Under the Udala Trees (31 page)

I remembered. One year, he had given me a set of plastic plates that could be used as Frisbees. I used them to play with my primary school classmates during recess and after school. Another year he had given me an oyibo doll, a baby with eyes so big and lashes so long that it had frightened me, and I had thrown it and ran. Father Christmas had then exchanged the doll for a children's tea set.

“I can just see it all over again, you and Father Christmas in that small, artificial hut of his, covered with small chunks of artificial snow. And your papa, the way he always crouched down to smile at you as you sat on Father Christmas's lap.” Mama sighed a lengthy sigh.

Nothing could have made me feel worse than to hear her sigh this way. There was something incandescent about it, a sigh that glowed with a sad kind of nostalgia.

“Okay,” I said. “We can go.”

Mama smiled brightly and stood up to embrace me.

That December would become one of my most vivid Christmases of all time.

Mama led us all, Chibundu included, to Kingsway. She had insisted that he accompany us, because this would, after all, become a new family tradition, which he and I and Chidinma would spend years reminiscing about, just like she and I had just done.

At Kingsway, I rode on the little train, carrying a wide-eyed Chidinma on my lap. Mama and Chibundu waved at us as the train rode, very slowly, past them. Chidinma giggled and smiled back. The driver of the train, a young man with a chubby face, came around to help me out after the ride ended.

We did not stay at Kingsway very long, but for those couple of hours that we did, Chibundu beamed with what appeared to be happiness, reminding me of his former child self. We returned home with him carrying a full ghana-must-go. But instead of the bag's being filled with heavy produce—yam, cassava, maize, for instance—like those used in the markets, ours was filled with toys for Chidinma and gifts for us—dresses and shoes for me, shirts and trousers and ties for Chibundu—Christmas presents that Mama insisted on buying for us in order to ensure that we passed a good holiday.

For those hours at Kingsway, things were indeed looking up, but by nightfall, Chibundu was somehow back to his pouting self.

E
VENING. I SAT
in the parlor, cradling Chidinma in my arms, nursing her. She was then around seven or eight months old.

The windows in the parlor hung open, their curtains tied to the sides. The harmattan had arrived, and in the distance a dense swirl of dust hung like clouds descended upon the earth.

The room was cool, and the table fan atop the television sat, not oscillating, not rattling or buzzing the way it did on hotter afternoons.

The front door, like the windows, lay open. Outside, I could see Chibundu sharpening the blade of his machete with a stone. He always used the same stone—not really a stone, but a large piece of cement that had cracked and fallen off the side of the back steps. If you looked at it a certain way, it had a shape like the middle of a woman, from shoulders to hips—large breasts but a sunken belly. No matter how many times he ran his machete against it, the piece of cement seemed to hold its shape.

He moved on from sharpening the machete to trimming the hedges with it. He worked at the hedges with the fervor of a man killing a bush animal. I rose from the couch, moved closer to watch him work. The machete's blade glowed, even in the dim harmattan sun. The strokes of his arm sent green leaves and brown twigs flying all over the place. Every now and then a breeze blew, which caught the scent of chopped plants and carried it in through the open windows, seeming to deposit it right before my nostrils.

His thrashing made a loud sound.
Slash, slash, slash.
Quick, sharp, hacking strokes. Twigs and leaves falling dead in the yard. His machete rising and falling. He continued that way for some time.

The baby began to fuss. I stopped nursing her, stood up from the couch, and walked around the parlor, gently rocking her and patting her back to see if she was in need of burping.

A sound came, like the cracking of knuckles. Chibundu always cracked his knuckles after he was done with the hedges and the grass, but this sound was louder and more long lasting than his usual knuckle-cracking. After a while it went away.

The baby settled down. I made my way to the couch and took a seat, still keeping her in my arms.

I looked in the direction of the window. On the sill was a jerry can whose top half I had cut off to make a vase. Dried-up hibiscus flowers stuck out of it, some fallen red petals floating atop the water. Just outside the window, by the door, the movements of Chibundu's shadow.

The knuckle-cracking came again. But this time it was more like a knocking on the door: several slightly muffled thwacks at a time.

I rose to answer, but hardly had I taken a step when Chibundu opened the door and entered, the machete in his hand. It all happened so quickly and unexpectedly that I took a step back out of the surprise of his entry.

He walked toward where I stood near the sofa. The blade of the machete bumped one of the metal legs of the center table, making a scraping sound, a little like a shriek.

He was wearing a cotton singlet and a pair of old khaki trousers. Patches of sweat had formed across the singlet, dark areas of dampness all over. The fabric of his trousers appeared, in spots, a darker shade of beige. Behind him, the parlor door remained open.

He cocked his head a bit to the side. He lifted one eyebrow, a slight lift, looking at me the way he had begun to look at me those days, in a slightly astonished way. Finally he spoke. “Why didn't you open?”

“I didn't hear,” I replied.

He cocked his head some more. “You didn't hear?”

“No,” I replied. But of course I had heard the knuckle-cracking sounds. I had in fact heard, only I had not equated the sound to someone knocking. I said, “I'm sorry. I think I mistook your knocking for something else.”

Mockingly, he said, “You think you mistook my knocking for something else.” He repeated it, even more mockingly, very singsongy, “
You think you mistook my knocking for something else.
”

“I'm sorry,” I said again.

“Now tell me, what am I to do with your sorry? Can I make soup with it? Can I pay bills with it? What exactly is your sorry good for?”

He turned in the direction of the kitchen. “I left my jug of drinking water in there. I needed you to bring it out to me. You didn't hear, so you couldn't bring it to me. You tell me you're sorry. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how useless your sorry is to me now.”

He shifted his weight on his legs. He tapped the machete lightly on the tile floor, transferred it from one hand to the other, shifting his weight once more and just looking at me.

Chidinma was making babbling sounds. His gaze moved down to her.

“Speaking of the child, we should really try again,” he said.

“We really should try
what
again?”

“Is she awake?” he asked.

“Something between asleep and awake,” I said.

He nodded.

“We should try for a son.”

I let out a sigh. It came out a little like a gasp.

“If the man who goes to the farm and comes back with no cassava is a true farmer, he will return to the farm, will put in the work necessary, so that one day he can return from the farm with cassava in his basket.” He paused. “We will try again for a son, put in the work necessary to bear ourselves a son. I will have a son. I deserve that much from you.”

I collected myself. I said, “Chibundu, I'm not really up to having another child, certainly not so soon. And besides, she's just as good as a son.”

“Ha!” he cried out, very indignantly. “Is she really? Are you forgetting that girls cannot pass on the family name? If for no other reason at all, you will give me a son to pass on my family name.”

“Chibundu, since when did you begin to care about all that nonsense?” I asked. “She's your child. Your flesh and blood. Your daughter.”

“Yes,” he said. “But she is no son. I want my son. I see the way you look at her, and the way she looks at you. She is all yours. I want my own. And maybe when he grows, and when you are too busy to answer my calls, he can be the one to bring me my jug of water. You'll have your girl, and I'll have my boy.”

“Chibundu, I'm not—”

“What are you not? What exactly are you not?” He moved closer, so close that I could feel his breath on my face and the blade of his machete on my leg. “You owe me that much,” he said in a steady whisper. “Do you hear me? You owe me that much.”

Sometimes these days it seems to me that what happened next was no accident on Chibundu's part. But then there are other times when I tell myself that it was indeed an accident, that Chibundu could not possibly have known, which would explain the bewildered look on his face when he became aware of it. But the truth is that a man who sets out to destroy can still be bewildered, especially when he is forced to look his indiscretion in the eye.

In any case, he was by now hovering above me, so that his machete all of a sudden was pushing heavily on the skin of my leg. I tried to move away, but he would not allow it. He moved closer, pushing the big knife farther into my leg.

“Chibundu!” I shouted. “Any more and you'll tear open my skin!”

His eyes widened, and he gazed at me with a bewildered look on his face. Finally he took a few steps back, still staring, still bewildered. A long silent moment passed between us, after which he turned around, machete in hand, and walked out of the parlor door.

That night, after I had put Chidinma to sleep, I went into the bedroom and lay down to sleep. Chibundu was in the bathroom. I thought, How dare he have done what he did to me, to nearly tear open my skin with a machete? And who was to say he wouldn't one day do something like that—something harmful—to poor little helpless Chidinma? What was to stop him from doing it?

The bedroom ceiling light was still on.

First the sound of silence and then the sound of a turning knob. Chibundu appeared at the doorway wearing his pajama bottoms, drawstrings dangling down the front, like what should have been a temptation. He waited there by the door, just looking at me. I stared back.

“Are you just going to stand there?” I asked. “Aren't you going to come to bed?”

He continued to stand. I pulled the covers up to my chest and turned around so that I was no longer facing him. He flicked off the light switch by the door; the room went dark. I listened to the soft thump of his footsteps as he walked the short distance to the bed.

His body sank into the bed. More minutes passed.

I had begun to doze off when I felt the tap of his fingers on the back of my hand.

I knew what it must be. I pulled the blanket up to my chest, holding it tight, trying to ignore the tapping.

He tapped again. I finally turned to answer, repositioning myself so that I was now lying on my back, the blanket still high on my chest.

In the darkness, I watched as his murky, monster-like face came square above mine. His hands found their way to mine as he twisted the blanket out of my hold.

“The sooner we get to it, the sooner we'll be done,” he said.

I stiffened.

His breath above me was chillingly warm as he settled himself on top of me. There was the rough movement of his hands and legs as the bottom of his pajamas came off. His hands returned to the space between our bodies, holding me in place as he lowered himself, and as he writhed himself into me.

T
HERE WERE TWO
ways I always imagined telling him that I could no longer go on trying for a boy, that I could no longer even go on being married to him. At some point during the confession, I would also tell him that all the time I had been married to him, how could he not have seen, just how could he possibly not have seen, that I had been the whole while in love with somebody else?

Two ways. The first:

I'd be in the kitchen making supper, stirring Maggi seasoning or crushed tatashi into a pot of soup. I'd listen to the opening of the front door as Chibundu entered from work.

I'd move to set the dishes on the table. Near me, on the floor, Chidinma happily swinging in her Fisher-Price swing.

Chibundu would make a detour to the bathroom, followed by a detour to the bedroom. After that he would arrive at the table, looking tired and disheveled, the way he had begun to look, his shirt unbuttoned from top to bottom, his feet bare under his trousers.

Between us, our now-usual silence as he took his seat at the table, as I served him his okra soup and garri with contrived mindlessness, as if today were just another ordinary day.

I'd eat, and I'd watch as he ate, and I'd watch as he peered intermittently at me. We'd stay like that for a while, and then I'd vomit it all out on him, the way a drunk vomits up undigested food, the way he hurls out sprays of stomach acid, sloppy matter haphazardly jetting forth out of me.

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.