Chinelo Okparanta - Under the Udala Trees

The grammar school teacher shouted, “Traitor!” It came out like an expletive.

“Coward that he is,” his wife said, “he would have killed us all if we had given him the chance.”

The radio broadcast continued.

The yam that I had been in the middle of pounding was still sitting in the mortar, the pestle idle in my hands. I stayed staring at the cubes of yam and listening, thinking of all that it would mean now that the war was over. For example, it was over, but even the fact of that could not bring Papa back. It was over, but nothing could be done to bring Amina’s family back. The dead would not suddenly leap out of the grave. Chances were that not a single one of them would rise the way Jesus rose from the dead. No resurrection for them.

At the sink, Amina stood, looking very alert, listening to the fading voice of the Radio Biafra announcer.

I imagined Ojukwu riding in the sky on that plane. I imagined him landing in an open space, a quiet and peaceful space, a land full of white sand, gray sand, brown sand. Where he landed there was no war. There, elephants roamed lazily about, those elephants from whose tusks, I’d read, ivory somehow came.

“To be on a plane headed somewhere else,” I finally said to Amina, leaning into the pestle, which was propped up by the mortar.

“What for?” she asked. She turned from the sink to face me. Her eyebrows scrunched together and her eyes narrowed. “What would be the point of leaving now that the war is over? If you wanted to leave, wouldn’t it have been while the war was going on?”

“I know, I know,” I said. “But what if you could go anywhere in the world? Even to Obodo ndi ocha! Do they even have wars in the white man’s land? Just think about it! Anywhere in the world!”

She shook her head as if to erase the question from her consciousness.

The grammar school teacher entered the kitchen then, clearing his throat loudly to announce his presence. I returned to the yam that I should already have been done pounding. I heard Amina sigh as she walked out the door.

Some days later, Gowon declared the official end of the war. Again we listened to it on the radio, from the kitchen. Outside, the sun was high in the sky, and Gowon said:

Citizens of Nigeria,

It is with a heart full of gratitude to God that I announce to you that today marks the formal end of the civil war… The so-called Rising Sun of Biafra is set forever. It will be a great disservice for anyone to continue to use the word “Biafra” to refer to any part of the East Central State of Nigeria…

Gowon had not finished when the grammar school teacher said, “That imbecile!” His wife joined in: “Murderer!”

… The tragic chapter of violence is just ended. We are at the dawn of national reconciliation. Once again we have an opportunity to build a new nation…

Gowon went on like that.

That evening, we were outside by the gate when the soldiers came, Nigerian army men, Hausa soldiers, marching in a parade along the road.

“One Nigeria! One Nigeria!” they called out. They lifted their legs high as they marched, all dressed up in green uniforms, berets on their heads, their guns held firmly across their chests.

THE SAYING GOES that wood already touched by fire isn’t hard to set alight.

We had finished our dinner, some garri and vegetable soup. Then we’d stepped out to the backyard, onto the slab of cement at the side of our hovel, to take our night baths.

Near the bucket, on the corner of the cement slab, was a stool that we’d left there from early in the morning. On the stool, the comb we shared, some hairpins, our body cream, and a small mirror. We had just dried ourselves with our towels when Amina lifted the mirror. Our towels were tied around our chests, extending down to our thighs. She leaned so that her face came close to the kerosene lantern. Its rays illuminated her face. She tugged at the loose braids on her head. “Does it look all right?” she asked.

I went closer to her, ran my fingers through her braids. Those were the braids that I had plaited for her just that morning. I held her face in the palms of my hands and pretended to inspect her hair. I nodded and smiled. She smiled back.

There were the usual night sounds: grasshoppers hopping, fireflies buzzing, crickets singing their songs, leaves rustling in the breeze. I ran my hands up and down Amina’s braids some more, up and down her arms. And Amina did the same to me.

Back in the hovel, our towels fell to the floor.

In the near darkness, our hands moved across our bodies. We took in with our fingers the curves of our flesh, the grooves. Our hands, rather than our voices, seemed to do the speaking. Our breaths mingled with the night sounds. Eventually our lips met. This was the beginning, our bodies being touched by the fire that was each other’s flesh.

“WE MIGHT AS well be married,” Amina said one day.

A moment passed and a thought occurred to me. I asked, “You mean to each other? Or do you mean to other people?”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Of course I mean to each other. I mean that it would be nice to be married to you.”

“It would be nice to be married to you too,” I said.

Silence.

“But that’s not the way marriage works, you know,” I said. “Besides, we’re still too young yet for it.”

Another silence.

“Have you kissed anyone before?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. Not at all. Where would I ever have kissed anyone before?” She looked skeptically at me. “What about you? Have you ever kissed anyone before?”

It had been on my mind, which was why I had brought it up. All this time it had been troubling me, feeling a little like a betrayal. Perhaps she would hate me for it, for having done this thing we did, this thing that was supposed to be special and only between us, with somebody else. But I owed her the truth.

I said, “Someone kissed me once before. My best friend from Ojoto. It didn’t feel the way it feels with you.”

“Your best friend?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“What kind of best friend is that?”

“Just a friend,” I said.

“It happened just once?”

“It happened just once.”

“You promise it didn’t feel as good as with me?”

It was a funny question, its answer being so obvious to me, so I laughed a little. Then, very honestly, I said, “I promise it didn’t feel as good as with you.”

After some time she asked, “How exactly does it feel with me?”

I thought about it. How could I describe it? I could not think of the words. Eventually I simply said, “Tingly and good and like everything is perfect in the world.”

She smiled. “But maybe you were just too young to feel it with your best friend,” she said.

“Maybe,” I said.

“Do you think you could have married him?”

“No,” I said. “Anyway, if I’m too young to be married now, then I was really too young to be married back then.”

“You’re always talking about being too young to marry,” she said.

“I suppose I am,” I said.

IT HAPPENED AT the beginning of August, the end of the rainy season, the day of the New Yam Festival.

Boutique shops had begun to open along the margins of the roads, small shops inside narrowly built zinc sheds. The items they carried were different from those sold at the old vendor stands. They included lipstick, perfume, and soap in green, red, blue, and purple packages — all colors — wrapped so delicately in their fancy boxes that they seemed like precious gifts. They included toothpaste in plastic tubes for those people who were ready to switch back from chewing sticks to toothbrushes.