Under the Udala Trees (32 page)

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.”

“Well, then, you might as well stop hiding them in that box. You might as well just throw them out.”

“Yes, you're right,” I said. “I will throw them out, yes. That's exactly what I will do.”

I squirmed free of his grasp, took the paper from him. I would have folded it back up, stuck it back in the chest with the rest of them, but his eyes were steady on me, and somehow I felt I owed that much to him. I looked one last time at the letter, then turned so that my eyes met his. I ripped the letter into shreds, one tiny little piece at a time.

We continued to stand there. Finally he turned away from me, walked over to the bedroom wardrobe. His work briefcase sat in front of the wardrobe. He picked up the briefcase, placed it on the bed, popped open its snaps. He lifted out some piles of paper, a stack of folders. Underneath was a wad of about a dozen envelopes, held together with a tan rubber band.

He extended the stack of envelopes to me.

“You might as well have these now,” he said. “They're yours.”

I struggled to understand what was happening. Chibundu tried to explain himself: “I thought maybe if I kept them away from you . . . I hadn't realized that you . . . that you reciprocated her feelings. I was so sure that you didn't . . . and if I kept these from you . . . there would have been no sense in giving them to you . . .” His voice faded away, as if utterly confused, or as if he were unconvinced of his own rationale.

I snatched the envelopes from him.

I looked down at the top envelope, about to open it, when I saw that its side had already been opened, neatly, carefully, as if to carry out the pretense that it had not been opened at all. All the rest of the envelopes were the same way.

In the moment that followed, I recognized the handwriting and cried out in surprise, and in anger. My hands shook as I held the letters.

“Chibundu, where did these come from? How long have you been keeping these? Why didn't you give them to me?”

Surely they must have started to arrive
after
the first two or three months that we moved to Port Harcourt, because those first few months I had been vigilant about checking the mailbox. No way would Chibundu have intercepted those letters before I got to them, so vigilant was I. But then months had gone by, and not a thing from Ndidi, and eventually I had resigned myself to checking the box only once in a while—once or twice every couple of weeks. Somehow the timing must have worked in Chibundu's favor, so that he managed to get to the box before me on the days when Ndidi's letters came in. But for every single one of her letters?

I said, “Chibundu, how is it that you got ahold of all these letters before I did?”

His jaw tightened as if he was not going to explain, but he explained anyway. “The first one I stumbled on by accident. I opened it just by accident. But after I read it . . . I began going to the post office every afternoon during my lunch break, early enough to get to them before I knew you would. Each time I saw an envelope with her writing, and with her return address, I took it. The rest of the mail I left in the box for later, either for you to get or for me to pick up on my way home from work.”

I was aghast. “That's a breach of confidence and trust!”

“I didn't mean to . . . I was afraid . . . I couldn't risk . . .” His voice broke. He gathered himself, then he said, “Ijeoma! You're the one who has broken my confidence and trust! You stand there and you lie to me and tell me you never sent a letter to her? Never? Not once?”

Immediately I recognized that he had caught me in my own lie. He grabbed the letters from my hand, riffled through the envelopes. He must have memorized them, which ones were which, because it took him only a couple of minutes to land on the two letters that he was looking for. He read:

My darling Ijeoma, just as I thought I might never hear from you again, I received your letter in the mail. Not a day goes by that I don't think of you . 
.
 .

“And what about this other one?” he asked.

My dear Ijeoma, I received your second letter in the mail today. What was I ever thinking to encourage you to marry? Yesterday, I ran into your mother and she couldn't stop gushing over the fact that you are pregnant. I've never felt such anger at the thought of anything as the thought of Chibundu having his way with you . . .

He stopped there, and he said, “So, you see, I'm the one who should be asking the questions here. You lied to me and said you never sent a letter to her. But you know, Ijeoma, if I'm to be honest too, then I should admit that I actually knew you had written to her, only somehow I really hoped that you had just written back to tell her to stop, because what business did you have writing to reciprocate her feelings? You're a married woman, Ijeoma! Do you hear me? You're a married woman, for God's sake!”

I wanted to scream at him at this point, and remind him that I had tried to tell him, that day long ago in church. Had he forgotten? I felt the urge to explain that I had not in fact tried to keep it from him, not really. Yes, I had hidden it, but also I had not hidden it.

He went on. “Imagine my surprise to find all those stashed-up letters in your drawer today. Imagine! Now I can see clearly that I was wrong in what I was hoping. So, what is it, Ijeoma? You really love her? How long has this thing between you and her been going on? How long were you both . . . before I married you? And how long after? How long?”

“Chibundu, I only wrote three letters,” I said. This time I was speaking the truth. It was risky enough to send those three. After all that time of not receiving anything back from her, I could not have sent more. “Just three,” I said. “I stopped myself from sending the rest.”

By now Chibundu was frantic. He cried out, “You have finished me! You have finished me completely! How could you? How could you?”

Suddenly he regrouped himself, regained his composure. His voice took back its steadiness. He said, “You can do whatever you will with those letters. You can even continue to write to her. But don't you forget for one moment—not for one tiny moment—that you are
my
wife. You are
my
wife, for God's sake. I can do things to make your life miserable. Do you hear me?
You are my wife.
Whatever you do, don't provoke me, or I will see to it that you pay the price.”

I
LAY IN BED
unable to get my limbs to move, my mind heavy with the realization of what I had become: the equivalent of a washrag, worn and limp, not from overuse, but rather from misuse and manhandling.

Chibundu was maneuvering himself about the room with an energy that seemed to say that everything was just the way it should be. Now he was pulling on his shirt and trousers, whistling as he did. Now he stood before the dresser mirror, humming the tune of a song I did not recognize, arranging the collar of his shirt, then tying his tie around his neck.