Chinelo Okparanta - Under the Udala Trees

One second I was fidgeting with my hands, out of nervousness, then the next second I was accidentally twisting a finger, turning it the wrong way so that I felt a sharp, unexpected pain. My gasp came out just as she was saying that last bit about leaving, so she stopped speaking and laughed. “You sound as if I’ve disappointed you,” she said.

“No,” I said. “Not at all. Just my finger.” I began to explain, but I was suddenly more self-conscious, which meant that I might only end up stumbling over my words and sounding like a bumbling fool. I decided to hold the explanation.

“Actually,” she said, bringing me back out of my thoughts, “I have a small admission to make. The reason I stopped by was that the bag I was using to carry all these books broke along the way. I don’t know how I will carry them all the way to school without a bag. Do you happen to have anything I can use?”

I pulled out a small cloth bag from behind the counter and handed it to her. Our fingers brushed slightly as I did, and my eyes darted up instinctively, to see if she had noticed. It didn’t seem she had noticed. She said, “Wonderful. Thank you. I’ll have it back to you as soon as I can.”

“You can keep it,” I said. “We have many of them. We can spare that one.”

“As you wish,” she said. She paused, then added, “But you know, it will be a good excuse for me to come back.”

If there were any confusion on my part as to what the connection was between us, at this point all of the confusion disappeared. And with its disappearance, I was feeling more confident. “It’s a shop,” I said, a little smugly. “We sell at least a hundred different things. You have at least a hundred different reasons to come back.”

She smiled and nodded.

She was wearing a watch on her wrist. She looked at it. “I better be on my way. The headmaster will scream off my head if I’m late. He doesn’t tolerate lateness one bit.”

My hands were resting on the counter. She reached out and placed her free hand over my right hand before turning to leave.

She stopped by the shop again on her way back from school. “There’s a place that makes really good jollof rice close to my flat. I know you like plantains. Their dodo is very good too. Do you want to come?”

Mama had been asking me to socialize and meet people for some time now, so going out with Ndidi seemed a good middle ground between what I wanted and what Mama wanted for me. At least, I reasoned it that way.

Her place was a small flat with postcards decorating the walls in neat squares and rectangles. Postcards of places she wanted to go.

As soon as we entered, and as soon as she had put down the bag she was carrying, she stepped behind the folding wall that separated the bedroom from the parlor. After some minutes she came out no longer wearing her A-line skirt and cotton blouse, but instead a colorful adire gown. Her black medium-heeled shoes had been replaced by a pair of brown flat sandals.

She joined me where I stood in the parlor, looking at a postcard of Venice with its canals and gondolas. She stood by my side. “Imagine, a city that is entirely car-free!” she said.

“No cars at all?” I asked.

“None.”

“I never thought that was even possible,” I said. “Not these days.”

“I know,” she said. “Neither would I have, if I didn’t know. But there it is — riverboats, gondolas, water taxis, that sort of thing. But no cars.”

I moved on to the next postcard. “That’s Turkey,” I said. “Istanbul.”

“Yes,” she said. “A very special city. The only city in the world on two continents. What I would give to go there and see its art and architecture: the Blue Mosque, the Basilica Cistern, and especially the Hagia Sophia!”

There were many other postcards, of Barcelona and Budapest, Rome and Paris, Cairo and Cape Town. I moved from one to the next, ending with London and Paris.

“It would be great to find myself in front of Big Ben,” she said. “You know, the big clock in London. Or imagine being able to watch the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Or to be in Paris, climbing the Eiffel Tower.”

She looked thoughtful for a moment before continuing: “The changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. It’s interesting, the way a place can have certain customs, passed down for ages. Somehow the ritual continues, even if there’s no longer any real significance behind it. Go figure.”

“Go figure,” I replied.

That evening, we had some wine, a cabernet that she said was just the thing she liked to drink in order to relax.

I’d never had wine before. It left a full taste in my mouth, nothing like I’d ever drunk before. A little acidic, the way I imagined the color brown to taste, or ground-up bark from a tree mixed with perfume.

She’d been looking at me.

I said, “This must be for the aristos, upper-class people with their sophisticated palates.”

She laughed.

I took a second sip. “I’m just a village girl, not used to fancy things like this.”

She laughed again and said, “I’m not much different from you, and anyway, village girl or not, I’m happy to be here with you, just sitting and sipping wine with you.”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling a stirring in my heart. In a small voice, I added, “I’m happy to be here with you too.”

Back at home, Mama was on the sofa in the parlor, hemming a skirt. “So how was it?” she asked, looking up at me as I entered.

“It was fine, Mama,” I said.

“Just fine?”

I nodded.

“Did you meet any of her friends? Any handsome young men? There must be several young men at that school. I’ve seen some the few times I’ve passed that way.”

“No, Mama,” I said. “I didn’t meet any handsome young men.”

There was a disappointed look on her face. What I said next was far from the truth, because Ndidi had not in fact brought up any of her male coworkers. But I said it anyway: “Ndidi talked about some of the young men teachers though. Maybe next time we will all meet and we can go from there.”

Mama’s disappointed face transformed into a broad smile. “Very good,” she said. “Very, very good. That girl Ndidi seems to have a good head on her shoulders. I’m glad she came along. You’re still young. It’s important for you to have friends like her. She might teach you a thing or two about the way things should be. With any luck, there might be hope for you after all.”

NDIDI BEGAN INVITING me over to her place in the evenings, and I accepted, stopping by as soon as Mama and I closed up the shop. For the initial hour or two, she was busy with schoolwork. Still, she insisted that I come over, that she enjoyed my company, even my silent company.

She had a record player, which sat on a table beside her box TV. I would sit on her sofa, listening to her records playing softly while I watched her brows furrow and her lips constrict as she marked her students’ papers. In between, I read books from her shelf. That was a period during which I read many books, many months of consistent reading, at least two hours every evening: Agatha Christie’s crime novels, Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard. Efuru , by Flora Nwapa. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. I had already read Things Fall Apart , but as it was on her shelf, I read it again.

Ndidi took small breaks while marking her students’ papers. Sometimes she’d go to the fridge and come back with two bottles of Fanta, one for me and the other for her. We’d drink together, not really talking, just staring and giggling at each other like small girls.

One Friday, as we drank our Fanta, she said, “There’s a place I’d like to take you to. I think you’ll like it very much.”