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.”
70
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 r
ather 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.
Chidinma was most likely wide awake in her room, playing with her toys and waiting for me to come and collect her. Instead, I continued to lie in bed.
The scent of his cologne was so strong in the room that it seemed as if someone were chopping wood and crushing the leaves and blowing the aroma out in the air with a fan.
He turned away from the dresser and began walking toward me. He took a seat on my side of the bed. There was a sallowness to his face, something a little like old age. I observed the way the crow’s- feet seemed suddenly to have deepened around his eyes. I observed the way his hair seemed grayer than ever before.
He sat so that he was facing the windows, his eyes lowered to the floor. The silence between us was loud.
“I admit I was a little rough on you last night,” he said. “We are husband and wife, and it shouldn’t have to be that way.”
“Chibundu—”
“I’ve been thinking, and my sense of it is that there’s a way in which you can just tell yourself to love me instead of her. I shouldn’t have to force myself on you night after night. I am your husband, and it shouldn’t have to be that way.”
“Chibundu, that’s not how it works.”
“How do you know if you don’t try? You can just try. It shouldn’t be that hard to love me. Or am I that unlovable?”
“Chibundu, it’s not that—”
“Tell me, what exactly can she give you that you don’t think I can?”
Silence.
“I don’t hate you for it,” he said. “I really don’t. You know already that I don’t believe all that nonsense about abominations. Maybe there’s something special about that kind of love, about a man loving another man, or a woman loving another woman in that way. Maybe there’s something appealing about it. But what makes me so angry is that I loved you first. Before there was her, there was me. And more than that, you made me a promise. Marriage is a promise, not just to marry, but also to love.”
I took his hand, began stroking it gently.
He looked down at our hands together, followed my movements with his eyes. He said, very softly, “I am your husband and you are my wife, and I just know that we will make it work. I can feel it in my bones, in my lungs, in my heart. You’ll see. We will make it work. None of that thing with Ndidi matters. We can still make it work.”
No string of words could have been more devastating than those. The desperation from which they came.
There was a sudden sharpness to his voice. “The answer is simple. You haven’t tried enough. If you put your mind to it, I know you can love me the way a woman is supposed to love her husband. You will try harder. And if all else fails, I really do want my son. You really must keep in mind that you are my wife. If all else fails, you will at least give me my boy.”
The remainder of that morning, after he had left for work, and for all of that afternoon, I found myself caring for Chidinma with an aloofness that even she must have felt—watching her, but barely watching.
Evening arrived. I tied her with a wrapper to my back and went out to pick up some missing ingredients for the stew I should already have finished but was yet to make. Outside, along the road, birds were zigzagging across the sky, sparrows and orange-blue trogons stopping to perch on the trees and on the roadside. A small boy was throwing a ball to his friend. Several girls were skipping rope. A woman was calling out to a man on a motorcycle. Everyone looked like puff-puffs, fat and round and chock-full of all the energy that I felt myself drained of.
“Aunty, good evening,” Anuli, the shop owner’s daughter, greeted me when I entered the shop.
“Good evening, Anuli,” I replied.
She was a girl of around sixteen or seventeen, a pretty face, and very bright: sharp-witted, sharp-mouthed, always a clever observation just waiting on the tip of her tongue. And her proverbs: as if she were a village elder reincarnated in the body of a girl, she was always ready to spew out something wise.
She appeared to study me with her eyes. “Ah, Aunty, you no dey look well o. You dey sick?”
I averted my eyes, not feeling in the mood for conversation. Mustering as much cheerfulness as I could, I asked, “Biko, you fit give me some fresh tomatoes and Maggi?”
The baby on my back was making small noises and squirming around.
Anuli went to the rear of the store and brought out a bowl of tomatoes. I looked through the bowl, picking some out for myself. She left me for a moment, and when she returned, she placed a box of Maggi seasoning cubes on the counter.
I reached into my purse and pulled out some bills.
As she collected the money, she said, “Aunty, whatever the matter, just remember that it is the same moon that wanes today that will be full tomorrow. And even the sun, however long it disappears, it always shines again.”
I smiled slightly at her. She smiled back. Her smile was more than a little like consolation.
Back at home, I cooked the stew with Chidinma still tied to my back. Afterward, I retreated from the kitchen to the parlor and set Chidinma down. I moved the center table to the far end of the room, where she could not be injured by the table’s sharp corners. I gathered a handful of her toys and put them on the parlor floor, on the area of rug on which the center table usually sat.
I stood for some time just watching her play with the toys. Then I took a seat on the sofa to give my back a rest. She gabbled delightedly as she hit the button of a toy book that immediately set music playing, and as she fussed with a set of plastic building blocks, I faded away into a series of incoherent thoughts. I must have fallen asleep to the sound of her gabbling and of her music book.
I woke up slowly to silence. Not a sound in the room. My eyes darted to the rug, to that space where the center table had sat, looking for Chidinma, but she was gone.
It was as dark inside the house as outside. I stayed a moment on the sofa while I called out to her.
“Chidinma!”
No answer.
I rose from the sofa and went straight to the light switch. How late was it now? Had Chibundu already arrived home and eaten and afterward put Chidinma to bed?
“Chibundu!”
No answer.
I turned in the direction of the kitchen. I saw her then, quietly sitting by the sewing machine in the corner.
The pincushion sat with the bobbins on the cloth plate, far enough away from the needle bars. The cushion was in the shape of a garden egg. Yellow-gold skin with meandering stripes of green. Its stem, twig-like, stuck out of its top. Chidinma had somehow climbed her way up to the machine to be able to grasp it in her hands.
She was holding the garden egg now, very near to her mouth, pins and needles glistening silver in the bright gold and green fabric of the cushion. Threads dangling from it like beautiful ribbons, a little like serpents, tempting her with their devilish charm.
She was not at first aware that I was watching her. Then, for whatever reason, she looked up, and her gaze caught mine.
I watched as she stuck the garden egg, pins and all, into her mouth, the pincushion deforming her mouth, one whole corner buried away.
She looked wide-eyed at me, green and red and black threads dangling from her mouth. And for some unknown reason, I could not get my feet to move.
I stood where I was. “Chidinma,” I whispered, and again, in a whisper, “Chidinma.”
Suddenly Chibundu entered the parlor, and he walked up to us in our little corner. He looked at me, and he looked at her, and at the threads dangling out from her lips.
It’s hard to say how much time passed, but I know that he shook his head (at me, or at her, or at all of u
s?), before going to her. He prodded and dug the cushion out of her mouth, with enough force that it either startled her or hurt her. She began to cry.
He picked her up and cuddled her as he replaced the garden egg on top of the machine.
I stood just staring idly, neither at her nor at Chibundu, but at the machine. It had been some time since I last used it. I now found myself engrossed in it. The spool of thread was sitting on the holder. Bobbins in cases, like medicine in capsules, surrounded the cloth plate. I thought of the handwheel. Just one. Not two. Not like a bicycle. If I were to have used it then and there, I imagined the way it would move: the needle, sharp in its movement. Needle up, needle down. Up and down, like a nod. Like an affirmation. Maybe yes, everything would be fine. Or maybe yes, one wheel was enough. No marriage of two. Just a single person would do.
Maybe yes, sometimes one was enough.
71
“IJEOMA!” CHIBUNDU CALLED from the front yard.
I sat in the parlor, watching Chidinma play with her rag doll and sewing up a seam that had come undone on one of our sofa pillow covers. It was a Saturday afternoon, just after lunchtime, the time of day when the sun, traveling in and out of the puffed-up rainy-season clouds, should have caused light and dark reflections to dance about the walls. The time of day when the rainy-season rains should have been pelting our corrugated aluminum roof like music. It was the time of day when afternoon siesta should have been on everyone’s mind, the thought of it as sweet as cake.
But all around the air was still, and not a drop of rain. For a while now—more than a handful of months—it seemed we had all grown too rigid for afternoon naps.
This particular afternoon, it was even as if the sky had grown too rigid to allow for rain. And yet no sun, either, in sight.
Under the Udala Trees Page 25