Free Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta Page B

on the head.
    â€œThe bottom line, Ijeoma, my dear,” she said, “is that if God wanted it to be otherwise, would He not have included it that other way in the Bible?”
    She closed her Bible and announced that we would stop there today. The session must have lasted all of fifteen minutes in total, but the discomfort of it made it feel as if it had lasted for much longer.
    She rose from her chair. Over at the cupboards, she pulled out two plates and walked with them to the stove. She dished out the rice and stew at the stove and brought them back to the table for us.
    We ate silently that evening. Afterward, we both retreated to our rooms.

14
    T HE NEXT MORNING , I met Mama again in the kitchen, at breakfast time. We sat together at the table, soaking our slices of bread in tea, when her eyes narrowed at me, and she said, “It’s not easy getting set up in a place. You really must understand that it took me all this time to get it looking the way it does now.”
    I replied that I understood, and I thanked her, though at the time I had not yet understood, and was not yet to the level of gratitude, because I was still smarting from her desertion of me and the memory of all that time at the grammar school teacher’s when my mind tortured itself with all the possible reasons for why my own mother had thought it best to abandon me.
    â€œAll that work and now here we are with our very own home. A new life with new memories to be made. I can tell you I’m no longer having those terrible nightmares.”
    There was something desperate and pleading in her face as she spoke. In that moment it was as if she were the child and I were the parent; she was seeking validation, trying to convince me of why I should be proud of her.
    â€œThat’s good, Mama,” I said. “I’m glad the nightmares are gone.”
    â€œIt’s unfortunate,” she said, looking forlornly into her cup of tea. “If only I had finished setting things up a little earlier, I might have prevented . . .” Her voice tapered into silence.
    I stared silently at her.
    She lifted her head from her cup and, with a forced sprightliness in her voice, she said, “I was thinking of making okra soup for supper tonight. I don’t sell okra at the shop. Would you mind picking up some okra at the market for me?”
    I nodded.
    â€œThe market is not far from here,” she said. “Out our own road, a right onto the main road, and you will see the church steeple. Walk in the direction of the steeple, and not a couple of kilometers beyond that you will start to see signs of the market—the open umbrellas and zinc sheds, the items hanging out of the vendor stands.”
    We were done with our tea and bread by now.
    â€œ
Oya
, I’m off to the shop,” she said, rising from her seat. Her handbag was on the countertop near where we sat. She reached for it.
    I stood up along with her and cleared the table, collecting our saucers and teacups and placing them in the sink.
    I had not yet begun to wash the dishes when Mama said, “I meant to say earlier how sorry I am that I left you there for all that time.”
    I turned to face her. She was holding her handbag and fumbling in it for the okra money. When she found the money, she stood there holding her bag in one hand and the money in the other. Finally, instead of just giving me the money, she took some steps closer and pulled me into an embrace. “I’m really, really sorry,” she said.
    My first thought was that it was strange to be in Mama’s arms like this. There was a distance between us that had not existed before, not even in her initial embrace when she had come to collect me from the grammar school teacher’s. There was a strain. She was my mother, and I should have leaned into her embrace, should have relished it like I did the day she had come to pick me up from the grammar school teacher’s—and like