Chinelo Okparanta - Under the Udala Trees

I grew eager and afraid at once, because this was, after all, the sign that I had asked for.

I heard the sound of footsteps behind me. I turned around.

I screamed at the sight, because if this was God’s sign, then Mama was the evil in my heart.

MAMA RAN TO ME, muffled my screams. “What is the matter with you? This is the house of God, for God’s sake! What is possessing you to scream this way?”

I collected myself. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was praying. I didn’t expect anyone to come walking in.”

“I’ve been running around looking for you. Of course I came! Do you realize you’ve been gone over two hours?”

“Two hours?” I asked, genuinely surprised.

She nodded. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m just a little sick,” I said. “I think I’ll go back home and sleep. That should help.”

She placed the back of her palm on my forehead. “Is it stomach trouble or a headache?”

“Mostly just a headache.”

“All right. Ngwa. Let’s go. I will walk back with you. I have some Panadol at home you can take. Hopefully it’s not the onset of malaria. Obiageli down the road just came down with a bad case of malaria.”

“I don’t think it’s malaria,” I replied. “A small headache, that’s all.”

DESPITE THE PANICKED dreams, as soon as Monday rolled around, and as soon as we closed up the shop, I went to Ndidi’s. It was like having an addiction to chili peppers, or to beans. You sensed that eating too much of them would overwhelm your system. That afterward there would be consequences. Your mouth would burn; you would surely get the runs. The dreams would come again. But you did it anyway.

I sat on her sofa listening to Fela Kuti on her record player, and again watching her mark her students’ assignments.

I peered at her off and on, scrutinizing, because maybe God would give me a different sign where she was concerned, a clearer one, and if I looked closely, maybe I would see.

After a while, she must have felt the weight of my scrutiny. She lifted her eyes and very softly said, “Ijeoma, what?”

I allowed my eyes to drop. “Nothing,” I said.

She went back to the papers in front of her. A few minutes went by.

She felt my gaze again and said, “Ijeoma, what’s the matter?”

“I’m just checking to see if you’re done yet,” I replied.

She put her pen down, rose from the table, and came to me on the sofa. “And if I say I’m done, then what? Do you have special plans for us this evening?”

I shook my head. “No plans. Was just checking to see if you were done.”

Now she was the one scrutinizing me, studying me with her eyes. She took my hand, began stroking it. “Well, if you have no plans for us, I might have a plan.”

My throat was suddenly dry, and I felt heat rising in my cheeks. “What kind of plan?” I asked hoarsely.

She leaned in so that I could feel the warmth of her breath on my ear and on the side of my face. Her voice was strong even if it was only a whisper. She said, “This kind of plan.”

She took my hand in hers and brought it to her waistline. In one swift motion, she unzipped her skirt at the side zipper. The skirt loosened, and she brought my hand inside. She wore no undergarments, not even a slip. Her skin where my hand landed was warm. But she moved it lower, pausing momentarily at the curls of hair that started low beneath her belly. She stopped only when my hand arrived at the wet flesh at the center. I felt a slight insecurity, having done this only with Amina before. What if the things that Amina had enjoyed were not the same things that would please Ndidi? What if I was somehow insufficient?

I would try anyway. I moved to her front, knelt before her. I pressed her wet flesh firmly with the tips of my fingers, then my fingers found themselves inside, enveloped by her warmth.

She gasped. The gasping transformed into moaning. I moved my fingers slowly in and out. I rubbed gently in small circles, slow at first and then faster, the way I had done with Amina and with myself.

Her hips moved along.

It did not take much time. She let out a cry, and I found myself overcome by emotion — warm feelings, feelings of affection, of happiness, of something like love; feelings of elation at being able to connect so intimately with her, at being able to elicit such an intense reaction from her. It was as if her pleasure was in that moment my own, ours, a shared fulfillment.

I held her, whispered her name, placed soft kisses on her face, her neck, her lips. If I could have stayed forever this way with her, there would have been no greater gift.

She let out another cry, and then her entire body stiffened in my embrace, with recurrent shudders, until finally she relaxed into my arms.

At home that night, the panicked dreams were worse than on all the preceding nights combined. Throughout my sleep I was confronted with Mama’s scolding face, her reprimanding finger wagging at me, threatening to poke out an eye. The images of Mama were interspersed with a thunderous sound that, in the dream, was the voice of God, scolding also like Mama, reprimanding, condemning me for my sins. Each time I fell back to sleep, the same dream. Eventually I rose from bed, no longer willing myself to sleep. I pulled off my nightgown, changed into one of my day gowns. Dressed, I went back to bed and sat, not daring even to lie down. I sat there for hours, wide awake, waiting for day to break.

As the sun peeked through the sky and darkness turned to a light gray, I climbed out once more from bed, picked up my Bible and prayer scarf, and headed out of my room. It was still early enough that Mama would not yet have awoken.

I walked briskly out the front door and along the path leading across the yard. I stepped outside the gate and switched to a running pace until I arrived at church.

I went down the aisle to the front of the church, as I had done the time before. I knelt down before God. I would have prayed, but somehow I could not find the words to do so. I took a deep breath, slowly exhaling, attempting to steady myself that way. And then another deep breath. And another.

My breathing finally stabilized. I attempted once more to string together the words to form a prayer, but nothing came. I remained mute. Not a single word to express myself, not a single one to explain or to defend myself, not one single word to apologize and beg forgiveness for my sins. All I felt within me was a trembling from this questionable sort of guilt. A sense of defeat washed over me. Tears spilled out, forming tiny dark spots on the gray cement floor of the church. I took in a deep breath and then exhaled. The exhalation came out as a long, tumbling sigh. Somewhere in the middle of it, I remembered John 8. I knelt there at the front of the church and at last the words came out of my mouth, Jesus’ words: He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

I felt a slow rising of relief. A steady dispersion of it, and then an overshadowing of that earlier sense of defeat. I exhaled once more. The air smelled of tears and sweat and that sharp scent of wet concrete.

I WAS GOING BACK and forth between the front and the rear of the store, dusting shelves and restocking, when I saw the man enter. His hair rose high above his head as if to form a black halo around him. He had a beard, a mustache, and sideburns trailing down his cheeks.

He headed toward the crates of drinks and picked up a bottle of Guinness. He wore a watered-down smile, the kind that matched the dull and wrinkled shirt he was wearing, the kind that matched the faded blue tie around his neck.