55 pages • 1 hour read
Chinelo OkparantaUnder the Udala Trees
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaPart 5, Chapters 42-48
Part 5
Chapter 42 Summary
In the present, walking through the colorful market in Aba, Ijeoma picks up plantains. The vendor girl, Nnenna, teases Ijeoma about the men that hit on her. Ijeoma tries to get her to hurry because Adaora is impatiently waiting.
Adaora’s shop is successful and has expanded its inventory. As Adaora and Ijeoma eat their bole, a woman a few years older than Ijeoma comes into the store. Ijeoma gazes at her admiringly, but they don’t have the item she’s looking for. The woman, whose name is later revealed to be Ndidi, looks “longthroat” (178) at the roasted plantains, and sneaks a glance at Ijeoma’s décolleté. She says she’ll come back in a few days after they restock.
Chapter 43 Summary
During another day, the grammar school teacher and his wife visit on their way to the teacher’s wife’s family. While drinking Coke and Guinness, they discuss Amina’s formal engagement and wedding ceremonies. Ijeoma feels betrayed, but can’t leave in case a customer comes while Adaora is distracted. She learns that Amina has already moved north to a Hausa region.
After the grammar school teacher and his wife leave, Adaora lectures Ijeoma on getting married. Ijeoma cooks dinner while Adaora worries about Ijeoma not finding a man to marry—Ijeoma is already 19, so she must find someone soon. Like the men at the market, Adaora thinks Ijeoma is “beautiful” (182).
Chapter 44 Summary
Ndidi returns to the store at a time when Adaora is out running errands. She is carrying a stack of ungraded children’s composition books. Ijeoma suggests lightening her load by making students do oral presentations instead of writing assignments.
Ndidi introduces herself and tells Ijeoma she works at the nearby secondary school. Claiming her book bag broke on the way to work, Ndidi asks to borrow one. Ijeoma says she can keep it, but Ndidi admits she wants an excuse to visit again to return the bag. They briefly touch hands, and later that day, Ndidi invites Ijeoma to get jollof rice.
Ijeoma describes Ndidi’s flat, covered with postcards of Venice, Istanbul, Cairo, Paris, and more cities. Ndidi gives Ijeoma her first glass of wine, and Ijeoma says she’s “just a simple village girl, not used to fancy things” (186).
When Ijeoma returns home, Adaora asks if Ndidi introduced her to any young marriageable men. Ijeoma lies and says Ndidi mentioned male teachers, which leads Adaora to believe Ndidi is a good friend to have.
Chapter 45 Summary
Ndidi regularly invites Ijeoma over after the shop closes. Ijeoma watches Ndidi mark student papers and reads her books. During breaks from grading, they drink Fantas together and giggle. However, Ijeoma feels like her infatuation with Ndidi is somehow a betrayal of Amina.
One day, Ndidi invites Ijeoma to go out dancing to a secret place—a church that at night is transformed with purple banners and drapes into a gay dance club called “Fountain of Love” (190). They sit at a table near the dance floor and run into a friend of Ndidi’s named Adanna.
Adanna asks Ijeoma to save a dance for her and goes off with another girl. Ndidi and Ijeoma dance and talk about the history of the makeshift gay club: Homophobes burned down a previous venue. Ijeoma asks about the relationship between Ndidi and Adanna, and Ndidi assures her they’re only friends.
When Ndidi admits she’s attracted to Ijeoma, Ijeoma thinks of Amina, her mother, and the Bible. Eventually, she allows the music and dancing to overtake her mind and enjoys the moment.
Ndidi walks Ijeoma home and asks her on another date. Ijeoma agrees and wants to kiss her, but fears her mother or someone else will see.
Chapter 46 Summary
Adaora yells at Ijeoma for coming home from the club around 11pm, but hearing that Ndidi was with her calms Adaora. Later, alone in her bedroom, Ijeoma masturbates thinking of Ndidi.
She wakes up from a nightmare of cowering on the floor with Adaora screaming “A heedless fly follows the devil to the grave” (195). The words repeat in her mind even after waking and return in a dream when she eventually falls back asleep.
Chapter 47 Summary
Ijeoma muses about witch-hunting: “If you set off on a witch-hunt, you will find a witch” (196). People will condemn anyone as a witch, she asserts. Ijeoma condemns herself as a witch and wants release from the demon her mother tried to exorcise. An echo of her nightmare about Adaora makes Ijeoma unable to listen to Adaora, so she goes to pray in church.
She asks God for meaning and then asks for a sign of what evil she needs to avoid. When a flicker of light bounces off the pulpit, Ijeoma turns to see her mother and screams.
Chapter 48 Summary
Adaora calms the screaming Ijeoma and tells her she’s been gone for two hours. Ijeoma claims to be suffering from a headache, and Adaora hopes it’s not malaria, which one of their neighbors caught recently. After Ijeoma assures her it’s not, they head back home.
Chapters 42-48 Analysis
While Ijeoma is frequently called beautiful, she is at odds with her looks. She has always appreciated the beauty of other girls and women, but the kind of heterosexual appeal her mother celebrates feels false to her: “a beautiful girl might as well be as ugly as the ugliest of ojuju masks” (176). Being catcalled in the Aba market makes her feel like literal garbage: “men shouting out their love as if tossing loose change into a beggar’s can, professing to want to marry me in that careless way that people often tossed out trash” (176). The metaphor between tossing words and tossing trash emphasizes how unflattering their “love” is.
This kind of surface attraction contrasts with the intellectual layers of Ijeoma and Ndidi’s budding relationship. They read books together, sharing both canonical European texts, like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, as well as famous Nigerian books, like Tutuola’s Palm-Wine Drinkard and Things Fall Apart (188). Black male authors are shelved with white female authors, novels including folk tales and the gothic.
Like she did with Amina, Ijeoma glories in the physical pleasure of Ndidi’s company. However, in this case, this physical release is not yet sexual. Instead, Ijeoma feels “liberation” (193) while dancing with Ndidi in the Fountain of Love club, a safe space for LGBT+ people. The freedom and ease in her body is temporary, however. Ndidi warns that “mentioning [the gay club] to anyone can cost some of us, if not all of us, our lives” (190), since a previous makeshift club was burned down.
