Chinelo Okparanta - Under the Udala Trees

The way Mama tells it these days, it’s a little like a Hollywood drama, or maybe a James Bond film — so many parts to it, and even some surprises. But I do believe her, down to the smallest details, because her memory of those days — even of the lessons — has remained very sharp and has been consistent throughout the years.

As she tells it, she had returned to Aba to find holes in the roof of the house, to find the grass overgrown, extending almost halfway the height of the walls of the bungalow. At first she had not recognized the place. She had gone past a field of green and yellow grass, and after six or so kilometers of trekking up the road, she reached an area where the land appeared to rise more abruptly than before. She thought that she had come close to where the house was, because she knew well that the house was on a bit of a knoll, almost overlooking the village. She continued to walk, ten more minutes of climbing the small incline, but the house was nowhere in sight.

She put down the bag that she was carrying and took a rest. She wiped her forehead with her handkerchief; she remembers this, she says, because the handkerchief was one of Papa’s old ones, with the letter U embroidered on it. U for Uzo. She remembers thinking of Papa then.

A woman was passing by, carrying a bucket of water on her head, and though Mama knew it would be an inconvenience to interfere with the woman’s errand, she did, out of a feeling of helplessness, of turned-upside-downness, of extreme disorientation, which was a little like a blow to the face, given the fact that she was in a town she thought she knew, a town she thought she would always know, because Aba was where she had been born and raised.

She had just opened her mouth to ask the question when her eyes fell on it. The house was there after all, barely visible on the slight incline ahead. It was a brittle box of worn cement and zinc, barely peeking out from the middle of some overgrown bushes.

She apologized to the woman for troubling her. As the woman proceeded on her way, Mama looked around the area again, taking it in more fully with her eyes. She had been aware that the war would change things for the worse, and so she reasoned that perhaps this was exactly what it should be: the windows broken; the orange and guava trees fruitless, their leaves dry and cracking, having the appearance of hunger. Some animals had been on the premises — grasscutters or bush squirrels, goats or stray dogs. She could see their paw marks on the earth.

She set her bag down at the entrance of the bungalow. She had just gone through the doorway when she saw the person, presumably a man, crouched on the floor to her right. She screamed, “ Chi m o! ”

He was almost all skeleton by now, if he was not beforehand already so. It appeared that his flesh had been eaten into, likely by the same animals whose tracks she had seen earlier outside.

She continued to scream, and several villagers came running in response. She felt their hands on her, their attempts to hold her, to calm her. “ Rapum aka! ” she screamed. Leave me alone! “ E metukwana m aka! ” Don’t touch me!

She decided then and there that Aba was no better than Ojoto, at least not in the way she had hoped, this fact of her having once more been subjected to the vision of death.

What was the meaning of all of this? Wasn’t the point of coming to Aba to escape all the reminders of what had happened to Papa? But here was this corpse in the house, soiling the energy of the place, making it so that her home was marked all over again with memories of death.

A feeling of faintness overcame her, and she broke out in a sweat. She crouched to the floor to steady herself. A woman nearby offered her a decanter of water. She gulped down the water, sprinkled a bit of it on her face. She returned the decanter to the woman when she was done. She looked around in order to further examine the place. On the ground not far from her, shards of glass.

She screamed some more.

“Madam,” the woman next to her said in a mollifying voice. “Madam.”

She turned to look at the woman. She wanted to explain that she had come so far only to find things just as bad as where she had come from. “I can’t stay here either,” she said. She shook her head and body so erratically that the woman had to hold her to calm her down. Several men prepared to move the corpse. Who had he been? people asked in hushed tones. But they did not stay long questioning. The men removed the body with the resignation and stale sorrow of people who had confronted death far too many times.

One of the men began picking up the shards of glass.

The woman comforting her recognized her then. “Aren’t you Adaora of the late Kenneth and Flora Amaechi?”

Mama nodded.

The woman cried with excitement. “Welcome, Adaora,” she said. “Nno!”

“This is no home to return—” Mama was saying.

The woman interrupted, saying, “Not to worry. Your father’s land greets you. I tell you, don’t worry. All will be well again. Together we will fix up the place. One person alone cannot move an elephant, but an entire village, that is a different story.”

“I can’t stay here,” Mama shouted. “Just how am I to stay here?” But deep inside she knew already that she would stay. Because if not, where else was there to go? And anyway, she could not continue to run forever.

So it was that she remained in Aba. The villagers helped her rebuild the bungalow, its roof, its windows, its doors. They painted its walls ivory. They cut the overgrown grass with their machetes, and Mama irrigated the land with jerry cans full of water. For camouflage, they covered the place with palm fronds. Inside, they swept and washed the tile floors.

It was they who helped her plant a garden and trees in her front yard after the war ended. Another guava tree and an orange tree. A mango tree and a pawpaw tree. Pineapples, their crowns sticking up in spikes above the surface of the earth.

It was they who helped to put up the four walls of the little shop that stood in front of the bungalow, just behind the compound’s gate.

All of this had taken some time. “Which is why I took so long to come for you,” Mama says, like a defense, each time she tells the story. “I had not forgotten you. Things were very difficult for a long time.”

It was a small bungalow with a large parlor and two bedrooms, one of which Mama had prepared for me. The other room was hers.

The first week I was back with Mama, she did not bother speaking to me. Every morning, I came out of my room, took my morning bath, and got dressed. I walked to the kitchen, found myself some food to eat, and went back to my room. For lunch and dinner I came back out. Each time I came out, she was not there. She either was already in the shop or doing something else around the house.

Nearly a full week passed and not a word between Mama and me.

Finally, when that first week came to an end, I found her in the kitchen as I entered to look for breakfast. She was wearing a black gown, as if in mourning. She also had a black cloth tied around her head.

I stopped at the kitchen doorway and fought a mental battle over whether to stay or leave. The thought occurred to me that whatever I decided to do, I must do it respectfully, which essentially meant that, whatever I did, I must first greet her.

“Mama, good morning,” I said.

There was the kitchen table along with its two chairs where we should have already been sharing our meals. But the whole week, if we had not so much as spoken, then we had certainly not eaten together, so we had yet to sit at the table together.

This particular morning, she must have made it a point to be there waiting for me. She was sitting at the table, stirring a cup of tea with a spoon. She must have just eaten a tangerine, because the crisp citrus scent of freshly peeled tangerines filled the air.