Chinelo Okparanta - Under the Udala Trees

For the rest of the trip, it was more of the same thing: more corpses, more soldiers marching, more chanting, all of the typical sights and sounds of a nation at war.

The Nnewi lorry dropped us off on the main Ojoto — Nnewi road, not far from the big market, at the opening of the small dirt road leading to the neighborhood where the grammar school teacher and his wife lived. We set off on foot from there.

We had almost reached the grammar school teacher’s gate when Mama stopped and said, “I’ll let you go on from here. It’s not a long or difficult distance; it’s the first house you get to where this road crosses with the next. It has a red gate. You can’t miss it. The grammar school teacher will be there waiting for you.”

All this time she had been carrying her own bag along with mine. In my bag, a change of clothes, an extra pair of slippers, a small container of pomade, another of body cream, some chewing sticks for my teeth, a flask of water, a small blanket.

I looked at her face. There were wrinkles on her forehead. Her face as a whole reminded me of Papa, those moments before the raid took his life.

She handed my bag over to me so that she was carrying just her own bag in one hand. With her free hand she pulled me to her. We stayed that way, in an embrace, so that I felt the movement in her chest when she took a deep inhale. She held me for a moment longer before finally letting go of me.

She was wearing a multicolored adire gown, and on her head was a simple black scarf. Her feet, those areas not protected by her sandals, were covered in dust so that her toenails appeared the color of mud.

She said, “You will be better off this way. A mother always knows best.”

I could have argued even that late, but I acknowledged to myself that there was no sense in arguing anymore. All my arguments before this had gotten me nowhere.

I nodded and then hung my head so that all I could see now were our feet, hers and mine both, covered to the ankles in dust.

Mama lifted my chin with her hand. I looked into her unsmiling face. “Cheer up,” she said. “Remember what I said. I will think of you every minute that I am away from you. And I will send for you as soon as I can.”

She stroked my hair, as if to put back any stray strands in place, like she used to do before the war came, early in the morning before she sent me off to school. It was as if she were once more getting me ready for school.

“ Nee anya ,” she said. “You must be respectful, always do as they say. Are you hearing me?”

“Yes, Mama,” I replied.

“They are your father’s very close friends, almost family, so you can call them Aunty and Uncle. I’m sure they will like that. Are you hearing me?”

“Yes, Mama,” I said.

She fumbled with her bag, searching for something in it. When she found what she was looking for, she pulled it out. It was Papa’s old Bible, the one he used to read from every Sunday at church. She handed it to me, holding my hand in hers even as I held the book in my hand.

“If God dishes you rice in a basket. .,” she said.

I knew the second half of the proverb. “Do not wish for soup,” I finished.

She smiled. “ Ngwa ,” she said. “ Gawazie. Go on. They are expecting you any minute, and I have to be off myself before the Aba lorry leaves me behind.”

I turned around and began walking, forcing myself to hold back my tears, forcing myself not to look back, forcing myself to resist the temptation to run shamelessly back to her.

THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL teacher was corpulent, and he walked with the gait of a man who had always been so. His skin was almost as dark as his hair, which did not grow very high from his head — it was hard to tell where the hair stopped and his face began. His belly stuck out, rotund as an udu, the kind made from the roundest of calabash gourds. His body appeared to lean backward at the hips, as if it were a struggle for it to follow any forward movement of his feet.

His wife’s skin was not exactly light, but neither was it as dark as her husband’s. But her eyes were just like his, a dark shade of brown. She had long hair, straightened, not natural like mine. She held it up in a bun at the nape of her neck. Her brows were penciled in and formed perfect arcs above her eyes. Her lips were a dark shade of red. Where his body leaned backward, she was so full of chest in an otherwise small frame that it appeared she had no choice but to lean forward, in the direction of the weight.

They met me at their gate.

She had a handkerchief with her. “On account of my asthma,” she explained, and began to cough. When she finished coughing, she asked, “How are you?”

“I’m well, Aunty,” I said.

Her husband stood just watching me, then he said my name. “Ijeoma,” he uttered enthusiastically. He repeated it, as if tasting it in his mouth.

I stared at the ground, my mind pondering the way he was saying my name. I hoped he would not taste it only to turn around and spit it out. By the sound of things, probably not. There was, after all, a warmth to his voice that reminded me of Papa’s voice. But then he was not Papa. He was fat and awkward-moving where Papa was thin and lithe. Would he really be warm like Papa, or was this warmth in his voice just a trick? Would it melt away the way a candle melts away with fire?

I had been looking down while he uttered my name, but now I looked up to find him peering at me. He said my name again. “ Ijeoma, ke kwanu? Welcome! How are you?”

My mouth felt dry, like I had somehow gotten a mouthful of sand. But I forced myself to speak. “Fine, Uncle,” I said.

“It’s been such a long time since we last saw you,” his wife said.

“Yes, yes,” he said, reaching out to pat me on the shoulder. “It’s been a long time.” In a more quiet voice he said, “I’m sorry about your father.”

“Yes, we are both sorry about your father,” his wife echoed.

I nodded, then looked around the front yard. It was a neat yard, but it was easy to see the effects of the war on it: A shattered dresser sat in front of the veranda. Next to it, some downfallen branches and what looked to be shattered glass. Their hedges were just as withered as ours had become in Ojoto, and the palm fronds they were using to camouflage their compound appeared to be losing their green, just like our Ojoto palm fronds.

He broke the silence. “ Ngwa , let’s go,” he said in a spirited sort of way, as if he had suddenly remembered what he had been planning to do next.

“Yes, let’s go,” his wife repeated.

He led us from the gate to a small house-like structure in the yard behind the main home. The structure was something like a boys’ quarters, only a bit too small to be one. And anyway, there was no indication that the grammar school teacher and his wife had ever had any household help. As he walked, he made his apologies. “We don’t have extra room in the house, or else we would have…”

“Yes, we would have put you in the house with us if only we had the room,” his wife said.

“Surely she understands,” he said.

“I’m sure she does,” she said.

“We’ve made the place as comfortable as possible,” he said.

A padlock hung near the top of the door. He unlocked it with a key.

His wife and I remained outside as he took my bag in.

When he came back out, he said, “You’ll be fine here.”

She nodded and said, “Yes, you’ll be fine here.”

“You’ll be a good girl for us,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “A good girl indeed. Helping us around the house as needed. That sort of thing.”

She appeared to be examining me. After a moment, she said, “Yellow skin, the color of a ripe pawpaw. That’s very lucky for a girl. It should be easy for her mother to marry her off.”