Every day for all of that week, I had called Mama on the phone. Something was not quite right.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, Mama. That’s the point. I don’t know.”

  I found the teakettle and set some water atop the stove to boil.

  I picked up the phone.

  A breeze through the kitchen windows gently lifted the curtains.

  I found a ginger root in the pantry. I scraped away the skin with a spoon, cut off a small piece, and allowed it to sit like a communion wafer on my tongue.

  On the phone:

  “Mama?”

  “Yes, my child?”

  “Mama, these days I have this feeling of being trapped in my body.”

  “Being in a new place is not easy.”

  “But Mama, it’s been months already.”

  “It takes time to adjust.”

  “Mama, you’re not hearing me.”

  “What, then?”

  “These days, I smell too strongly the scent of wet earth. I catch a whiff of the rain before it starts to fall. Even the sun is a burning odor in my nose. Every scent is as sharp as a knife.”

  Outside in the backyard, swallows hovered around the guava tree. I observed them from where I stood by the window.

  “So what do you think is wrong with you?”

  “That’s the point, Mama. I don’t know.”

  She made her pronouncement one day over the phone: “Depression.”

  “I suppose it could be.”

  “Just think of all the things you have to be happy about in your life!”

  “Like what?”

  “Are you sad? Do you cry?”

  “Mama, I’m too tired to cry.”

  “I can come stay with you two in Port Harcourt for a while.”

  “No, Mama. It’s not necessary. I’m sure I’ll begin to feel better soon.”

  “Of course you will.”

  “Yes, I think I should.”

  “The blind man wanted badly to see. He said, ‘Today I will see.’ But today he did not see. He said, ‘Tomorrow I will see.’ But tomorrow became today, and today became yesterday, and still he did not see.”

  “Mama, I’m sure I’ll feel better soon.”

  “God helps those who know to ask for help.”

  “You are not God.”

  “No matter. I am coming. I will come and see what I can do. Whatever the problem, I’m sure I can fix it.”

  “Anyone home? Ijeoma? Chibundu? I told you I would come. I have shut the store, put up the Closed sign. Please don’t tell me that I have done all that for nothing, coming all the way here and finding not even a soul to welcome me. Children these days! What is the world coming to?”

  I swung open the front door. In the air, the too-sweet scent of the guavas, which hung in scattered arrangement from the branches of the tree, guavas ripe and yellow and nearly bursting with juice.

  “Mama, welcome,” I said. I opened the door wider to allow her in. The scent rushed in, stronger.

  “How was your trip?” I asked.

  No answer, but she entered. When she did, she remained near the entrance, would not take another step forward.

  “Mama, why are you just standing there?”

  She was scanning the flat with her eyes. After a moment she exclaimed, “I see the problem now! There is still so much to be done around here! Why have you two not taken the time to fix up the place? Well, we can certainly take care of all of this now. There’s really no better cure for depression than hard work. We have our work cut out for us, but believe me, once things start to look nicer around here, you will surely start to feel better!”

  Afternoon. Lunchtime. The thick scent of garri and Mama’s okra soup.

  “Look at you looking so miserable. When I was your age, I was wearing my marriage like a badge of honor. It’s not every woman who is lucky enough to snatch herself a husband, you know. What’s wrong with you that you still can’t see that? God has been good to you, and you don’t even have the common sense to see it.”

  “Mama, I’m not in the mood.”

  “Just as I thought you would reply.” She rubbed the palms of her hands against each other as if my words were crumbs, as if to dust off the crumbs from her hands.

  After breakfast of agege bread and tea. Chibundu long gone to work. My head full, a terrible dizziness, as if someone took a hammer and pounded and pounded until I blacked out, and now I was just coming to.

  “I’m off to pick up some groceries from Mile One market.”

  “Mama, there’s food already in the flat.”

  “Is that right? There’s food already and yet your fridge is looking like someone took a bulldozer and gutted it out. Let me ask you, what will we be having for supper tonight?”

  “We still have that pot of ok
ra soup remaining. We can finish that off for supper.”

  “Ehn-hehn! So you want me to eat for supper what I already ate yesterday for lunch?”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “What’s wrong with that!”

  “Yes, Mama. What’s wrong with that?”

  “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with that. For one thing, you’re a newlywed. You should be making all sorts of food for your husband, not making him eat the same things over and over again.”

  “Chibundu doesn’t mind.”

  Now she was opening and closing kitchen cupboards and drawers, inspecting for missing food items.

  “Do you have beans at home? No. Do you have akamu? No. Do you have corn? No. Any oha leaves? Any ogbono seeds? No. What if I want to make egusi soup? Do you have water leaves? Any crayfish? Do you have palm oil?”

  “We have other things.”

  “Listen, I won’t spend time arguing with you. I’m thinking maybe we can make some moin-moin and eat it with akamu for supper tonight. Or do you think Chibundu would prefer some rice and stew?”

  “Chibundu will be fine with anything.”

  “Very well, then.” She picked up her handbag from the kitchen table. “I will see you in a few hours. This place needs to be made to feel like a home, not a boarding room. I will pick up some food, and then I will also see what I can begin to do about the rest.”

  I had fallen asleep on the sofa. I woke up to a tapping on my shoulder. The sun was streaming in through the windows.

  She was hovering over me, pointing to the back wall of the parlor. I straightened up on the sofa and saw what she was pointing at: against the wall, a small Singer machine, propped up on a wooden encasement, a stack of threads, a pair of scissors, and some other sewing supplies on the table near it.