Chinelo Okparanta - Under the Udala Trees

I squeezed through the first set of students I met with, those standing a few steps in front of the veranda. I cut across the veranda, walked hastily toward the door. There, by the door, I found her. I’d never seen her with makeup on, but now her lips were painted red, her eyes lined in black. Ugochi and a group of other girls stood not far away from her. There she was, Amina in an off-the-shoulder blouse made of a lacy material. Amina in a tight skirt and sequined sandals. Amina with earrings I’d never seen on her before. They dangled like teardrops, bottom side heavy. One had only to turn them upside down and the thin, tapered ends would have been something sharp, like the tip of a knife. There she was, Amina trying to be beautiful, even if she already was.

I moved closer to her. She was unaware that I was there. I watched as she put her arms around the shoulders of one of the boys. His own arms came around her waist.

I tapped her on the shoulder. It must have been too light a tap, because she only leaned into the boy, and soon their heads were meeting. Afraid that their lips would soon follow, I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her to me. There was a fragrance coming from her, something sweet and floral, like the scent of a rosebush.

She looked me in the face, very shocked. The boy’s arms came around her waist again, as if he had not noticed that I was standing there. She turned to him.

“Amina,” I said, my voice flat and dry.

She turned back to me. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice was a little more apologetic than the look in her eyes. She repeated it: “Sorry.” And again, she repeated it. If sorry was meat, I could have cooked a pot of soup with it.

Whether they finally kissed or not, I did not stay to see.

BY OUR FOURTH and fifth years, Amina and I had drifted even farther apart. We sat in the same classroom for our mock WAECs, not saying a word to each other, not before or after the exams. By the time the real WAECs rolled around, I had resigned myself to hopelessness. The possibility of any kind of relationship between us now felt like a lost cause.

The grammar school teacher and his wife had continued to remain in contact with Mama, and, through them, I received small, infrequent updates on Amina, nothing significant enough to have held my interest. But then our final year came to an end, and with it, the big announcement.

It happened on the very last day that it could have happened, at the conclusion of our senior send-off party, when the parents had already arrived to collect their children. Out on the school fields, chairs still stood in rows. But no one was sitting. Instead, parents swarmed around their children like ants around morsels of sweets. Some of them stood along the perimeter of the chairs, swaying alongside their children to the rhythm of some invisible, inaudible drum. Others simply stood around conversing.

Mama and I had managed to find the grammar school teacher and his wife in the crowd. As Amina was still under their care, she was with them when Mama and I approached.

The grammar school teacher was smiling mischievously. There was hardly a greeting before he blurted out, “Amina has wonderful news. Have you heard?”

By his side, his wife stood unsmiling. If she knew the news, it was failing to have the same effect on her as it was having on him.

He turned to Amina. “Go on,” he said. “Tell them.”

Amina cleared her throat. She looked at me as she spoke. It was a simple declaration: “There is a Hausa boy who wants to marry me.”

It was not at all characteristic of me, but in that moment, I burst out with one quick ha , the vocalization of my shock.

Mama glared at me, then turned back to Amina. “Congrats, dear,” she said, but in a way that came off, if not spiteful, then resentful. “He’s Hausa, you say?”

“Yes, Hausa,” Amina replied.

“Okay. Very good, then,” Mama said. And now she seemed appeased that Amina had at least known to marry into her own tribe. “You’ll be with your own kind, back where you belong, learn a little about your people. Keep to yourselves.”

The grammar school teacher nodded with the overenthusiastic effort of a person trying hard to keep things jovial. “Indeed. With her own kind. It couldn’t be better,” he said.

“So tell me about him,” Mama said to Amina. “Is he a student?”

Amina nodded. “Yes,” she said. “He finished secondary school last year and passed the JAMB with flying colors. He’ll be entering university up north this year. He wants to study civil engineering.”

Mama’s eyes had been widening, little by little, as Amina spoke. Now her hands came together, as if to clap, and she turned to look at me. “Did you hear that, Ijeoma? An educated young man! Please-o, better hurry up and find yourself someone like that before you wind up getting left behind. But,” she added, “Igbo, of course.”

I stood glaring at Amina. She appeared to avoid my gaze.

“Of course, he’ll do it the proper way, not so?” Mama was asking. “He’ll come to make the formal request?”

Amina nodded. The grammar school teacher was all smiles still. All the while his wife remained unsmiling.

“It’s always a good idea to go the traditional way,” Mama said. “Traditional wedding is a must. By that I mean Hausa, of course. White wedding, you can take or leave.” She reached out her hand and patted Amina on the back. “Ah! The lost sheep of the shepherd, strayed from the group, now finding her way back to her people, to her very own pack of sheep.”

The grammar school teacher nodded. “A true miracle. Certainly a cause for celebration.”

His wife had been silent this whole time, but now she turned to me. Mama and the teacher were still going on and on about Amina. His wife looked at me. There was something sympathetic in her eyes, and when she spoke, she spoke softly. “It’s just the way things are done,” she said. “You understand, don’t you?”

My head was a little downturned, but she reached for my chin, lifted my face so that I was looking into her eyes. She said, “Don’t worry. Somehow it all works out.”

Not long after, while the adults stood chatting among themselves, I found Amina off by herself, leaning on an udala tree behind one of the school buildings.

I approached her under the tree.

She was holding her head down, refusing to look at me.

At first neither of us said a word, but after some time I cleared my throat and asked, “Will you really marry him?”

She nodded, still not looking at me.

“You really want to marry him?”

Again she nodded, still averting her eyes.

“You and I both know it’s not what you want,” I said.

She looked at me now, her eyes narrowed. “It is,” she said.

At this point we seemed to be staring each other down. When I could no longer hold her gaze, I looked away at the ground. There were yellowing weeds growing from the brown earth that circled the trunk of the tree. On the grass around that brown patch, a grasshopper was skipping about. Off in the distance I heard the grammar school teacher’s voice, calling Amina’s name, then Mama’s name, then mine.

“I want to marry him. I really do,” Amina said.

A breeze rustled the leaves above us just as the grammar school teacher, his wife, and Mama made their way to us.

ALL AROUND WAS an assortment of colors: bright reds and blues and greens. Oranges and purples. Shades in between. All the storefronts — and all the items in them — sparkled. Colors and more colors, dancing harmoniously under the glow of the brisk afternoon sun. But the roads were still wet from an early morning rain, poto poto everywhere.