Stay With Me

by AYÒ. BÁMI ADÉBÁYÒ.

  Then one day, after Akin had left for work, I went back upstairs to have my bath and discovered that a section of the roof had collapsed. It was raining that morning and the pressure of the gathering rainwater must have finally pushed through the already soggy asbestos and ripped the leaky square open in the middle so that water poured through it into the bathtub. I tried to find a way to bathe in that tub anyway because I had never used any of the other bathrooms in the house since we had got married. But the rain would not stop and the torn asbestos was located just so that I could not fit myself into any corner of my own bathtub without getting hit by the rainwater or bits of wood and scraps of metal that were making their way into the tub along with the water.

  After I called Akin’s office and left a message with his secretary about the roof, for the very first time I had to have my bath in the guest bathroom down the hallway. And there, in a space that was unfamiliar, I considered the possibility that I might end up having to take many showers in that tiny shower stall if Funmi decided to start coming over and insisted on spending her nights in the master bedroom. I rinsed off the soapsuds and went back to the master bedroom – my bedroom – to get dressed for work. When I checked on the state of the bathroom before going downstairs, the damage had not got any worse and the water was still flowing directly into the tub.

  By the time I unfurled my umbrella and dashed for the car, the downpour had become torrential; the wind was strong and it tried its best to wrestle the umbrella from me. My shoes were wet by the time I got into the car. I took them off and put on the flat slippers that I used for driving. When I turned my key in the ignition, I got nothing, just a useless click. I tried again and again without any luck.

  I had never had a problem with my faithful blue Beetle since Akin gave it to me after we got married. He took it in for servicing regularly and checked the oil and whatever else every week. The rain was still pouring outside and there was no use walking to my salon, even though it wasn’t too far from the estate. The wind had already snapped several branches off the trees in our neighbour’s front yard and it would have wrecked my umbrella within minutes. So I sat in the car, watching more branches struggle against the wind until they were broken and fell to the ground, still lush and green.

  Funmi broke into my thoughts in moments like that, in the moments that did not submit themselves to my routine. And the idea that I too had become one of those women who would eventually be declared too old to accompany her husband to parties would flutter into my mind. But even then, I could trap those thoughts and keep them caged in a corner of my mind, in a place where they could not spread their wings and take over my life.

  That morning, I brought out a notepad from my bag and began to write down the list of new items that I needed in the salon. I drew up a budget for my planned expansion for more salons. There was no point in thinking about Funmi; Akin had assured me that she would not be a problem and nothing had happened yet to prove him wrong. But I did not tell any of my friends about Funmi. When I spoke with Sophia or Chimdi on the phone, it was about my business, their babies and Akin’s promotion at work. Chimdi was an unmarried mother and Sophia was a third wife. I did not think either of them could give me any useful advice about my situation.

  A roof that had caved in and a car that would not start – if her day had begun like that, Iya Martha would have gone back to her room and spent the day behind locked doors and shut windows because the universe was trying to tell her something. The universe was always trying to tell that woman something. I was not Iya Martha, so when the rain slowed to a drizzle, I turned the key in the ignition one last time and got out of the car in my slippers. With my handbag slung over my shoulder, umbrella in one hand and wet shoes in the other, I walked to work.

  My salon held the warmth of several women. Women who sat in the cushioned chairs and submitted themselves to the mercies and ministries of the wooden comb, the hooded hairdryer, to my hands and the hands of the stylists I was training. Women who quietly read a book, women who called me ‘my dear sister’, women who made loud jokes that still had me laughing days later. I loved the place – the combs, the curlers and the mirrors on every wall.

  I started making money from hairdressing during my first year at the University of Ife. Like most female freshers, I lived in Mozambique Hall. Every evening for the first week after I moved into the hostel, I went from room to room, telling the other girls that I could plait their hair for half the price they would pay to regular hairdressers. All I had was a small wooden comb, and while I lived at the university the only other thing I invested in was a plastic chair for my customers to sit in. That chair was the first thing I packed when I moved to Moremi Hall in my second year. I did not earn enough to buy a dryer, but by my third year I was making enough money for my upkeep. And whenever Iya Martha decided to withhold the monthly allowance my father routed through her, I did not go hungry.

  I moved to Ilesa after my wedding and though I drove to Ife for classes on weekdays, it was impossible to continue the hairdressing business as before. For a while I wasn’t making any money. Not that I needed to: apart from the housekeeping stipend, Akin gave me a generous personal allowance. But I missed hairdressing and did not like knowing that if for some reason Akin stopped giving me money, I would not even be able to afford a packet of chewing gum.

  For the first few months of our marriage, Akin’s sister Arinola was the only woman whose hair I wove. She often offered to pay me, but I refused her money. She didn’t like elaborate styles and always asked me to weave her hair into the classic suku. Weaving her tresses into straight lines that stopped in the middle of her head bored me after a while. So I persuaded her to let me spend ten hours plaiting her hair into a thousand tiny braids. Within a week, Arinola’s colleagues at the College of Education were begging her to introduce them to her hairdresser.

  Initially, I attended to the growing stream of women beneath a cashew tree in our backyard. But Akin soon found a salon space that he told me would be perfect. I was reluctant about opening up a real salon because I knew I would only be able to work there over the weekends until I got my degree. Akin convinced me to take a look at the place he’d found, and once I stepped into that room, I could see that it would really be perfect. I tried to contain my excitement by telling him it was not sensible to spend money on a place that would be closed for five days a week. He saw through me and a few hours later we held hands in the landlord’s living room as he negotiated the rent.

  I was still using that salon space when he married Funmi. And that morning, although I arrived later than usual because of the rain and the trouble with my car, I was still the first in the salon. None of my apprentices was in sight when I unlocked the doors. They usually came in earlier to set up shop for the day, but even as I switched on the lights, the pitter-patter of rain picked up speed until it sounded like a hundred hooves were pounding on the roof. There was little chance that the girls would make it across town before the rain let up again.

  I switched on the radio my father had given me when I went to university. It was now broken in several places but I’d put it back together with duct tape. I fiddled with the dial until I found a station that was playing music I did not recognise. Then I started setting out shampoos and pomades, styling gels and curling irons, bowls of relaxers and bottles of hair spray.

  I did not bother to check if walking in the rain had ruined my braids in spite of the umbrella. If I looked in the mirror, I would have had to examine the shape of my face, my small eyes, my big nose; the things that could have been wrong with the dip of my chin or my lips, all the different ways in which any man, Akin specifically, might find Funmi more attractive. I did not have time to indulge in self-pity, so I kept on working because handling the equipment focused my thoughts on hair.

  After the rain stopped, the girls trickled in one after the other. The last one came in just before our first customer showed up. I grabbed a wooden comb, parted the woman’s hair in the middle, dipp
ed two fingers into the sticky pomade and started my day. Her hair was thick and full, the tresses crackled softly as I wove them in tiny rows that gathered at the nape of her neck. There were four people waiting when I was through with her. I moved from head to head, sectioning hair, weaving strands into patterns, snipping off split ends and dispensing advice to the girls in training. It was bliss; time slipped by and soon it was well past noon. By the time I took a break for lunch, my wrists were hurting – almost everyone wanted weaving and braiding that morning and few easy wash-and-sets were coming our way.

  That afternoon I went for rice cooked in eeran leaves and topped with palm-oil stew. There was a woman on that street who cooked it so well that after enjoying the bits of smoked fish and cow hide in the stew, I always had to fight the urge to lick the leaves clean. It was the kind of food that demanded a moment’s pause after the plate was empty and induced a level of contentment that had me staring into space while the salon buzzed around me. Outside, the sky was still a threatening indigo although the rain had finally stopped. Cold air swept into the salon in draughts and battled the hairdryers to set the room temperature.

  I thought she was a customer when she came in. She stood in the doorway for a moment, the overcast sky hanging behind her like a bad omen. She looked around the room with a frown on her face until she saw me. Then she smiled and came to kneel beside me. She was so beautiful. She had the kind of face that would complement any hairstyle, a face that would have other women looking longingly after her in the market, a face that would have some of them asking who her hairdresser was.

  ‘Good morning, our mother,’ Funmi said.

  Her words pierced me. I was not her mother. I was not anybody’s mother. People still called me Yejide. I was not Iya This or Iya That. I was still merely Yejide. That thought tied my tongue and made me want to pull hers out of her mouth. Years before, nothing would have stopped me from punching her teeth down her throat. When I was a student at Ife Girls’ High School, I was known as Yejide Terror. I got into fights every other day. In those days, we would wait until school was over before starting a fight. We would leave the vicinity of the school compound and find a path that none of the teachers passed through on their way home. And I always won – not once, not one single time did I lose. I lost a few buttons, broke a tooth, got a bloody nose many times, but I never lost. I never got one single grain of sand in my mouth.

  Whenever I arrived home late and bloodied up from another fight, my stepmothers would scold me loudly and promise to punish me for my disgraceful behaviour. At night they whispered, with washed-out wrappers tied around their shrunken breasts, they whispered instructions to their children not to be like me. After all, their children had mothers, living women who cursed and cooked, had businesses and bushy armpits. Only motherless children, children like me, could misbehave like that. And it was not just that I did not have a mother, but the one I once had, the one who died seconds after she had pushed me out into the world, was a woman without lineage! And who impregnates a woman with no lineage? Only a stupid man who happened to be, well, her husband. But that was not the point; the point was that when there was no identifiable lineage for a child, that child could be descended from anything – even dogs, witches or strange tribes with bad blood. The third wife’s children obviously had bad blood since insanity occurred frequently in her family. But at least that was known bad blood – my (possible) bad blood was of unknown origin and that was worse, as evidenced by the way I was disgracing my father by fighting like a street dog.

  The whispered discussions in the rooms that each wife shared with her children were eventually reported to me in detail by my half-siblings. The words did not bother me; it was a game the wives played, trying to prove which woman had produced a superior stock of children. It was the threats that were never carried out, even when my fighting became a daily event, that bothered me. It was the whips that were not unleashed, the extra chores that were not assigned, the dinners that were not withheld that reminded me that none of them really cared.

  ‘Our mother?’ Funmi said. She was still on her knees.

  I swallowed my memories like an oversized bitter pill. Funmi had placed her hands on my lap; her manicure was perfect. The nails were painted hibiscus red, like the matching mugs Akin and I had used to drink coffee that morning.

  ‘Our mother?’

  I never painted my fingernails any more. I used to paint them when I was at university. Was it the nails that made her attractive to him? How did he feel when she raked those beautiful nails across his chest? Did his nipples tighten? Did he moan? I wanted . . . no . . . I needed to know immediately, in detail. What did she have of him that had always been just mine? What would she have that I had never had? His child?

  ‘Our mother?’

  ‘Who is your mother? You better get up now,’ I said.

  There was an empty chair next to me, but she chose to sit on the arm of my chair.

  ‘Why are you here? Who showed you this place?’ I whispered because the background chatter between customers and stylists had stopped. Somebody had turned off the radio and the salon had gone quiet.

  ‘I just thought I should come to greet you.’

  ‘At this time of the day? Are you jobless?’ It was an insult, but she took it as a question.

  ‘No-o. I don’t have a job since our husband is taking good care of me.’ Her voice rose as she said ‘our husband’, and it was obvious that everyone in the room had heard her. Chairs creaked as customers shifted in their seats and leaned back as much as possible in their attempts to listen in on the conversation.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Our husband is a very caring man. He has been taking good care of me. We thank God that he has enough money for all of us.’ She smiled at the top of my head.

  I glared at her reflection in the mirror opposite us. ‘Enough money for what?’

  ‘For us, our mother. That is why a man works, abi? For his wives and children.’

  ‘Some of us have jobs,’ I said, keeping my clenched fists firmly by my side. ‘You have to leave so that I can do mine.’

  She smiled into the mirror. ‘I will visit tomorrow afternoon, Ma. Maybe you will be less busy then.’

  Did she expect me to smile back? ‘Funmi, don’t let me see your broomstick legs in this place ever again.’

  ‘Our mother, there is no need for all this-o; we have to be friends. At least for the sake of the children we will have.’ She went on her knees again. ‘I know people say you are barren, but there is nothing God cannot do. I know that once I conceive, your own womb too will be opened. If you say I should not come here, I will not come, but I want you to know that this bitterness can be one of the things causing the barrenness-o. Goodbye, Ma.’

  She was smiling as she rose to her feet and turned to leave.

  I stood up and grabbed the back of her dress. ‘You! This wretched . . . this evil egbere. Who are you calling barren?’

  I was not prepared for the confrontation. Even my insult was off the mark. Funmi did not look like the mythical egbere. She was not short; she was not carrying a mat or weeping incessantly. In fact, when she turned to face me, she was smiling. I was surrounded by customers and stylists before I could land the first slap on her cheek.

  ‘Leave her alone,’ the women said. ‘Let her go.’ They pulled my hands from Funmi’s dress and pushed me until I was back in my seat. ‘My dear sister, please calm down. Just take it easy.’

  5

  I bought new mugs.

  ‘You know why I don’t like white mugs?’ Akin said at breakfast.

  ‘Please enlighten me,’ I said.

  ‘You can always see the coffee stains too clearly.’

  ‘Really?’

  He pulled at his tie and frowned. ‘You sound angry. Is something wrong?’

  I spread more margarine on my toast, stirred my coffee and clenched my jaw. I was prepared to keep my mouth shut about why I was upset until Akin asked me why at least five times
. But he did not even give me a chance to sulk.

  ‘I don’t like these white mugs.’ He held a finger up and paused to drink some water. ‘Where are the old ones?’

  ‘I broke them.’

  His mouth formed an Oh that it did not expel and he took another bite of toast. I could see that he assumed I had simply knocked the mugs over by mistake or dropped them as I was putting them away. There was no reason for him to think that I had slammed each hibiscus-red mug against the kitchen wall as the cuckoo clock in the sitting room chimed at midnight. He could never have imagined that I had swept the broken pieces into a dustpan, put them in a small mortar and pounded them until I was sweating from every pore and wondering if I had lost my mind.

  ‘You know the internal auditors from the headquarters were in the office yesterday, we were so busy with them. I forgot to send someone to look at that roof. Today I’ll –’

  ‘Your wife came to my salon yesterday.’

  ‘Funmi?’

  ‘Who else?’ I leaned forward in my chair. ‘Or do you have another wife that I don’t know about?’ It was an idea I had not been able to shake since Funmi had left my salon the previous day, the possibility that there could have been other wives out there – in Ilesa, in any other city – other women that he could love, other women who made him less mine.