Chinelo Okparanta - Under the Udala Trees

“Chibundu! Are you there? Are you hearing me? I said the baby is coming!”

“Yes, yes!” he shouted excitedly. “I hear you. Obiawana. Baby’s coming. I was just letting my coworkers know. How much time do we have? I’m on my way right now. I can be there before you know it.”

“Maybe I should catch a taxi and you can meet me at the hospital,” I said, thinking aloud.

“No, no,” he said. “ Mba. I’m coming right now. I’ll be there right away. I’ll catch a taxi and head there right now and we can take that same taxi together to the hospital.” The line went dead.

I replaced the receiver and stood there, not sure what to do with myself as I waited for him. It occurred to me to go grab my hospital bag, to have it waiting at the front door for the moment Chibundu arrived. I took some steps in the direction of the bedroom, but then the pain came again.

I squatted, grabbing on to the table, bracing myself that way and waiting for the pain to subside. But the pain only grew worse.

I stayed there on the kitchen floor for what felt like hours, screaming, clenching and unclenching my fists, struggling to catch my breath.

I crawled toward the phone, reached for it, not sure who exactly I’d be calling and why, because surely Chibundu was already on his way. Even if I phoned his office again, he would not be there to take the call.

Soon, it seemed the world was closing up around me. Everything turned to black.

I looked up to see Chibundu entering the kitchen, his footsteps loud and drum-like on the tile floor. Just that one brief moment of lucidity and then things returned to black. Eventually I opened my eyes once more to find that I was lying on a hospital bed. More screaming, more clenching and unclenching of my fists. Pushing and more pushing, and feeling myself empty out, like the way a river empties into the sea.

THE FESTIVE ATMOSPHERE lasted the whole first week and into the second: the gathering of the neighbors, the gulping down of bottles of soft drinks — crates of them — and of gourds and jerry cans of palm wine. There was all the usual gift-giving, the well-wishing from family and friends. Mama and Chibundu’s mother had come and had been waiting for me at the flat when I arrived from the hospital, all of them eager to welcome baby Chidinma home.

The first sign of trouble was when Chibundu refused to purchase a goat. Without the goat there would be no butchering, no digging of the hole, no letting of its blood into the earth. The roasting of the goat would have been the hallmark of the celebration, seasoning it with peppers and onions, and serving it for all to enjoy.

But Chibundu refused. Instead, he walked around moping, barely greeting the visitors.

Mama could not help but notice. She had taken the child and had been carrying her around the flat when she crossed paths with Chibundu. She returned to me immediately. “Whatever is the matter between you two,” she said in a low voice, “you must find a way to work it out. Do you hear me?”

I was in Chidinma’s bedroom — the nursery — sitting on a recliner. I took the baby from her. “I hear you,” I said. “The only thing is that I actually don’t know what the matter is.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I mean I don’t know,” I replied.

I began to rock the baby in my arms.

“He is your husband,” she said. “Something is wrong, and you are telling me you don’t know what it is?”

I examined my baby, no longer listening to Mama’s questioning. Here was my child, my flesh and my blood. Tiny hands and feet. Nails as thin as paper. Eyes hardly more than slits. Her skin was smooth and soft, and her scent was sweet and pure, a little like the aroma of fresh coconut oil.

My breasts were swollen, and there was a rush of pain in them as her mouth latched on to me. But I also felt a mixture of gratitude and delight. I held her tight against my body. Despite the pain, she was cause for celebration. A beautiful baby girl, healthy, no harelip, no curse. Here she was, a little human being whom I would love the way I saw fit — love overflowing, love unrestricted. Chigoziem was the name that Chibundu had picked out in the event that she had been a boy. Chigoziem, because he would have been our little blessing, and through that name we would have been, in turn, asking God to bless him.

But she had wound up a girl, which was just as well to me. Chidinma was the name I chose for her. Chibundu had allowed me to choose the girl name, his only stipulation being that it somehow reflect his own. Chidinma was the name I decided on, for “God is good,” because she was no curse of a child, no harelip. Through her, this perfect representation of me and of Chibundu, God had indeed been good.

I HAD NO SHORTAGE of help. Chibundu’s mother stayed a week and did her best to help out around the house. Mama outdid her and stayed nearly two months, longer than I would ever have asked of her. She might have stayed even longer had I not encouraged her to go. Her shop was, after all, waiting. Two months was too long to keep it shut. Finally she conceded.

But I had been more than grateful for her stay, especially in those early days when I could not get Chidinma to latch on, and when there was all that pain.

Those days, she had brought a stool for me. “Here. Put your leg on this, it will bring the baby closer to your breast and make it easier for both of you.”

It worked.

When the lumps came, Mama said, “It’s nothing to worry about. Just a little lumping from congealed milk. A plugged duct. It will go away in a couple of days.”

She saw to it that I fed Chidinma more consistently — at least every two hours — so that the duct would drain. She reminded me to switch positions so that there was not too much pressure on any one side.

She brought me a hot washcloth every few hours, especially at night, told me to lay it on my chest, as the heat from it would help to dissolve the clog. She saw to it that I drank lots of fluids, water especially. She made sure that I slept on my back or side so that I did not put extra weight on my breasts. Sometimes at night, those nights when I fell asleep in the nursery, in the double bed there that I sometimes shared with Mama, I woke up to her hovering over me, saying, “Ijeoma, you’re lying too far into your front again. Turn around so that you’re completely on your back.”

IT WAS ALL Chidinma those days after Mama packed her bags and left. In the afternoon when, before giving birth to her, I’d usually be sitting in church, I instead tied Chidinma to my back with a wrapper and carried her on long walks, back and forth, with no real destination in mind.

Once, I waited until the evening to see if Chibundu wanted to come along. He was sitting in the parlor chewing on a garden egg. The question had hardly left my mouth when he looked sharply at me, his face twisted in a scowl. He responded that his work had rendered him useless for everyday life, that it wore him out so much that, he was sorry to say, he’d probably never have the energy to come along. Not in the evenings after he returned from work, and not in general, because didn’t I see? Didn’t I see that even on the weekends they were now sometimes calling him in? And those weekends when they did not, he preferred to rest, he said.

I had in fact noticed that he was starting to go in to work on some Saturdays.

I nodded, not saying a word, but it was clear that something had gotten into him. The way he was snapping more often than ever. As if all the world, and especially me and Chidinma, had become like thorns on his skin.