Chinelo Okparanta - Under the Udala Trees

What could he do? Perhaps he’d sit there and listen. Or maybe, even before I was finished, he’d rise angrily, thrusting the items on the table — his food, the hollow wooden centerpiece that sat in the middle of the table, the drinking glasses, all the silverware — to the ground. Maybe he’d walk up to me and slap me again and again, until he was feeling spent and purged and relieved. Until I was feeling spent and purged and relieved.

The second way I imagined it was this:

I’d wait until bedtime, until he was lying asleep next to me, soft breaths whistling through his nostrils like a distorted lullaby.

I imagined that I’d tap him, tap him until I startled him awake. Then I’d tell it to him. There’d be silence for some time while he registered the words. And then the shouting, the sound of his voice billowing out in the room, appearing to fill up even the tiniest cracks and crevices, and then seeping out slowly through the slightly open windows, scattering into pieces in the wind, fading and fading and diffusing until incomprehensible to the ear.

But perhaps there’d be no shouting. Just the singing of the crickets and the stillness of the night.

Perhaps he’d only turn back to sleep, and it’d be as if I’d not confessed a thing.

I WAS AT THE kitchen counter shucking corn, green and yellow leaves falling to the sink, yellow threads of corn silk everywhere. Near me, on the floor, Chidinma gabbling to herself in her swing. A large polythene bag lay open on the counter into which I should have been putting the corn leaves, but I was missing and making a mess all around. Next to the bag, a damp cloth with which I would eventually wipe away the mess.

The sun was already setting. The last I’d seen of Chibundu, he’d been sitting in the parlor, reading a newspaper and snacking on a bowl of boiled groundnuts. This was shortly after he’d returned from work, and even more shortly after we’d had our supper of rice and stew.

I wiped my hands with the cloth. I rose and walked to the parlor, where I’d last seen him, but he was not there. On the center table, next to his bowl of hollowed-out groundnut shells, lay a rag doll of Chidinma’s, its legs dangling over the table’s edge.

The curtains on the parlor windows were still open. The sky outside was dark.

I drew the curtains closed. I had been looking for him for no particular reason, but now I recognized that there was in fact a reason: I was ready, had now reached the point of readiness. Today was the day I would lay it all out on him.

I turned from the parlor and walked down the corridor to the bathroom. Perhaps he was there.

By the bathroom door, I leaned against the wall, waiting for him to come out. At the far end of the hallway, above the doorway of our bedroom, hung a white clock. It was eight o’clock in the evening.

Chidinma, in the kitchen, had been making loud, playful baby sounds which had been traveling throughout the flat. Now her sounds seemed to grow even louder, a definite fussing, no longer just play.

I returned to her in the kitchen, soothed her. “Hush, baby. Hush, little girl. What’s the matter? Can’t you try and settle down for me? Can’t you see Mommy has something important to do?”

I carried her in her swing out to the parlor, where her rag doll still lay on the center table. I picked up the doll and handed it to Chidinma.

“Hush, baby,” I said again in a whisper. “Be good for Mommy, you hear?”

I returned to the bathroom, took my position near the door. I had not stood there long before I noticed a sound coming out of the bedroom. I approached and saw Chibundu’s shadow, like a bust on the wall, growing larger and darker the closer I got.

Chibundu sitting on my side of the bed, my wooden chest on his lap. Several letters unfolded and scattered on the bed around him. One of the letters hung from his hands. My pile of pens and pencils lay on the bed near where he sat.

I did not move past where I stood, just a few steps beyond the bedroom doorway. He looked up at me, rose from the bed. My wooden chest went crashing to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” I said, taking a few steps back into the hallway and then coming to a stop.

He had been walking in my direction with the letter, but now he stopped too, staring at me with a rabid look. If his eyes were nails and he the hammer, he would have pinned me down in one fell swoop.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, because I truly was sorry for what he had read.

He looked down at the letter in his hand. He read:

He is my husband, yes, but you are the one I love.

He looked back up at me.

I chuckled nervously. “I’m sorry,” I said once more.

“You’re sorry for what? What exactly are you sorry about? Tell me, I want to know.”

My hands hung limply at my sides. I brought them to my hips as if to collect myself that way. There I stood, arms akimbo, struggling to find the words to speak.

He walked up to me, placed his hands on my cheeks. He was still holding the letter; the paper made a crumpling sound against my face. “It’s just a silly letter, not so?” he said. His hands on my cheeks were tight, painful. His voice was steady and calm. “You’ll tell me now that it’s just a stupid letter. That nothing ever happened between you and this Ndidi.” His voice broke.

I nodded, attempting to loosen my face from his grasp.

“Who is she anyway?” he asked.

In all the time that we had been in Aba, they had not formally met. Every once in a while there was a close encounter, he leaving the store just as she was entering, or vice versa — a cursory greeting here, a cursory greeting there — but never a formal meeting. And since she had been so standoffish, so withdrawn, and so sequestered at our wedding, they were as good as strangers.

“Who is she?” he asked again, my face still tight between his hands, his palms pressing into my face as if to bore a hole into my cheeks.

“She’s just a woman,” I said. “Just an old friend.”

He chuckled wickedly. There was something fiendish about the look on his face. “Just an old friend?”

He let go of my face. He picked up another one of my letters and began to read a section from it:

… I can’t wait for my baby to be here. I love the precious little thing already and can’t wait to hold him or her in my arms. Poor Chibundu. I do care for him. But not a moment passes when I don’t wish you were the one here with me, the one with whom I would raise my child.

He riffled through the letters, picked another, and read:

… Last night I dreamed of you. You were merging into me and I was merging into you. There were no clothes between us, nothing but our flesh and our warmth. And my lips reaching longingly for yours. ..

The heat rose in my face. I felt naked, like my heart had been yanked out and kept out as public display.

I held my breath as he read the next one:

… My baby is here, Ndidi. She’s here. My beautiful baby girl. It’s hard to believe that I’m now a mother. It’s so true what they say: there’s been no better feeling than seeing her, than holding her in my arms. I love her so much that sometimes I am weak with love. I look into her little face and my stomach flutters. My only regret is that you were not here to welcome her into the world with me. ..

And another:

… the only thing I want now is to make love—

I cut in before he could read any more. “All that is foolishness,” I said, chuckling nervously. “Just silly ramblings.”

“Foolishness? Silly ramblings?”

“Yes, very ridiculous of me to have written them,” I said. “That’s why I never bothered to send them out. It’s all foolishness, really.”