Chinelo Okparanta - Under the Udala Trees

Heading back from Okeke’s, the trees glistened, both the bare trees and those that had managed to retain their leaves. Sometimes when a leaf dangled low enough to fall within my reach, I turned my face upward and tapped it, and the water on it, left over from the earlier rain, sprinkled forth on me like a blessing.

I wasn’t far into my return when I felt a shadow following me, a shadow other than my own. It crossed the roads with me, hopped over the puddles with me. It appeared to tap the leaves with me, or at least it stood close behind me as I did.

I stopped in order to allow the shadow to pass me. I found a large rock near where an udala tree stood and sat down there. I waited on the rock, hoping that the shadow would continue along, but it did not. Instead, it sat across from me, on another rock, eyes bright, like a pair of light bulbs. She was no longer a shadow.

She had skin as light as mine. Yellow, like a ripe pawpaw. She wore a tattered green pinafore that was bare at the sides. Her hair hung in long clumps around her face, like those images of Mami Wata, hair writhing like serpents. But there were no serpents on her. She looked too dazed or disoriented, or simply too exhausted, to speak.

Someone had discarded udala seeds near where I sat, forming a tiny mound on the ground. Ants had paved themselves a path to the mound. I watched the ants for some time, the way they lined up, one after the other, the way they gathered in circles around the seeds. There were crushed leaves all around. The sun hovered above, watchful over us.

We moved our plastic-slippered feet around the muddy earth. We looked down at the ground as we did, but I sneaked peeks at her, and I’m sure she did at me. A bird flew from the udala tree, its wings beating hard through the air. We tilted our heads and watched. Finally we gathered the courage to look into each other’s faces. The moment our eyes locked, I knew I would not be leaving without her.

I arrived home, but later this time than ever before. I sensed deep inside that I would get a flogging. I resigned myself to it.

I lifted the metal latch to unlock the gate, pushed it open to let myself and her in. We cut through the backyard and walked the path leading to the house. We stopped outside the kitchen door.

The grammar school teacher and his wife stood leaning on opposite sides of the kitchen counter. There was a coolness about the kitchen, and a coldness in their faces. His eyes were very stern, hers even sterner.

She held her handkerchief to her chest. Her breathing suddenly became loud and labored. “Do you know what time it is?” she asked angrily.

“What possibly could have taken you this long?” he asked.

“There’s really no excuse for it,” she interjected.

“No, there really is no excuse for it,” he agreed.

She cleared her throat and said, “And now it’s well past dinnertime, and here we are with nothing to eat.” She began to cough lightly. Three little coughs.

By now it was clear to me that her asthma was just a manifestation of her aversion to doing housework.

“I could really flog you for this,” he said. “Twelve strokes for each of your twelve years. Or is it now thirteen? Whatever it is, I could even multiply it by two. Twenty-six strokes for good measure.”

“Yes, we really could flog you for this,” she said. “Twenty-six strokes for good measure,” she repeated.

I hung my head. “I’m very sorry,” I said.

“You are lucky,” he said. “Very lucky, for the simple fact that I’m too tired to do any flogging today. Anyway, I’m sure you can already see how upset you’ve made us. That should be enough punishment for you this time. But as long as you live under our roof, you are never, ever again to return this late.”

I nodded and told them again how very sorry I was.

“Luckily, in the time that you were gone, your oga did manage to find some yams from the vendor down the road,” she said. “The tubers are there in the cupboard. Take them out, peel them, cut them up, and boil them. Osiso-osiso. Quick, quick. Any longer and I’m sure I’ll die of hunger.”

She turned, began walking in the direction of the dining room. At first he followed along, but then he stopped. She stopped with him. Almost simultaneously they turned around and looked at the girl next to me. They appeared to study her intensely before turning back to me.

“Who is she?” the grammar school teacher’s wife asked.

A minute went by while I thought of how to answer. I cleared my throat and replied simply, “Aunty, a friend.”

“She looks like a street urchin, a homeless little imp,” the grammar school teacher said.

“A friend?” she asked. Her voice was raspy and harsh.

Now the grammar school teacher’s wife’s face was more than mildly thoughtful. “Well, street urchin or homeless imp, never mind that for now,” she said. “Boil the yams. She can help you. The more help we have for dinner, the faster it will be done.”

He appeared to think about what she had said. “Yes, I suppose that’s true. Yes, you certainly have a point.”

Finally there was the tap-tapping of their feet, and then the increasing distance between us and their words.

That evening, Amina and I peeled the yams together, rinsed them together, our fingers brushing against each other’s in the bowl. I doused the wood with the kerosene and lit the cooking fire, and she set the pot of yams on top to boil.

After the grammar school teacher and his wife had eaten, after we ourselves had eaten, and after we had washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen, I filled the bucket at the tap outside my hovel. We rinsed ourselves off together on the cement slab. The crickets sang their usual night songs, and the mosquitoes perched on us, and the fireflies glowed green, like luminous droplets of grass.

At the end of it all, I carried my lantern and led Amina into my hovel, where I offered half of my mattress to her.

THE WEEK FOLLOWING her arrival, the grammar school teacher and his wife made remarks about throwing Amina out. “What are you still doing here?” he asked. “You must go back to where you came from. Better find your way before I make you find it.”

I knew why the grammar school teacher was so ill at ease with her. I was not oblivious to the rifts between the tribes, especially between the Hausas and the Igbos. Chances were that had Amina been an Igbo girl, or even from Cross River State, he would not have been so agitated by her presence. Maybe even if she had been Yoruba, he would have been more at ease with her. But there she was, a Hausa girl, an enemy of the Igbo people.

It was the first time that I was befriending a Hausa person. Until then, I’d seen them only as they walked along the roads and in the markets where they sold their goods. This was my first time getting to know one in an intimate way.

It made sense that the grammar school teacher and his wife would be worried. Given how relentlessly they were killing us Igbos, to keep a Hausa was a safety hazard. If she had any relatives, they might come find her and kill us in the process.

Amina always responded by looking blankly at him.

One afternoon, he came out to the veranda, his face looking very cross. Amina and I were chopping wood at the left side of the front yard. The sky was overcast, but the rain had not yet come.

He stood watching us, just watching and looking very annoyed. Half an hour must have passed by while he simply stood and watched. Finally he called her to him.

She walked from the side of the front yard where the pile of firewood sat in small clumps to the side of the veranda where he stood.

“Is it that you don’t have somewhere else you can go?” he asked.