Chinelo Okparanta - Under the Udala Trees

A girl with a tray on her head called out, “ Akara oku! Hot akara! Akara oku! ”

There was the heavy scent of fufu and ground crayfish in the air. Above the haggling voices of the market people, radios played music and spouted out news. Some simply hissed with static.

A shirtless old man, with skin so loose that it appeared to be melting down his body, said: “Fine girl, look how say even sun dey follow you! Even sun sabi say you dey fine! Beauty-beauty. Omalicha! Carry go!”

“Mineral! Mineral! Come get your mineral,” a hawker cried.

A middle-aged woman sang, “ Agidi, Agidi, Agidi, Agidi jollof! ”

I walked up the road until I arrived at the bole stand, where the vendor girl — Nnenna was her name — stood slicing the peels off some plantains.

“Two plantains,” I said to her. “The usual.”

Nnenna just stood there, slicing a plantain in the slowest possible way. As she sliced it, she sang out loudly, “ Onye ihe m n’ewiwe, ya biko wegbuo ya, osukosu nwa mpi, ya biko sugbuo ya, selense. ” Each time she got to selense , she moved her hips sharply from side to side, jutting her face in a pose, as if getting ready for her picture to be taken.

There was something mocking about the way she did all of it. She had recently begun teasing me about the stupid catcalls of some of the men vendors. “It must be nice to be so beautiful!” If she only knew that all the beauty in the world did not amount to much where many things in life were concerned. All those men shouting out their love as if tossing loose change into a beggar’s can, professing to want to marry me in that careless way that people often tossed out trash. The way life often defied its own logic, the way it often threw us for a loop, a beautiful girl might as well be as ugly as the ugliest of ojuju masks.

Mama was waiting for me back at the shop. “Biko, make so I fit go!” I said to Nnenna. Did she not realize that if she made me wait any longer, she could altogether lose my business?

I had just turned nineteen, and Nnenna was a couple of years younger.

“Ehn-ehn,” she said, shaking her head from side to side. “So you think se you be the only selense around here? I go show you o!” She sang even louder now and did the thing with her face and hips again. The way she held her face, she reminded me of a duck, and so I burst out laughing. But she was so carried away with her dancing that it took her a while to register the sound of my laughter. When she finally did, she put on a look of mock sadness, and immediately her laughter mixed in with mine.

“ Oya , biko, give me plantain make I fit go,” I said.

Business was booming at Mama’s shop now that it stocked more than the basics. In addition to loaves of bread and meat pies, palm oil and a few crops, we sold wafers, chewing gum, peppermints. Toothpaste and toothbrushes, matchsticks, candles, newspapers, thread. Now there were beverages beyond palm wine. The shop carried crates of soft drinks neatly stacked along the walls. Glass bottles of Fanta and Coke and Sprite, of Guinness and Gulder, Heineken and Star.

Mama had relegated the stocking and dusting of shelves to me. There was quite a bit of stocking still to be done that day, and so I was in a hurry to get back.

Finally Nnenna stopped with her playing and she reached for two already roasted plantains. She sliced them open and proceeded to pour palm oil into them, proceeded to sprinkle ground pepper over the palm oil.

It was a steaming-hot afternoon, and the heat from the coal grill, combined with the mob of people, only made it feel hotter.

I collected the wrapped-up plantains and rushed back to the store.

That was the way things played themselves out earlier that afternoon. The whole business with Nnenna — the surprise teasing followed by our shared laughter. And then, not long after, that same day, there would be another surprise.

It started with Mama and I munching into our bole. Mama sat in her usual seat, on a stool along the back wall of the store. The cash register sat on the counter in front of her. We had barely begun eating — barely taken three bites — when a customer entered. She was a tall girl, taller than me by several centimeters. She looked to be my age, certainly no more than one or two years older. Her hair was packed high atop her head in a big round puff. A set of bright yellow gold circular links dangled down from her earlobes. She looked somewhat like Amina, the way her face was long and serious-looking, but her skin was darker, something between the color of a brown carton and the color of Guinness. Her lips were red, in a way that reminded me a little of the grammar school teacher’s wife’s, or of Amina’s on that tragic day out on the veranda with the boy. But this girl’s lips were a lighter shade of red. She was wearing an Ankara romper whose bottom came down to mid-calf. Its neckline angled down on one side, revealing a shoulder. On her feet she wore a strappy, flat pair of sandals.

She walked up to the register. Her eyes seemed to scan my face.

“Do you carry Mentholatum?” she asked.

It was the rainy season, and quite a number of people had been coming in asking for Mentholatum, and we had run out. I shook my head. “Sorry,” I said. “We should be getting more in a few days, maybe even by next tomorrow.”

Mama was now standing beside me, very close to the counter. “If you need something immediately, we have Rub,” she said. “It’s the same thing, maybe a little stronger than Mentholatum. Should work even better.”

The girl shook her head. “Thanks, but I prefer Mentholatum.”

My roasted plantain was out on the countertop, on the aluminum foil from which I was eating it. The girl looked down at it and then back up at me. “Mmmm. Bole. I was just on my way to get some.”

I said, “Nobody roasts them as well as Nnenna.”

She nodded, and for a moment she stood there smiling at me. It crossed my mind that maybe she was waiting for me to offer her some of my bole, which would have been awkward, this random customer just standing there looking with longthroat at my food.

I was wearing a navy-blue polka-dotted dress that formed a V-line at the junction between my breasts, and I saw the moment when her eyes flickered down to that area, and paused, before darting back up to meet my eyes.

She smiled an embarrassed, almost apologetic smile when her eyes met mine.

“I’ll just come back for the Mentholatum in a few days,” she said.

I nodded.

She scanned my face once more, very quickly, before turning around to leave.

LATE AFTERNOON ON a Saturday, almost evening. In an hour Mama and I would be getting ready to close up the shop. Mama was reading the newspaper behind the counter. Fela Kuti was playing on the radio.

I was still counting change from a previous sale when I looked up to see the grammar school teacher and his wife walk in. I tugged Mama by the arm. She looked up and saw them too, and exclaimed with surprise, “Oga! Madam! What brings you here today?”

She went out from behind the counter to greet him and his wife in an embrace.

I finished with the counting, placed the money into the register, followed her out from behind the counter to greet them as well.

“Uncle and Aunty, good afternoon. Welcome,” I said.

Mama turned to me. “Ijeoma, bring out the folding chairs,” she said.

I went to the stock room, pulled out two folding chairs and set them up in the front corner of the store.

When they were seated, he said, “Ah. Long time no see. How you dey?”

“We dey fine o, we thank God,” Mama said very cheerfully. She had by now pulled out her stool from behind the counter to join them. “So what brings you two to Aba?”