Under the Udala Trees (24 page)

Outside, behind the church, it was that time of the morning when the moon is looming, the sky is still dark, and the cocks have not yet crowed. Midnight had come and gone.

Ndidi held my hand as we ran. The palm fronds were not quite covering the wooden slab at the entrance of the pit. We recognized the bunker that way.

In front of us and behind us, in the quiet of night, the girls, a dozen or so of us, lined up quietly to make our way into the bunker. Chichi pulled open the wooden slab and allowed us to climb into the hole.

We packed the bunker tightly like stacked-up tubers of yam. Chichi pulled the wooden slab back over the entrance of the pit. We stood quietly, our breaths hushed, the way we used to do those days during the war.

Above us, but a little distance away, we heard a scream, and then another. Then there were the sounds of men's and women's voices, talking, shouting, and then another scream.

Chichi raised herself, reached for the cover of the pit as if to open it up, but several of the girls pulled her arm back.

“They've caught someone,” she whispered to us. She looked frantically around. “There must be at least a couple of us missing.”

“Where is Adanna?” someone whispered.

Chichi reached again for the wooden cover.

The same group of girls pulled her arm back once more. “So you'll allow the rest of us to die to save one?” a girl asked.

“Shhhh,” another girl said. “You don't want them to know where we are hiding.” And of course the attackers would not have known unless we made it evident to them. These particular bunkers, I'd find out later, were very well concealed, palm covering and grass and all. Harder to detect than those of our war days. As if one or more of the girls had known to plan ahead. As if they had known that a raid like this would be inevitable.

Chichi no longer reached for the pit cover. We all returned to silence.

There was nothing else to do but to study the hole. All around, nothing but darkness, the smell of fresh earth, and in all that darkness the faint contour of bodies. Other sounds above us—of screams and cries and a man's thundering voice, as if reciting a prayer. In my mind, I saw the walls of the earth collapsing around us like the pillars of the Temple of Dagon, the walls of our pit crumbling all around us, and we, Samson-like in our decline, crumbling along with the walls. So was this how we would meet our end? An image of Mama came to my mind, Mama weeping before my dead body, Mama at my grave, mourning over me. Or perhaps she would not mourn. Perhaps she would be too angry to mourn. Perhaps she would not even bother with a burial for me.

By my side, Ndidi held my hand.

The sound of the screaming grew louder, and for a moment I thought I heard the thuds of feet approaching the bunker. But seconds and then minutes passed and no one came.

Everything seemed to settle above us. The screaming died out. The praying faded away. We stood rigidly breathing in the scent of our bodies, of our collective sweat. Breathing in the scent of our collective fear.

The knock seemed to come as gradually and steadily as the crawl of a snail. A tap, and then another quiet tap on the wooden slab of the bunker. We must have been inside for over an hour by then.

I watched—we all watched—as, above us, the cover was pulled open. There was the light of a kerosene lantern, followed by the squinting face of a woman. She called for us to come out.

We made our way out one by one. Back above ground, the smell of burning tires was strong in the air.

I recognized the woman who let us out as the one with the afro and short skirt who had led Adanna away during my first visit to the church. The woman had managed to hide in the small, cellar-like vault of the church and had not been found. Her face was tear-stricken. She was crying hard, coughing in fits, and she was pointing to something ahead.

We had hardly walked two yards when we saw, in the backyard of the church, a flame of orange and blue. A stack of burning logs. Ndidi began to cry, and then all of us were crying too, because we had all seen what remained of the face, and we had all recognized her: Adanna in the midst of the logs, burning and burning and turning to ashes right before our eyes.

I arrived back home at about seven in the morning. Mama was out by the gate.

“Where have you been?” she hollered. “What in God's good name were you thinking to stay out all night? Do you know I have not slept a pinch? Are you that inconsiderate to make me wait up for you all through the night? Spending the night going back and forth from the gate to the bungalow and back, waiting for you. I was just getting ready to notify the police, and finally there you are. But what kind of thing was that to put me through? Do you not know better than to do that to me? Have I not trained you right?”

She caught her breath.

“That friend of yours, Ndidi, is she the reason for this? Tell me, is she? Is there something going on between the two of you?”

“Mama, I just fell asleep,” I replied. “Can you please stop with all your suspicions? I lost track of time and fell asleep, that's all.”

I brushed past her, went through the gate, not waiting to hear what she said next. I made my way to my bedroom, where I could be alone with my thoughts.

R
AIN CLOUDS HOVERED
in the sky, spreading themselves over the sun like an ashen film. Through the shop door and window, it was the pallid gray of evening time. But it was yet afternoon.

Two weeks, nearly three, had gone by, and still all the talk in Aba continued to be about the discovery of the church and the burning. No one could say who had made the discovery, or who had taken part in the burning, but everyone seemed to agree that all of it was necessary, that the discovery was aided by God, that an example needed to be set in order to cleanse Aba of such sinful ways.

Ndidi and I kept a low profile. I stopped visiting her as much. Sometimes three days passed before I went to her place. I never stayed later than eight p.m.

“Lucky for you that the grammar school teacher and I warned you of this,” Mama said. She was standing behind the shop counter, writing my to-do list on a notepad, while I stood idly by her side. “That could have been you, Ijeoma. Imagine, not only would I be a widow, I would also have lost my only child.”

I listened quietly, gazing out into the gray outdoors, praying that Mama would move on to some other topic. The last thing I needed was to be reminded that it could have been me. And by extension that it could have been Ndidi. Since the incident, every couple of hours or so, the image of Adanna flashed through my mind. The recurring reminder that one of us had lost her life in that terrible way. The reminder that Adanna had burned at the stake while the rest of us were allowed to continue to live.

I wanted Mama to stop her preaching, to stop the reminders. As it was, I remembered the incident clearly enough on my own. I didn't need any more reminders. Just stop, I prayed silently. Please, God, make her stop.

In that moment, as if to answer my prayer, Chibundu walked into the store. By now he had gotten into the habit of dropping by during his lunchtime. His visits were becoming a source of increasing anxiety for me—the fact of this unwanted attention that I did not know what to do about, how to dispose of. But at least he never visited in the evening, for which I was grateful. My evenings were, until the burning incident at least, reserved for Ndidi, and I could hardly imagine a better way to spend them.

I saw my moment to flee. I left Mama's side, went into the stock room, and returned with a box of items to restock the shelves.

The beer cooler sat near the entrance of the store. Chibundu walked over to it, reached in, and brought out a bottle of Guinness. He straightened back up. The next step should have been for him to head to the counter to pay, or go to some other part of the store to pick up one or more items. But he did not move. He just stood there.

I had watched from behind the shelf as he reached in for the beer, but I had then returned to restocking, taking only momentary glimpses at him. My head was downturned in the direction of the box at my feet when I felt his gaze heavy on me. I looked up to find him still standing by the cooler, still gazing at me. In all the years that I was at the grammar school teacher's and at Obodoañuli Academy, Chibundu and I had not kept in touch. Perhaps this was one reason why conversations between him and me during these afternoon visits were awkward. So many years had gone by that he seemed only a little less than a perfect stranger to me. But it was also true that I realized Chibundu might still hold a romantic interest in me. And if he did, how would I handle the situation? I found myself balking at the thought of it. How should I go about conversing with him without accidentally giving the wrong impression? How should I navigate the whole thing without giving Mama any ideas about a match between him and me?

My eyes darted to Mama at the counter to see if she was watching. I was relieved to find her head turned. She was flipping through the newspaper that lay open on the counter.

I looked back at Chibundu, who was now walking toward me. His footsteps were steady, striking in their evenness.

It was just as I feared. When he reached me, he leaned so that his body rested on the shelf from shoulder to mid-thigh. He smiled broadly and said, “
Omalicha.
” Beautiful. There was a mischievous look on his face as he said it again: “
Omalicha.
” All the while his eyes studied me, lingering on my hands, on my braids, on my face, before finding their way to my eyes.

“I've been thinking,” he said when his eyes met mine.

“Thinking what, Chibundu?” I asked stiffly.

He laughed nervously, but still he spoke. “I've been thinking that every man needs a wife.”

I breathed deeply, gathered myself, focused on not letting my alarm show.

He held the bottle of Guinness with both hands now, wiping off the condensation as he spoke. I did my best to avert my eyes from his. My gaze lingered on his clothes instead: a beige-collared shirt so tight fitting that the muscles of his upper arms threatened to burst open the seams. The collar of the shirt was rather wide and long. Either the shirt itself was not made to be buttoned all the way up, or it was too tight fitting to be buttoned up, or Chibundu had simply decided not to button the top two buttons—whatever the case, his dark, curly chest hair was exposed. From his neck hung a thin gold chain with a cross pendant. He wore a pair of gray-and-black-striped bell-bottom trousers.

His lips curved into a flirtatious smile. They were a little chapped, but his teeth beneath were flawlessly aligned: two rows of perfect little white squares. He said, “
Omalicha
, won't you agree that every man needs a wife?”

I laughed with discomfort, more a snicker than a regular laugh. “I suppose some women would also do well to have a husband.”

“That's right,” he said. “It goes both ways. Every man needs a wife, and every woman needs a husband.”

I repeated, lingering on the “some,” drawing it out for emphasis. “Yes,
some
women would do well to have a husband.”

The clarification seemed to go over his head. He continued to wipe his bottle. I pretended to inspect the shelf for dust. There was the sound of wood scraping on the cement floor, and then a shuffling sound from the corner of the store. I looked up to find Mama approaching, nodding robustly, a wide smile on her face. I wondered why it had taken her so long to notice. I wondered if she had been in on the whole thing from the start.

“It's very good to see you children reconnect,” she said, not quite winking, but almost.

“We thank God,” Chibundu replied.

The blood vessels in my temples pulsed. My face heated up, and I felt a burning sensation in my cheeks. It seemed clear to me that I was the victim of a terrible conspiracy. A pawn in a scheme. “In fact, I came for a special request,” Chibundu was saying now, looking at Mama. He turned back to look at me. “I've been thinking. Would you like to join me for dinner one night soon? I have been wanting to ask you for some time. I hope you don't already have another handsome young fellow in the picture. My disappointment would be too great.”

Mama leapt in. “No, no, she does not have a boyfriend. You came just in time. Even one day's delay might have changed your fate,” she said, smiling, patting him on the back. “Who knows, another man might have walked in and stolen her from you. But you are lucky, Chibundu my boy. Very lucky. Good timing.”

He smiled.

I felt the anger in me mounting. I could say something to put them both in their place, to retract myself from any longer being a pawn. I could seize back control of myself just by opening my mouth and speaking my mind.

But for some reason, it was the same kind of issue that I had by now started to notice as a pattern in me: my mouth would not open up. I could not get myself to speak.

“What do you say? Tomorrow? Six p.m.?”

Mama did not miss a beat. “Yes! Certainly!
Da'lu.
Thank you o. Ijeoma would like that very much. It's been so good to have you here in Aba, Chibundu. So very good.”

“Wonderful,” he said. He'd been looking at me as Mama spoke. He lifted his hand and squeezed me gently by the arm. “I will see you both tomorrow then. I must get back to work now.”

He walked to the counter. I did not return to stocking the shelf. I looked back and forth between him and Mama. Mama was standing by my side, her arms akimbo, glowing like a pregnant woman.

I watched as Chibundu placed the money for his beer near the register, the glossy brownness of the Guinness bottle sticking out sharply from the light-colored skin of his hand. Then he made his way out of the door.

For the rest of the day, I longed for the closing of the store like a prisoner awaiting release. I felt terribly lethargic, as if all my energy had gone into simply surviving the incident with Chibundu and Mama.