Stay With Me

by AYÒ. BÁMI ADÉBÁYÒ.

  When they complained that they would have preferred pounded yam with vegetable stew and dry fish, I ignored Akin’s look. On some other day I would have gone back to the kitchen to pound yam. That afternoon, I wanted to tell them to get up and pound the yam if they really wanted pounded yam. I swallowed the words burning in my throat with gulps of malt and told them I could not pound because I had sprained my hand the day before.

  ‘But you didn’t say that when we first got here,’ Iya Martha scratched her chin. ‘You yourself offered to give us pounded yam.’

  ‘She must have forgotten about the sprain. She was really in pain yesterday. I even considered taking her to the hospital,’ Akin said, backing up my fairly obvious lie.

  They shovelled the beans into their mouths like starving children, advising me to get the hand checked at the hospital. It was only Funmi who squeezed her mouth around the first mouthful of beans and looked at me with suspicion. Our eyes met and she smiled a wide red-rimmed smile.

  After I cleared away the empty plates, Baba Lola explained that he had not been sure how long the visit would last, so he had not bothered to make any arrangements for the cab driver who had dropped them off to come back and pick them up. He assumed, the way relatives often do, that Akin would take responsibility for getting them back home.

  Soon it was time for Akin to drop everyone off. As I saw them to his car, Akin jiggled his keys in his trouser pocket and asked if everyone was fine with the route he intended to take. He wanted to drop Baba Lola off on Ilaje Street and then drive Iya Martha all the way to Ife. I noticed that he did not say anything about where Funmi lived. After Iya Martha said the route my husband picked was the best option, Akin unlocked the car doors and got into the driver’s seat.

  I stifled the urge to pull out Funmi’s jheri curls because she slipped into the front seat beside my husband and pushed the small cushion I always kept there to the floor. I clenched my fists as Akin drove away, leaving me alone in the cloud of dust he had raised.

  ‘What did you feed them?’ Akin shouted.

  ‘Bridegroom, welcome back,’ I said. I had just finished eating my dinner. I picked up the plates and headed for the kitchen.

  ‘You know they all have diarrhoea now? I had to park by a bush for them to shit. A bush!’ he said, following me into the kitchen.

  ‘What is so unheard of about that? Do your relatives have toilets in their homes? Don’t they shit in bushes and on dunghills?’ I yelled, slamming the plates in the metal sink. The sound of cracking china was followed by silence. One of the plates had cracked in the middle. I ran my finger over the broken surface. I felt it pierce me. My blood stained the jagged space in trickles.

  ‘Yejide, try and understand. You know I am not going to hurt you,’ he said.

  ‘What language are you speaking? Hausa or Chinese? Me, I don’t understand you. Start speaking something I understand, Mr Bridegroom.’

  ‘Stop calling me that.’

  ‘I will call you what I want. At least you are still my husband. Ah, but maybe you are not my husband again. Did I miss that news too? Should I switch on the radio or is it on television? In the newspaper?’ I dumped the broken plate into the plastic dustbin that stood beside the sink. I turned to face him.

  His forehead glistened with beads of sweat that ran down his cheeks and gathered at his chin. He was tapping a foot to some furious beat in his head. The muscles in his face moved to that same beat as he clenched and unclenched his jaw. ‘You called me a bastard in front of my uncle. You disrespected me.’

  The anger in his voice shook me, outraged me. I had thought his vibrating body meant he was nervous – it usually did. I had hoped it meant he felt sorry, guilty. ‘You brought a new wife into this house and you are angry? When did you marry her? Last year? Last month? When did you plan to tell me? Eh? You this–’

  ‘Don’t say it, woman, don’t say that word. You need a padlock on your mouth.’

  ‘Well, since I don’t have that, I will say it, you bloody–’

  His hand covered my mouth. ‘OK, I’m sorry. I was in a difficult situation. You know I won’t cheat on you, Yejide. You know I can’t, I can’t do that. I promise.’ He laughed. It was a broken, pathetic sound.

  I prised his hand away from my face. He held on to my hand, rubbing his palm against mine. I wanted to weep.

  ‘You have another wife, you paid her bride price and prostrated in front of her family. I think you are already cheating.’

  He placed my palm over his heart; it was beating fast. ‘This is not cheating on you; I don’t have a new wife. Trust me, it’s for the best. My mother won’t pressure you for children any more,’ he whispered.

  ‘Nonsense and rubbish.’ I snatched my hand away and walked out of the kitchen.

  ‘If it makes you feel better, Funmi couldn’t make it into the bush fast enough. She soiled her dress.’

  I did not feel better. I would not feel better for a very long time. Already, I was coming undone, like a hastily tied scarf coming loose, on the ground before the owner is aware of it.

  3

  Yejide was created on a Saturday. When God had ample time to paint her a perfect ebony. No doubt about it. The finished work is living proof.

  The first time I saw her, I wanted to touch her jeans-clad knee, tell her there and then: ‘My name is Akin Ajayi. I am going to marry you.’

  She was effortlessly elegant. Only girl on the row who didn’t slouch. Held her chin up, didn’t bend sideways to lean on the orange armrests. Sat straight, shoulders squared, hands linked and held in front of her bare midriff. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed her in the ticket queue downstairs.

  She glanced to her left some minutes before the lights went out; our eyes met. She didn’t look away like I expected and I straightened up under her gaze. She looked me up and down, sized me up. It was not enough that she smiled at me before turning to face the big cinema screen. I wanted more.

  She seemed unaware of her effect. Appeared oblivious to the way I was gawking at her, enthralled, already thinking about the words that would convince her to go out with me.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t talk to her at once. The lights went out right after I came up with the words I had been trying to find. And the girl I was going out with at the time was seated between Yejide and me.

  I broke up with the girl that night, right after the movie. I did it while we stood together in the foyer of Oduduwa Hall in Ife as the crowd that had come to watch the film show flowed past us.

  I said to her, ‘Please find your way to your hostel. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ I clasped my hands together apologetically, though I didn’t feel sorry. Would never feel sorry. I left her standing there with her mouth slightly open.

  I pushed through the throng. Searched for a beauty in blue jeans, platform sandals and white T-shirt that showed off her belly button. I found her. Yejide and I were married before the end of that year.

  I loved Yejide from the very first moment. No doubt about that. But there are things even love can’t do. Before I got married, I believed love could do anything. I learned soon enough that it couldn’t bear the weight of four years without children. If the burden is too much and stays too long, even love bends, cracks, comes close to breaking and sometimes does break. But even when it’s in a thousand pieces around your feet, that doesn’t mean it’s no longer love.

  After four years, nobody else cared about love. My mother didn’t. She talked about my responsibility to her as a first son. Reminded me about the nine months when the only world I knew was inside her. She focused on the hardship of the last three months. How she couldn’t get comfortable in bed and had to spend her nights in a cushioned armchair.

  Soon, Moomi began talking about Juwon, my half-brother, the first son of my father’s second wife. It’d been years since Moomi had used him as an example. When I was much younger, she was always talking about him. Juwon never comes home with dirty uniforms; why is your shirt dirty? Juwon has never lost his sc
hool sandals; this is the third pair you’ve lost this term. Juwon is always home by three; where do you go after school? How come Juwon came home with prizes and you didn’t? You are the first son in this family, do you know what that means? Do you know what that means at all? Do you want him to take your place?

  She stopped talking about Juwon when he decided to learn a trade after secondary school because his mother couldn’t afford to pay his university fees. Guess Moomi felt there was no way a boy who was training to become a carpenter could ever measure up to her university-trained children. For years, she didn’t talk about Juwon, and appeared to have lost interest in his life until she wanted me to marry another wife. Then she told me, as if I didn’t already know, that Juwon already had four children, all boys. This time she didn’t stop with Juwon but reminded me that all my half-brothers now had children.

  After I’d been married to Yejide for two years, my mother began to show up in my office on the first Monday of every month. She didn’t come alone. Each time, she brought a new woman with her, a potential second wife. She never missed a first Monday. Not even when she was ill. We had an agreement. As long as I continued to let her bring the women to my office, she would never embarrass my wife by showing up at our home with any of her candidates; she would never mention her efforts to Yejide.

  When my mother threatened that she would start visiting my wife each week with a new woman if I didn’t choose one within a month, I had to make a decision. I knew my mother was not a woman who made empty threats. I also knew that Yejide couldn’t bear that kind of pressure. It would have broken her. Of the string of girls my mother paraded through my office every month, Funmi was the only one who didn’t insist on moving in with Yejide and me. Funmi was the obvious choice because she didn’t want much from me. Not in the beginning.

  She was an easy compromise. She accepted a separate flat, miles away from Yejide and me. Didn’t ask for more than a weekend every month and a reasonable allowance. She agreed that she would never be the one to go with me to parties and public engagements.

  I didn’t see Funmi for months after I agreed to marry her. I told her I had a lot going on at work and wouldn’t be able to see her for a while. Someone must have sold the ‘a patient wife wins the husband’s heart in the end’ line to her. She didn’t argue with me; she just waited until I came to terms with the fact that she was now a part of my life.

  It had been more immediate with Yejide. I spent the first month after I met her driving two hours every day to be with her. I’d leave the office at five and spend about thirty minutes driving down to Ife. It took another fifteen minutes to get through the city to the university gates. Usually, I would enter F101 in Moremi Hall about an hour after leaving Ilesa.

  I did this every day until one evening Yejide came out into the corridor and shut the door behind her instead of letting me in. She told me never to come back. Said she did not want to see me again. But I didn’t stop. I was at F101 every day for eleven days, smiling at her room-mates, trying to convince them to let me in.

  On the twelfth day, she answered the door. Came out to stand with me in the corridor. We stood side by side as I begged her to tell me what I had done wrong. A mix of odours from the kitchenette and toilets wafted in our direction.

  It turned out that the girl I’d been dating before I met her had been to Yejide’s room to threaten her. The girl had claimed that we had had a traditional wedding.

  ‘I don’t do polygamy,’ Yejide said on the evening she finally told me what was going on.

  Another girl would have found a roundabout way of saying she wanted to be an only wife. Not Yejide, she was direct, up-front.

  ‘I don’t either,’ I said.

  ‘Look, Akin. Just let us forget it. This thing – us. This thing.’

  ‘I’m not married. Look at me. Come on – look at me. If you want to, we can go to that girl’s room right now and I’ll confront her, ask her to produce the wedding pictures.’

  ‘Her name is Bisade.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  Yejide didn’t say anything for a while. She leaned against the door, watching people come and go in the corridor.

  I touched her shoulder; she didn’t pull away.

  ‘So, I was being silly,’ she said.

  ‘You owe me an apology,’ I said. I didn’t mean it. Our relationship was still at the point where it didn’t matter who was wrong or right. We hadn’t arrived at the place where deciding who needed to apologise started another fight.

  ‘Sorry, but you know people have all sorts of . . . sorry.’ She leaned into me.

  ‘All right.’ I grinned as her thumb drew invisible circles along my arm.

  ‘So, Akin. You can confess all your secrets to me now, dirty or clean. Maybe a woman who has children for you somewhere . . .’

  There were things I could have told her. Should have said to her. I smiled. ‘I’ve got a few dirty socks and underwear. How about you? Any dirty panties?’

  She shook her head.

  Finally, I spoke the words that had been dancing on my tongue since the beginning – or a version of them. I said to her, ‘Yejide Makinde, I am going to marry you.’

  4

  For a while, I did not accept the fact that I had become a first wife, an iyale. Iya Martha was my father’s first wife. When I was a child, I believed she was the unhappiest wife in the family. My opinion did not change as I grew older. At my father’s funeral, she stood beside the freshly dug grave with her narrow eyes narrowed even further and showered curses on every woman my father had made his wife after he had married her. She had begun as always with my long-dead mother, since she was the second woman he had married, the one who had made Iya Martha a first amongst not-so-equals.

  I refused to think of myself as first wife.

  It was easy to pretend that Funmi did not even exist. I continued to wake up with my husband lying on his back beside me in bed, his legs spread-eagled, a pillow over his face to shut out the light from my bedside lamp. I would pinch his neck until he got up and headed for the bathroom, responding to my greetings with a nod or a wave. He was incoherent in the mornings, incapable of putting words together before a cup of coffee or a cold shower.

  A couple of weeks after Funmi came into our home for the first time, our phone rang shortly before midnight. By the time I sat up in bed, Akin was halfway across the room. I pulled my bedside lamp’s cord twice, and all its four bulbs came on, flooding the room with light. Akin had picked up the phone and was frowning as he listened to the person on the other end of the line.

  After he returned the phone to its cradle, he came to sit beside me in bed. ‘That was Aliyu, he’s head of operations at the head office in Lagos. He called me to say we shouldn’t open the bank to customers tomorrow.’ He sighed. ‘There has been a coup.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ I said.

  We sat in silence for a while. I wondered if anyone had been killed, if there would be chaos and violence in the following months. Though I had been too young to remember the events, I knew that the coups of 1966 had ultimately thrust the country into a civil war. I comforted myself by thinking about how the tension after the last coup, which had made General Buhari Head of State just twenty months before, had dissipated within a few days. The country had decided then that it was tired of the corrupt civilian government Buhari and his colleagues had ousted.

  ‘But is it certain that the coup plotters succeeded?’

  ‘Looks like it. Aliyu says they have already arrested Buhari.’

  ‘Let’s hope these ones don’t kill anybody.’ I pulled the bedside lamp’s cord once, switching off three of the bulbs.

  ‘This country!’ Akin sighed as he stood up. ‘I’m going to go downstairs and check the doors again.’

  ‘So who is in charge now?’ I lay back in bed, though I would not be able to go back to sleep.

  ‘He didn’t say anything about that. We should know in the morning.’

  We did not know in the mor
ning. There was a broadcast at 6 a.m. by an army officer who condemned the previous government and didn’t tell us anything about the new one. Akin left for the office after the broadcast so that he could arrive at work before any protests broke out. I stayed at home, knowing already that my stylists in training would not come to the salon after listening to the news that morning. I left the radio on and tried to call everyone I knew in Lagos to make sure they were safe, but the phone lines had been severed by then and I could not get through. I must have dozed off after listening to the news at noon. Akin was home by the time I woke up. He was the one who informed me that Ibrahim Babangida was the new Head of State.

  The most unusual thing about the next few weeks was that Babangida referred to himself, and came to be referred to, not just as Head of State but as President, as if the coup counted as an election. On the whole, things appeared to go on as usual and, like the rest of the country, my husband and I went back to our usual routine.

  Most weekdays, Akin and I ate breakfast together. It was usually boiled eggs, toast and lots of coffee. We liked our coffee the same way, in red mugs that matched the little flowers on the place mats, without milk and with two cubes of sugar each. At breakfast, we discussed our plans for the day ahead. We talked about getting someone to fix the leaking roof in the bathroom, discussed the men Babangida had appointed to the National Council of Ministers, considered assassinating the neighbour’s dog who would not quit yelping during the night, and debated whether the new margarine we were trying out was too oily. We did not discuss Funmi; we did not even mention her name by mistake. After the meal, we would carry the plates together to the kitchen and leave them in the sink to be cleaned later. Then we would wash our hands, share a kiss and go back into the sitting room. There, Akin would pick up his jacket, sling it over a shoulder and leave for work. I would go upstairs to shower and then head for my salon, and so we continued, days sliding into weeks, weeks into a month, as though it was still just the two of us in the marriage.