Chinelo Okparanta - Under the Udala Trees

“We were on our way to visit family,” the grammar school teacher said.

His wife said, “My sister moved here with her husband about a month ago. We decided it was time we come see the new place. While we were at it, we thought to stop by and see you. Kill two birds with one stone.”

“Welcome!” Mama said. She called me. “ Oya , Ijeoma, fetch our guests some beer and soft drinks.” Turning back to them, she said, “We have Guinness, Coke, Fanta, Sprite—”

His wife requested a Coke. The grammar school teacher requested a bottle of Guinness.

When they had been sitting, drinking the soft drink and beer, and making small talk for about twenty minutes, the topic of Amina came up. I felt my stomach churn.

“It went just as you would expect,” the grammar school teacher said. “The groom’s family came down and took permission from us. I think they called it Na gani ina so. It didn’t take much time before we arrived at the Sa rana— the setting of the date, that is.”

“Look at you!” Mama laughed. “You’ve become a proper Hausa man, using their words even!”

“I try,” the grammar school teacher said, laughing too. His wife joined in the laughter.

“So how was it?” Mama asked when the laughter subsided.

“It was a beautiful wedding,” the grammar school teacher’s wife said. “Very simple and intimate — just family — but beautiful. You should have seen her, with paint decoration all over her hands, up her arms, flower designs. Very pretty.”

“How wonderful,” Mama said.

The whole time I had been standing behind the counter, listening to their conversation, struggling to contain my anger. I wanted to scream out “Traitor!” for the way Amina had betrayed me. The last thing I wanted to hear now was talk about her wedding. I felt an urge to walk out, but it would have been rude to walk out with the guests there, and what if a customer came while Mama was still visiting with them?

The next thing the grammar school teacher said sent a wave of sadness that totally obliterated all the anger that I had previously been feeling.

He said, “They have since moved up north.”

Up until then, it had been a bit of comfort to think of her as not being too far away. Sometimes I liked to fantasize about us accidentally running into each other. I would imagine the age-old lovers-reunion cliché: arms wrapping around each other, kisses, declarations of love.

But truthfully, the announcement should not have come as a surprise. Back at our send-off party, she had mentioned that the groom would be going to school up north.

“Where exactly up north did they wind up?” Mama asked.

“She mentioned it, but I can never keep those northern states straight.” He turned to his wife. “Do you remember?”

“I think it’s either Kano or Kaduna, I can’t remember myself,” she said. “He had mentioned Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, but he had also mentioned that new federal university in Kano.”

He said, “Yes o. Kano or Kaduna. Definitely not as far up north as Sokoto, but north enough that there will be an abundance of her people, just the thing a girl like her needs.”

That evening, after the grammar school teacher and his wife left, Mama gave me a talking-to. We were together in the kitchen. She was sitting on her stool, her legs wrapped around the mortar, about to begin pounding the cubes of yam for dinner.

It came out as a chant. She said, “A woman without a man is hardly a woman at all. You won’t stay young forever. Even that girl has gone and found herself a husband. Why won’t you do the same?”

I was standing by the sink, cutting up okra for soup. I paused with the okra and turned to look at her.

A candle was burning on a tin can that sat on the countertop. It was nearly all used up, though some of its wax had congealed on the sides of the can.

Mama rose from where she was sitting to grab a new candle from the cupboard. As she did, she said, “ Gee nti. Listen, and listen well. Oge na gakwa. Time is passing. You need to get out there and find yourself a husband. Time waits for no one.”

She took what remained of the old candle and tossed it into the dustbin. Under her breath, she muttered, “If you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself like that candle, all burnt up and nothing to show for it.”

She picked up the pestle, held it, but she did not in fact pound. Instead, she looked at the cubes of yam and said, “Marriage has a shape. Its shape is that of a bicycle. Doesn’t matter the size or color of the bicycle. All that matters is that the bicycle is complete, that the bicycle has two wheels.

“The man is one wheel,” she continued, “the woman the other. One wheel must come before the other, and the other wheel has no choice but to follow. What is certain, though, is that neither wheel is able to function fully without the other. And what use is it to exist in the world as a partially functioning human being?”

Under her breath, she said, “A woman without a man is hardly a woman at all.” There was something self-deprecating about the way she said it.

She began to pound the yam, one loud thump after another. The soft yam cubes did not do much to muffle the hard sounds of wood smacking against wood, of the pestle smacking against the mortar. A couple of more thumps and then silence.

I turned around at the sink, to go back to the okra I had been cutting. But Mama was not done with me yet. She said, “A word to the wise: go out, make some friends, socialize. How will the young men even know that you are available if you spend all your time moping around at home?”

It was true. Other than church and work at the shop, and some errands to and from the market, I spent all my time at home. Even in church I sat alone, at the very back of the room, and I’d be gone the minute the final benediction was said.

“Some people, you wonder if God was sleeping when He made them. But you, you are beautiful. God was definitely not sleeping when He made you. A girl as beautiful as you! You are nineteen, almost twenty, and yet no young man has so much as come for you. Chineke bi n’elu! God in heaven! How can this even be?”

THE MENTHOLATUM GIRL came back early one morning, only not for Mentholatum. Mama was away arranging the purchases and deliveries for the store.

The girl walked in carrying a stack of composition books, her face perfectly made up, her navy-blue A-line skirt and white cotton blouse crisply ironed. She was wearing a pair of black medium-heeled shoes.

She dumped the composition books on the counter. “I don’t know why I continue to give these children writing assignments. It’s self-torture having to carry all these composition books home, read them, mark them, only to have to lug them back to school.”

Back in Obodoañuli Academy, the social studies teacher Mr. Aderemi sometimes used to make us read our essays to him aloud. I said to the Mentholatum girl, “You could give them oral presentations instead. Just have them read aloud what they’ve written, and mark them that way.”

“Something to consider,” she said, nodding thoughtfully, as if she were weighing the pros and cons of the suggestion right then and there.

“By the way, I’m Ndidi,” she said.

“Ijeoma,” I replied. “So where exactly do you teach? What school?”

“The secondary school a few roads down. You can’t miss it. Yellow buildings with green roofs. The only school in the area with that color combination. If you pass by when school is beginning or letting out, you might see me out on the grounds, overseeing the children.”

She looked down at the pile of composition books on the counter. She said, “I’d love to say I stopped in to chat, but—”