Chinelo Okparanta - Under the Udala Trees

Inside the parlor, she caught a glint of the sun reflecting through the windows. Tiptoeing around the shattered glass on the floor, she followed the light with her eyes. I followed close behind.

At the window, only one glass pane remained in its frame, and on it, cracks in an almost circular pattern, as if a spider web had been stretched across its surface. She went up to that pane, touched it, stroked its fissures with her fingers, stared accusingly at it.

At the onset of the war, our social studies teacher, Mrs. Enwere, had, one afternoon, given us a history lesson that, so long as I live, I will not forget.

All the students in class were sitting as they usually did, two to a desk. It was nearing the end of the school day. The day had been stuffy and humid, the kind of weather that seemed to make everyone more miserable than they already were. Mrs. Enwere had certainly been in a miserable mood all of that day, her face so downcast you’d have thought she’d lost a parent or a child. Now she was speaking to us, no longer consulting the book in front of her, but speaking freestyle, as if the words of the textbook had somehow registered themselves in her mind.

“First a coup, and then a countercoup. Coup,” she said. She repeated the word, “A coup.” Then, “Who knows what that means?”

Mrs. Enwere must have pronounced the word correctly, but somehow, in my tired, end-of-school-day child’s mind, I heard instead: coop. I could even see it in my mind’s eye: a hutch, a cage, red-tailed chickens and golden chickens and white chickens, chickens with wattles of different colors — yellow, brown, pink. A coop.

But what exactly about coops? How was it that chickens were all of a sudden the topic of our social studies class? The context for it, there in the classroom and in the middle of what appeared to be a history lesson, kept me from being sure that I really knew the word.

Mrs. Enwere waited only a moment for a response, and getting none, she continued. “I shall define ‘mutiny’ for you,” she said, looking around the class. She spoke loudly: “Mutiny is a revolt or rebellion against authority.”

The classroom was a large cement room, all gray, no paint on the walls. There were three other classroom buildings in the compound, in the midst of which was a courtyard, made up of lush green grass and strategically planted flowers, and a sandy brown area where we had our morning assemblies. The assemblies were the period during which we underwent inspections — the time when the headmistress and teachers checked to see if our fingernails were cut and if our uniforms were ironed and if our hair was combed. During the morning assemblies, we sang the school anthem, and then the national anthem, and from there our teachers led us to class.

The windows were located on the side of the classroom facing the courtyard. This was the way all the windows in all the classrooms in the school were, as if to prevent the students from looking the other way, out into the world.

I was staring out one of those courtyard-facing windows, thinking of the moment when school would be dismissed. What path would I take? The one that cut through the large overgrown field? Or the path alongside the road, alongside the bicyclists and the occasional motorists?

“Repeat after me,” Mrs. Enwere was saying. “Mutiny is a revolt or rebellion against authority.” And now I turned back from the window to Mrs. Enwere to find that she was looking directly at me. “Repeat,” Mrs. Enwere said, like a reprimand.

I repeated: “Mutiny is a revolt or rebellion against authority.”

“Very good. Let me not have to remind you again to pay attention,” she said, tapping the cane in her hand on my portion of the desk.

“Now, all of you know of Government House in Ibadan,” she continued. This was the way Mrs. Enwere asked her questions, questions that came out more like statements. Questions that were too far above our minds, questions whose answers we could not possibly have known.

The class remained silent.

“Who can tell me about the Prime Minister and about Sardauna of Sokoto?”

More silence.

At this point, Mrs. Enwere began speaking quickly, her words coming out like a storm: Ahmadu Bello, dead. Tafawa Balewa, dead. Akintola, dead. Dead, dead, dead.

We listened with alarm, or at least I did, trying to make sense of the words. Soldiers. Bullets. Head of State. Military.

Mrs. Enwere went on like that for some time before turning her attention to Ironsi.

“Ironsi,” she said. She repeated the name. “Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi.”

Head of State. Ironsi, his body in a forest, still dressed in his military apparel. Holes and holes scattered across his corpse, holes out of which blood flowed like the waters of a fountain, only red.

Ironsi, bullet-riddled and left to decay in the bush.

“A real shame what is happening in this country,” Mrs. Enwere said. But in any case, she said, this was how we had arrived at Gowon for Head of State. Before Ironsi, Azikiwe. After Ironsi, Gowon.

We all sat there dumbfounded. You could have heard a pin drop in all that silence.

The silence in the house was as heavy as the one that day in school. Mama calling out Papa’s name, and I taking in the dead air that greeted her after each call, complete emptiness in response.

We found him face-down on the black-and-white-tiled floor of the dining room. Mama leapt to him, bent over his body, resumed calling out his name.

His hands and legs were tangled strangely around his body, dying branches twisted around a dying trunk. Pieces of wood from the dining table lay scattered around him. A purple-brown hue had formed where the pool of his blood was collecting.

She stayed bent over his body, the cloth of her wrapper soaking up his blood. “Uzo, biko, mepe anya gi! Ana m ayo gi!” I’m begging you, Uzo. Please open your eyes for me!

She continued to call his name, and each new call was louder than the one before. “Open your eyes, my husband. Mepe, i nu go? ” she said. “Open, do you hear me?!”

Her calling became shouting, and soon the shouting turned into wailing.

I remained where I stood, steps behind her, stunned. My father was dying or already dead, and even if I would have liked to do something to make it otherwise, I must have known already that there was nothing I could do.

In a whisper this time, Mama called Papa again by his name. For minutes she continued that way, just whispering his name, and as she did, she pleaded with him. “My husband, please. Please, get up and walk.”

But of course he lay there still.

That evening, a handful of parishioners from church came and lifted Papa’s body, cleaned it off, and took it with them. Where they took it I did not exactly know, but I watched as Mama handed to one of the men Papa’s gold-patterned isiagu, hanging neatly on a hanger. They must have been the ones who put the isiagu on for him. When they returned with him and laid him back down in our parlor, he was clean and perfect-looking, as if he had gotten all dressed up for a big occasion only to suddenly fall asleep.

PAPA’S NAME, UZO, meant “door,” or “the way.” It was a solid kind of name, strong-like and self-reliant, unlike mine, Ijeoma (which was just a wish: “safe journey”), or Mama’s, Adaora (which was just saying that she was the daughter of all, daughter of the community, which was really what all daughters were, when you thought about it).

Uzo. It was the kind of name I’d have liked to fold up and hold in the palm of my hand, if names could be folded and held that way. So that if I were ever lost, all I’d have to do would be to open up my palm and allow the name, like a torchlight, to show me the way.