Stay With Me

by AYÒ. BÁMI ADÉBÁYÒ.

  ‘Welcome, sir. I hope you have had a good journey,’ I said.

  Dotun settled into an armchair, stretching his legs out on the mahogany centre table. ‘My wife sends her greetings – she’s on a night shift this weekend. I can’t handle the boys on my own; their fighting would have convinced me to drive into a tree on the way here, so they are in Lagos. How did our mother survive with us? This is payback time for me. The boys are with their aunt, my wife’s sister. Yejide, I hear you have become two in one; you have swallowed a human being! Come, let me see you clearly.’

  I stood in front of my brother-in-law, and then turned around for inspection. The smile that had been sitting on my husband’s face since Dotun showed up fell off his lips.

  ‘She is not pregnant,’ Akin said. ‘She has a condition, she’s seeing a doctor.’

  ‘But Moomi said –’ Dotun began.

  ‘I am pregnant,’ I said, clutching my tummy, willing the baby to kick at that time, willing it to prove itself to me, to everyone in the room, and put a permanent end to Akin’s unbelief.

  ‘Brother mi, it is the woman that will say if she’s pregnant,’ Dotun said.

  ‘Ask her how long she has been pregnant,’ Akin said.

  Dotun focused his gaze on my belly, squinting as though I had somehow shrunk and he had to try really hard to see me.

  ‘Akin, you can’t tell me what I am feeling in my body.’

  Akin stood up and grabbed my shoulders. ‘You have been sent away from antenatal classes, Yejide. You had five scans, five different doctors, in Ilesa, Ife and Ibadan. You are not pregnant, you are delusional!’ Saliva foamed from the sides of his mouth. ‘Yejide, this has to stop. Please, I beg you. Dotun, please talk to her. I have talked and talked, my mouth is starting to peel off because of all the talking.’ His hands were hurting my shoulders.

  Dotun’s mouth was open; he closed it and opened it again. I had never seen him speechless.

  ‘What do doctors know anyway?’ Dotun said when his voice returned to him from its wandering. ‘It is a woman that knows if she is pregnant or not.’

  He believed me. There was no mockery, no doubt in his eyes. They met mine evenly. His eyes held something I hadn’t seen in Akin’s eyes for so long, for far too long. Faith in me, in my words, in my sanity. I wanted to hug Dotun close to me until his faith in me restored my dwindling hope and drove away the familiar despair that was eating me up.

  ‘Your brain is melting, Yejide. It is melting,’ Akin said. ‘Dotun, I’m tired of reasoning with this crazy woman. I’m going to the club, are you coming?’

  He had never spoken to me like that before. His words would replay themselves to me for weeks and cause me to cringe each time. Your brain is melting, Yejide. It is melting, melting. Dotun started to say something in my defence, but I didn’t wait to listen. I pressed my palms against my stomach and stumbled up the stairs, blinded by tears. As I entered our bedroom, I could hear Akin’s car pulling out of the front yard.

  Sometimes I think my husband’s words made it easier for me to let Dotun comfort me. I think they made me weak enough to lean against him as he held me while I wept, as he kissed my earlobes and took off my clothes. It was over before I could blink, leaving me with semen and a dry ache between my thighs. I felt a strong sense of pity for my poor sister-in-law. Was this it? All she got out of Dotun week in, week out? I had at least expected to feel more, a tingle at the very least in spite of myself, even if it was against all I thought I believed in – until that weekend.

  ‘It will be better next time; I’ll be better. You are too beautiful . . . you . . . I’ve always thought . . .’ Dotun said as he pulled on his trousers hastily. And even as I tried to deny the knowledge, I knew there would be a next time. There was something different about being with him, something fuller. I wanted to try it again. My first instinct was to tell Akin, but how does one tell one’s husband: I want you to fuck me the way your brother did?

  I hid in the room for the rest of the weekend. I left the door open so I could hear Akin and Dotun laughing or hear their voices rising in disagreement. I heard nothing; all was quiet downstairs. The silence was a presence that reached up to punch me hard in the stomach until I lost my miracle baby in a flood of guilty tears.

  When he came to bed on Sunday night, Akin found me curled up. I was moaning my baby, my baby.

  He stood by the door. I was sure he would not come near me – that he would walk out. I was sure his brother’s hands had left prints on my skin. Prints that shone for my husband to see under the fluorescent tube that lit our room, prints that the hot showers I had taken would not wash away.

  Akin closed the door, removed his shirt and singlet, carefully folded them at the foot of the bed and lay down beside me. He stretched out my limbs, trailing the tips of his fingers over my skin.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  He whispered my name, Yejide, Yejide. It was so soft on his lips, an exotic sound that was a caress in itself. I wanted him to know what I could not say, that my baby, the pregnancy I had nursed, was gone. Gone. I was empty again.

  He kissed my face until I started moaning his name instead.

  I wanted to run downstairs to Dotun, to tell him, See! See what Akin can make me feel on just my face. SEE!

  He whispered my name, his breath hot against my skin. I shivered and covered his lips with mine. He moved to my neck and I shut my eyes. This time, I could not drown in the tingly sensations his tongue and fingers gave. Pleasure was suspended by my fierce hope that everything would be perfect, positioned just right for me to conceive.

  Dotun left on Monday morning. His hand lingered too long on my shoulder when he said goodbye. And I wondered if I saw Akin grind his jaw as we both waved at Dotun’s departing car.

  14

  When they finally came, the armed robbers sounded like a group of men who were lost and had come into our sitting room to ask for directions. They spoke impeccable English, sat in chairs like visitors and requested something to drink (no alcohol on duty, please). Then they pointed a gun at each of our heads and asked us to pack up all our electronics.

  Initially, it was more of a visit than an attack. One of the men even said thank you when he was done with his bottle of Limca. Then a few minutes after Akin, Funmi and I went back into the house, after we had loaded our electronics into their van, we heard a gunshot, then a scream that punched holes into the silent night. Several gunshots followed, leaving echoes that would keep residents of the estate awake with sweaty faces and dry mouths for months to come.

  Akin pushed me down after the first gunshot and threw his body over mine. We stayed that way, trying our best not to breathe loudly. I was aware that Funmi was somewhere in the sitting room too; she whimpered until Akin told her to shut up. We stayed on the ground until dawn; Akin did not shift once, not even when Funmi asked him if he did not care about protecting her too.

  When we stood up in the morning, Funmi began to sob.

  ‘You don’t love me,’ she said to Akin. ‘You don’t care at all.’

  Akin didn’t reply. He asked me if I was OK and went outside to check on our neighbours. I went upstairs, leaving Funmi alone in the sitting room.

  It turned out that the shots had all been fired into furniture, walls and car windows. No one had been hurt; although Mr Fatola fainted the minute robbers entered his home. He came to after the robbers had left and his wife poured a cup of ice-cold water on his face. The estate committee wrote a petition to the police station at Ayeso when the hired hunters informed us after the robbery that none of the policemen had shown up for work the day the robbery took place. After they said this, Mrs Ojo announced in her British accent that one of the policemen had been among the thieves. No one paid her any attention. It was obvious the police were involved in some way, but that they would take up arms against us themselves? We did not think things had become that bad yet.

  While Iya Bolu worried about the robbers, I had better things on my
mind. My stomach was bulging with child – even the ultrasound machines agreed this time. I tucked the glossy scan result under the wooden frame of my mirror, at the top corner, where I could see it when I combed my hair every morning. I ate fruits and Akin cooked vegetable stew for me every night. There were stones in it most times, but I did not complain. I refused to change my wardrobe so that the pregnancy would strain against my too-tight clothes. I kept this up until a dress ripped from armpit to knee as I rose up to join the congregation in sharing the grace at a Sunday service.

  I became known as ‘the pregnant woman with the ripped dress’, even after the baby was born. But I did not care that people pointed and smiled behind their hands during a hymn or the Nicene Creed at the church. I had become immortal, part of a never-ending chain of life. New life kicked within me and soon I would have someone that I could call my own. Not a stepmother or half-brother. Not a father shared with two dozen other children or a husband shared with Funmi, but a child, my child.

  These thoughts filled me with so much happiness that I was gripped with fear. It seemed too much that any human being should be so happy and fortunate. More than once, in the early months of pregnancy, I would take my hands off the steering wheel while driving and place them over my belly, splaying my palms to cover as much of the belly as they could. I tried to hold the baby in, lest, in a wave of misfortune that my infinite joy of those months had me overdue for, the baby burst to the floor of my Volkswagen and left my stomach hanging open.

  The hoots of horns and curses from other motorists reminded me that an accident would be a surer way to lose the baby. To my amazement, I was never involved in an accident during my tummy-clutching moments. This reaffirmed my belief that bad luck would soon come knocking. That my happy life was too good to be true and would soon come crashing down on my head. I set about blocking off all possible avenues for bad luck. I became nice to Funmi, shared tips about Akin, from his favourite shade of lipstick – a bright red that would look garish on her – to how he liked his beans – watery and with lots of pepper. I was ready to share. A man is not something you can hoard to yourself; he can have many wives, but a child can have only one real mother. One.

  Against my worst imaginings, the pregnancy was smooth. The doctors were happy every time I went in for an examination. And by the third trimester my anxiety disappeared and I settled in to enjoy the pregnancy. I loved the aching back. I bragged about the enormity of my feet and complained incessantly about how difficult it was to find a sleeping position. It was the best time of my life.

  15

  We called the baby Olamide and twenty other names. She was soft yellow and turned pink in the face when she cried, which was almost all the time, except when a nipple was stuck in her mouth. Her ears were a shade of brown that matched the back of Akin’s hands. Moomi assured us that Akin had been that way too and soon our pretty girl would ripen from soft yellow to the brown shade of her ears.

  The naming ceremony was a carnival. Olamide had been born on a Saturday, the most convenient day of the week. Her naming ceremony seven days later was attended by hundreds of people, as it didn’t have to compete with working hours or a Sunday service. My stepmothers arrived on Friday; they came wearing smiles to mask the disappointment that lurked in the corners of their eyes. They peered into the cot where Olamide lay as though expecting to discover a pillow wrapped in a shawl instead of a baby. They gushed appropriately about how happy they were and mentioned names of pastors and priests they had visited to pray for me to conceive. I acknowledged their lies with an appreciative smile, then herded them out of my bedroom before they could actually touch my child.

  Dotun came down from Lagos with his wife and children. They arrived before the ceremony, about the time the DJ was whispering Testing, testing, one, two, one, two into the microphone. I was in the bedroom, sitting on a bucket that contained a mixture of hot water, alum and antiseptic, wondering why all the masters of ceremony had to say those words and never something else. Moomi was standing guard to make sure that I did not stand up until enough steam had entered my vagina to tighten the walls.

  Moomi cackled. ‘Not long now, Akin’s fingers will start probing under your wrapper in the dark again.’

  I wished for more than her son’s fingers to probe at that later date, but I did not share this with my mother-in-law, whose thinly veiled references to sex were already making me uncomfortable.

  It should have been a relief when Dotun’s wife came in, liberating me from Moomi’s hypotheses about her son’s sexual prowess and offering me a reason to escape the steam that was making my sore vagina burn as though red pepper had been shoved into it. Instead, the heat in me increased as I rose to hug my weeping sister-in-law. Ajoke sobbed into my bare shoulder and I gripped her hand, afraid that she would break loose and pour the alum water mixture on my head. Surely she knew and I was doomed to disgrace on the happiest day of my life.

  She pulled back and laughed her peculiar laugh that always seemed to come from every part of her being, right from her toes up until it erupted from her mouth. ‘The Lord is good. Our God is so good.’ She smiled, her eyes full of pure joy and relief that mirrored what I felt in the first moment I held my daughter in my arms. Ajoke had never said anything to me at family gatherings about a baby; she was a woman who hardly ever said anything to me or anyone at all. I was surprised and shamed by her unusual display of emotion. I hugged her again so she could not see my eyes. Moomi joined in the loose hug. I was surrounded by their laughter and mine. Ajoke made delighted sounds that pricked me like a fork.

  Olamide yelled throughout the naming ceremony and if there hadn’t been a microphone, nobody would have heard the vicar call out her names. I went back upstairs to feed her until she slept. Downstairs the party continued until the early hours of the morning. Long after the live band had stopped performing, food and beer flowed until most of the guests dropped off to sleep on the blue metal chairs. I did not join in the festivities, even when a drunken Akin sang love songs and tried to drag me downstairs with him. I was not ready to leave my child with someone else, not even my mother-in-law. I thought of my mother. If she had been alive, I could have given Olamide to her and gone downstairs to dance.

  The next morning, Olamide was the first to wake up in the house. Her cries startled me out of my sleep. I bathed her and breastfed her. She soon fell asleep, still suckling at my breast. I waited for her mouth to loosen its grip on my nipple before tying her to my back with a wrapper. Then I went downstairs to find something to eat.

  I screamed as my feet hit the first step. I staggered downstairs still screaming, holding onto the banister for support. At the bottom of our flight of stairs, Funmi lay lifeless. She was dressed in a pink nightgown unlike anything I had ever seen before. It had only one strap on her left shoulder, the right side of the gown stopped at her navel, leaving her yellow breast bare. So this is all it takes to snatch a man from his wife’s bed, I thought, even as I screamed for help and lifted Funmi’s head from a small pool of blood; a bare yellow breast and a pink nightgown.

  Funmi’s body was already cold. I shook my head and screamed her name. My mother-in-law raced downstairs with a wrapper tied haphazardly over her breasts; Akin and Ajoke were a few steps behind her.

  ‘What happened?’ Moomi yelled, even though she was already standing beside me.

  ‘Funmi?’ Akin was squinting at his wife as if he didn’t know who it was. His breath stank, like a mix of garlic and alcohol.

  Moomi knelt beside me, lifted Funmi’s hand and watched it fall heavily to the ground. She tried to force a finger through Funmi’s clenched teeth while calling the girl’s name over and over.

  ‘Ahhh, I’m stuck, I am now firmly stuck in a tight place,’ Moomi said as she stood up. Then she threw her hands in the air and began to dance. She hit herself and shuffled left and right, bending her knees and screaming at intervals. ‘I have accrued a debt I cannot pay back; I’m in trouble. Funmi, what do you want me to tell your
mother? Ahhh, I’m stuck.’

  It was Ajoke who thought to check Funmi’s pulse and heartbeat.

  I clung to Akin as Ajoke bent over Funmi, digging my nails into his arm. Moomi continued to slap her head, but was quiet when Ajoke looked up at us.

  ‘She is gone,’ Ajoke said softly.

  ‘Ahhh! I’m in hot oil! Funmi! Ahhh! I’m in debt-o. Eternal debt,’ Moomi screamed and began to dance again.

  ‘What is going on?’

  We all turned to the staircase. Dotun stood at the top, wearing only boxer shorts.

  I shut my eyes and wished Funmi had picked a better day to die. A day unattached to my Olamide’s birth and naming ceremony. I wasn’t supposed to think like that; I should have been sad. Instead, I felt inconvenienced, upstaged even, but not sad, not at all.

  We changed the tiles in the sitting room because Funmi’s blood wouldn’t come out. Sometimes I stood at the base of the stairs where I had found her body and stared upstairs. I half expected her to sashay downstairs one more time in the heels she wore around the house, with her footfalls sounding like nails being driven into concrete. I kept expecting her to turn up on our doorstep, her hand held just so I could see her new manicure. Sometimes, as I grated okra into a bowl of water, I could feel her eyes on the back of my neck, but she was never behind me when I turned around, it was just the kitchen door swinging on its hinge. She wasn’t in the room she had shared with my husband. Even her clothes were gone from the wardrobe. There were rows of naked hangers that her sister hadn’t packed when she came for Funmi’s things.

  The sister was a startling copy of Funmi, just a few inches taller. I needed a third look at her flat slippers to convince myself she was not Funmi in heels. She did not speak to anyone as she lugged her late sister’s possessions out of our house. I was relieved when she left. I had been expecting drama, a slap or two on my cheek for outliving my rival – surely that made me a suspect in Funmi’s sudden death? I had been afraid someone would suggest I had pushed the poor girl down the stairs, but no one did. It was agreed that, groggy and probably drunk after Olamide’s naming ceremony, Funmi had slipped on her way up the stairs at some point in the night.