Stay With Me

by AYÒ. BÁMI ADÉBÁYÒ.

  Akin covered one half of his face with a hand. ‘Yejide, I’ve explained my agreement with Funmi to you. You shouldn’t let her bother you.’

  ‘She said you are taking good care of her.’ My words did not carry the power that I wanted them to, because I could not find any of the anger and disdain I had directed at Funmi the previous day. I wanted to be angry with him so I kept speaking; trying with my words to reach past what I really felt to the anger I was supposed to feel. ‘What does that mean? Explain to me what “good care” means.’

  ‘Sweetie . . .’

  ‘Hold it. Just hold it there. Please don’t sweetie me again this morning.’ But I did want him to call me sweetie again, only me and no one else. I wanted him to reach across the table, hold my hand and tell me we would be all right. And I still believed then that he would know what to do and what to say just because he was Akin.

  ‘Yejide –’

  ‘Where were you yesterday night? I waited until well past midnight for you to come home. Where did you go?’

  ‘The sports club.’

  ‘Ehen? Sports club? You must think I’m a fool. When do they close at the sports club? Tell me, when?’

  He sighed and glanced at his watch. ‘You want to start policing me?’

  ‘You said nothing would happen between you and that girl.’

  He grabbed his jacket and stood up. ‘I need to get to work.’

  ‘You are deceiving me, abi?’ I followed him to the door, grappling for words to tell him I did not really want to fight with him, to explain that I was afraid that he would leave me and I would be all alone in the world again. ‘Akin, God will deceive you, I promise you. God will deceive you the way you are deceiving me.’

  He shut the door and I watched him through the glass panes. He was all wrong. Instead of holding his briefcase in his hand, he gripped it to his side with his left arm so that his body tilted a little to the left, and he looked as though he was about to double over. His jacket was not slung over a shoulder but clutched in his right hand; the edge of a sleeve touched the ground and slid down the porch steps and through the grass as he walked towards his black Peugeot.

  I turned away as he put the car into reverse. His coffee mug was still full, not one drop had left the cup. I sat in his chair, finished my toast and his and drank up his coffee. Then I tidied up the dining table and took the dirty dishes to the kitchen. I washed up and took care to make sure there was no coffee stain left in the mugs.

  I did not feel like going to work because I was not ready for another confrontation with Funmi. It was clear to me that she would not stop showing up at the salon simply because I said so. I knew that women like Funmi, the kind of women who chose to be second, third or seventh wives, never backed down easily, ever. I had watched them arrive and evolve in my father’s house, all those different mothers who were not mine, they always came in with a strategy hidden under their wrappers, they were never as stupid or as agreeable as they first seemed. And it was Iya Martha who was always caught unawares, stunned, without a strategy or a plan of her own.

  It was becoming obvious that I had been a fool to believe for one second that Akin had Funmi under control. So I decided to take the day off to think things through. I stopped by the salon for a few minutes to give instructions to Debby, the most senior stylist in training. Then I took a taxi to Odo-Iro to get Silas, the mechanic who usually repaired my Beetle.

  Silas was surprised to see that I had come to his shop alone and asked after Akin. Throughout the drive to my place he kept telling me in different ways that he would prefer to discuss the repairs with Akin before he did anything.

  I cooked while he worked on the Beetle and offered him lunch when he was done. He washed his hands outside and ate the yam pottage quickly. I sat and watched him as he ate. I talked to him and he stared at me, grunting now and then, but mostly he just stared at me with a look of wonder as though he did not know what he could say in reply to my non-stop chatter. When he stood up to leave, I counted out the amount he had charged and gave the bills to him, then I followed him to his car, still talking as he drove off.

  I sat on the porch calling out greetings to neighbours who passed by until Debby came to give me an account of the money that had been made at the salon. I invited her in and offered her some food, but she turned it down and said she was not hungry. So I insisted that she should have a bottle of Maltina. After she went home, there was nothing left to do. The car had been fixed, plates washed and dinner was ready, even though I knew by then that Akin would not be home until midnight. I could not delay thinking about Funmi any longer.

  I went through several possibilities, from beating her to a pulp the next time she showed up in the salon to asking her to move in with us so I could keep her close enough to have my eye on her at all times. It did not take long to realise that the ultimate solution had little to do with her. I simply had to get pregnant, as soon as possible, and before Funmi did. It was the only way I could be sure I would stay in Akin’s life.

  I believed I was Moomi’s favourite daughter-in-law. As a child, it was expected that I would call my stepmothers Moomi, even my father encouraged me to, but I refused. I stuck to calling them Mama. And whenever my father was not around, some of the women would slap me just because I refused to honour them by calling them ‘my mother’. I did not refuse because I was being stubborn or trying to defy them as a number of them concluded. My mother had become an obsession for me, a religion, and the very thought of referring to another woman as Mother seemed sacrilegious, a betrayal of the woman who had given up her life for me to live.

  One year, the Anglican Church my family attended celebrated Mothering Sunday with a special service. After the vicar delivered his sermon, he summoned everyone who was below the age of eighteen to the front of the church because he wanted us to honour mothers with a song. I must have been twelve at the time, but I didn’t get up until an usher poked me in the back. We sang a song that everyone already knew, an expansion of a popular saying. I managed the first line, Iya ni wura, iya ni wura iyebiye ti a ko le f’owo ra, before biting my tongue to choke back tears. The words, Mother is gold, Mother is treasured gold that cannot be bought with money, resonated with me more than any homily I’d ever heard. I knew by then that my mother could not be replaced with money, by a stepmother or anyone else, and I was sure I would never call any woman ‘Moomi’.

  Yet every time Akin’s mother wrapped me in her fleshy embrace, my heart sang Moomi and when I called her the venerated title, it did not cling to my throat and refuse to climb out the way it used to when my stepmothers tried to slap it out of me. She lived up to the name, taking my side if any issue I had with Akin came to her attention, assuring me that it was a matter of time before I got pregnant for her son, insisting that my miracle would be waiting once I turned the right corner.

  When Mrs Adeolu, a pregnant customer, told me about the Mountain of Jaw-Dropping Victory, I went to Moomi that same day to discuss it with her. I needed her to authenticate the information; she was a treasure-house of knowledge about such things. Even if she did not know anything about a miracle house, she usually knew whom to ask and once she had checked out the stories, she was always prepared to accompany me to the ends of the earth to seek out a new solution.

  There was a time when I would have ignored Mrs Adeolu’s words, a time when I did not believe in prophets who lived on mountains or priests who worshipped beside rivers. That was before I had so many tests done in the hospital and every one of them showed that there was nothing preventing me from getting pregnant. I hoped at one point that the doctors would find something wrong, anything to explain why my period still showed up every month, years after my marriage. I wished they would find something they could treat or cut out. They found nothing. Akin also went in to get tested and came back saying that the doctors had found nothing wrong with him. Then I stopped waving aside my mother-in-law’s suggestions, stopped thinking that women like her were uncivilised and a little
crazy. I became open to alternatives. If I was not getting what I wanted in one place, what was wrong with searching elsewhere?

  My parents-in-law lived in Ayeso, an old section of town that still had a few mud houses. Their house was a brick building, with a front yard partially enclosed by a low cement fence. When I arrived at the house, Moomi was sitting on a low stool in the front yard shelling groundnuts into a rusty tray that sat on her lap. She looked up as I approached and looked down again. I swallowed and my steps slowed. There was something wrong.

  Moomi always greeted me by shouting Yejide, my wife. The words were as warm as the embrace that usually followed them.

  ‘Good evening, Moomi.’ My knees trembled as they touched the concrete floor.

  ‘Are you pregnant now?’ She said without looking up from the tray of groundnuts.

  I scratched my head.

  ‘Are you barren and deaf too? I say, are you pregnant? The answer is either, yes, I am pregnant or no, I still haven’t been pregnant for a single day in my life.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I stood up and backed away until she was not within the reach of my clenched fist.

  ‘Why won’t you allow my son to have a child?’ She slapped the tray of groundnuts on the floor and stood up.

  ‘I don’t manufacture children. God does.’

  She marched towards me and spoke when her toes were touching the tips of my shoes.

  ‘Have you ever seen God in a labour room giving birth to a child? Tell me, Yejide, have you ever seen God in the labour ward? Women manufacture children and if you can’t you are just a man. Nobody should call you a woman.’ She gripped my wrists and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘This life is not difficult, Yejide. If you cannot have children, allow my son to have some with Funmi. See, we are not asking you to stand up from your place in his life, we are just saying you should shift so that someone else can sit down.’

  ‘I am not stopping him, Moomi,’ I said. ‘I have accepted her. She even spends the weekends in our house now.’

  She held her thick waist and laughed. ‘I am a woman too. Do you think I was born last night? Tell me, why has Akin never touched Funmi? He has been married to her for over two months. Tell me why he has not removed her wrapper once. Tell me, Yejide.’

  I stifled a smile. ‘It is not my business what Akin does with his wife.’

  Moomi lifted my blouse and laid a wrinkled palm on my stomach.

  ‘Flat as the side of a wall,’ she said. ‘You have had my son between your legs for two more months and still your stomach is flat. Close your thighs to him, I beg you. We all know how he feels about you. If you don’t chase him away, he won’t touch Funmi. If you don’t, he will die childless. I beg you, don’t spoil my life. He is my first son, Yejide. I beg you in the name of God.’

  I closed my eyes, but tears still forced their way past my eyelids.

  Moomi sighed. ‘I have been good to you, I beg you in the name of God. Yejide, have mercy on me. Have mercy on me.’

  She held me then, pulled me into her arms and muttered words of comfort. Her embrace held no warmth. Her words sat in my stomach, cold and hard where a baby should have been.

  6

  Fear gripped my ankles as I climbed the Mountain of Jaw-Dropping Miracles. The heavily bearded man who trailed me did not ease my worries. He was my escort, sent from the mountaintop where the other faithful chanted words that the wind carried to us and carried away again. I could see about a hundred of them, clad in green robes and matching chef caps.

  ‘No stopping,’ my escort said.

  He must have noticed that my steps were slowing. The steep mountain was bare, with no trees to offer momentary shade from the sun. I was thirsty, my throat was dry and there was hardly any saliva in my mouth. There would be no reprieve for me. I had been asked to come fasting. No food, no water and, as the escort had informed me when he met me at the foot of the hill, if I stopped to rest as we climbed up the hill, I would be sent back home with no prayers and no meeting with the Highest Priest.

  Mrs Adeolu had assured me that the Prophet Josiah, the leader of this group, was indeed a miracle worker. Her protruding belly was convincing evidence. I needed a miracle fast. The only way I could save myself from polygamy was to get pregnant before Funmi; that way Akin might let the girl go. But as I pulled a small goat up the mountain, the only miracle I really wanted was that of water gushing from a rock so that I could quench my thirst. The way my escort stared at my chest was alarming. I was trembling not just from exhaustion but with foreboding. Each time my eyes met his blatantly roving ones, I wanted to run down the hills back to my car; yet I pressed on towards the crest. Funmi was still living in her flat in town, but I did not need a prophet to tell me that she would move into my home once she got pregnant.

  ‘Can you help me with the goat?’ I asked the escort, wishing the prophet had sent a woman to fetch me.

  ‘No,’ he replied and moved a palm across my face. Just when I wanted to slap it away, he curved his palm and dragged rolls of sweat down my cheek.

  He held my waist, presumably to steady me. I tried to quicken my trembling pace, but the goat had stopped. I pulled and pulled until the rope was chafing my hands. I would have dragged it on its side, but the instruction had been to bring a white goat without wound, blemish or a speck of another colour.

  ‘It is the goat; I’m not stopping to rest.’ I was scared he might send me back.

  ‘I can see that.’

  After a while, the goat started moving. We soon arrived at the crest of the mountain. The faithful sat in a wide circle with their eyes closed.

  ‘Enter the circle,’ my escort said. Then he sat down with the others and closed his eyes.

  A man stood at the centre of the circle. His beard was even longer than the escort’s and covered most of his face. His chef cap was bigger than that of the others and instead of dragging down his back, something had been stuffed in it to make it stand upright.

  ‘Make way for our sister,’ he said.

  The two faithful in front of me stood up and stepped further into the circle without opening their eyes. I dragged the goat with me into the circle and went to stand by the man with the big cap. I looked around at all the faces and realised that they were all bearded, all men. I recalled the escort’s lewd stares and felt faint. As if on cue, the men began to moan and tremble as though from some unseen stimulation. I thought of Akin and how beautiful our children would have been.

  ‘You will have a child,’ the man beside me shouted and the moaning stopped. He opened his eyes. ‘Behold your child,’ he said pointing at the goat. I glanced from the goat to the man’s dancing eyes. I thought of running away from this crazy man, but I could see all of them chasing after me, deranged and drooling like rabid dogs, green robes flapping in the wind. I could imagine myself rolling down the steep hill to my death.

  ‘You think I’m mad? The Prophet Josiah is mad?’ He grabbed the back of my head and laughed in short cackles. ‘You cannot run from us until we are done. By then you will be with child.’

  I nodded until he let go of my head.

  The moaning resumed. The man stooped beside the goat and removed the rope from its neck. Then he swaddled it in a piece of green cloth until only its face was showing. He thrust it towards me. ‘Your child.’

  I took the bundle.

  ‘Hold it close and dance,’ he commanded.

  The moaning stopped and the men began to sing. I shuffled along, holding the bundle to my chest, labouring under its weight. The singing switched to a quick chant and my pace quickened. I sang with them.

  We danced until my throat was so parched that I could hardly swallow. And each time I blinked, I saw flashes of light and colour, like shards of a broken rainbow. We kept dancing until I felt I was on the edge of some divine experience. Then, beneath the brilliant sun, the goat appeared to be a newborn and I believed. We sang and danced until my ankles ached and I longed to fall on my knees. Hours must have passed before Prophet
Josiah spoke.

  ‘Feed the child,’ he said. His voice was like a remote control that switched the activity of the surrounding men. This time when he spoke, the singing stopped. I looked to his hand, expecting him to hand me some grass.

  He tugged at the front of my blouse. ‘Breastfeed the child.’

  After he whispered those words, it was natural for me to reach behind my back and unhook the ivory lace bra I wore. To lift up my blouse and push up my bra cups. To sit on the ground with my legs stretched out, squeeze my breast and push the nipple to the open mouth in my arms.

  I did not think of Akin and how he would have said I was going mad. I did not think of Moomi, who would have reminded me that my feet were shaky in her son’s house without a child. I did not even think of Funmi, who might be pregnant already. I looked down at the bundle in my arms and saw the little face of my child, smelled the fresh scent of baby powder and believed.

  When Prophet Josiah removed the bundle from my arms, they felt empty.

  ‘Go,’ he said. ‘Even if no man comes near you this month, you will be pregnant.’

  I hugged his words close to me. They filled my arms and comforted me. I smiled as I walked down the mountain alone. I could still feel the wetness on my breast and my heart thudded with desperate faith.

  7

  Yejide told me she was pregnant on a Sunday. Woke me up around 7 in the morning to say a miracle had taken place the previous day. On a mountain of all places. A miracle on a mountain.

  I asked her to please switch off her bedside lamp. Light hurt my eyes in the morning.

  She still had a sense of humour back then. Wasn’t above a practical joke once in a while. I thought she was building up to something hilarious. Maybe it was a stretch, me thinking she could joke about being pregnant.