Under the Udala Trees (21 page)

“Look at you!” Mama laughed. “You've become a proper Hausa man, using their words even!”

“I try,” the grammar school teacher said, laughing too. His wife joined in the laughter.

“So how was it?” Mama asked when the laughter subsided.

“It was a beautiful wedding,” the grammar school teacher's wife said. “Very simple and intimate—just family—but beautiful. You should have seen her, with paint decoration all over her hands, up her arms, flower designs. Very pretty.”

“How wonderful,” Mama said.

The whole time I had been standing behind the counter, listening to their conversation, struggling to contain my anger. I wanted to scream out “Traitor!” for the way Amina had betrayed me. The last thing I wanted to hear now was talk about her wedding. I felt an urge to walk out, but it would have been rude to walk out with the guests there, and what if a customer came while Mama was still visiting with them?

The next thing the grammar school teacher said sent a wave of sadness that totally obliterated all the anger that I had previously been feeling.

He said, “They have since moved up north.”

Up until then, it had been a bit of comfort to think of her as not being too far away. Sometimes I liked to fantasize about us accidentally running into each other. I would imagine the age-old lovers-reunion cliché: arms wrapping around each other, kisses, declarations of love.

But truthfully, the announcement should not have come as a surprise. Back at our send-off party, she had mentioned that the groom would be going to school up north.

“Where exactly up north did they wind up?” Mama asked.

“She mentioned it, but I can never keep those northern states straight.” He turned to his wife. “Do you remember?”

“I think it's either Kano or Kaduna, I can't remember myself,” she said. “He had mentioned Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, but he had also mentioned that new federal university in Kano.”

He said, “Yes o. Kano or Kaduna. Definitely not as far up north as Sokoto, but north enough that there will be an abundance of her people, just the thing a girl like her needs.”

That evening, after the grammar school teacher and his wife left, Mama gave me a talking-to. We were together in the kitchen. She was sitting on her stool, her legs wrapped around the mortar, about to begin pounding the cubes of yam for dinner.

It came out as a chant. She said, “A woman without a man is hardly a woman at all. You won't stay young forever. Even that girl has gone and found herself a husband. Why won't you do the same?”

I was standing by the sink, cutting up okra for soup. I paused with the okra and turned to look at her.

A candle was burning on a tin can that sat on the countertop. It was nearly all used up, though some of its wax had congealed on the sides of the can.

Mama rose from where she was sitting to grab a new candle from the cupboard. As she did, she said, “
Gee nti.
Listen, and listen well.
Oge na gakwa.
Time is passing. You need to get out there and find yourself a husband. Time waits for no one.”

She took what remained of the old candle and tossed it into the dustbin. Under her breath, she muttered, “If you're not careful, you'll find yourself like that candle, all burnt up and nothing to show for it.”

She picked up the pestle, held it, but she did not in fact pound. Instead, she looked at the cubes of yam and said, “Marriage has a shape. Its shape is that of a bicycle. Doesn't matter the size or color of the bicycle. All that matters is that the bicycle is complete, that the bicycle has two wheels.

“The man is one wheel,” she continued, “the woman the other. One wheel must come before the other, and the other wheel has no choice but to follow. What is certain, though, is that neither wheel is able to function fully without the other. And what use is it to exist in the world as a partially functioning human being?”

Under her breath, she said, “A woman without a man is hardly a woman at all.” There was something self-deprecating about the way she said it.

She began to pound the yam, one loud thump after another. The soft yam cubes did not do much to muffle the hard sounds of wood smacking against wood, of the pestle smacking against the mortar. A couple of more thumps and then silence.

I turned around at the sink, to go back to the okra I had been cutting. But Mama was not done with me yet. She said, “A word to the wise: go out, make some friends, socialize. How will the young men even know that you are available if you spend all your time moping around at home?”

It was true. Other than church and work at the shop, and some errands to and from the market, I spent all my time at home. Even in church I sat alone, at the very back of the room, and I'd be gone the minute the final benediction was said.

“Some people, you wonder if God was sleeping when He made them. But you, you are beautiful. God was definitely not sleeping when He made you. A girl as beautiful as you! You are nineteen, almost twenty, and yet no young man has so much as come for you.
Chineke bi n'elu!
God in heaven! How can this even be?”

T
HE MENTHOLATUM GIRL
came back early one morning, only not for Mentholatum. Mama was away arranging the purchases and deliveries for the store.

The girl walked in carrying a stack of composition books, her face perfectly made up, her navy-blue A-line skirt and white cotton blouse crisply ironed. She was wearing a pair of black medium-heeled shoes.

She dumped the composition books on the counter. “I don't know why I continue to give these children writing assignments. It's self-torture having to carry all these composition books home, read them, mark them, only to have to lug them back to school.”

Back in Obodoañuli Academy, the social studies teacher Mr. Aderemi sometimes used to make us read our essays to him aloud. I said to the Mentholatum girl, “You could give them oral presentations instead. Just have them read aloud what they've written, and mark them that way.”

“Something to consider,” she said, nodding thoughtfully, as if she were weighing the pros and cons of the suggestion right then and there.

“By the way, I'm Ndidi,” she said.

“Ijeoma,” I replied. “So where exactly do you teach? What school?”

“The secondary school a few roads down. You can't miss it. Yellow buildings with green roofs. The only school in the area with that color combination. If you pass by when school is beginning or letting out, you might see me out on the grounds, overseeing the children.”

She looked down at the pile of composition books on the counter. She said, “I'd love to say I stopped in to chat, but—”

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.”

N
DIDI 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.