Stay With Me

by AYÒ. BÁMI ADÉBÁYÒ.

  I sat on the bed, imagining Ajoke and her children huddled in the corner of a room. ‘God help them.’

  ‘If they are still fighting now, I don’t think Babangida is going anywhere.’

  ‘You should tell Dotun that Ajoke called.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ He lifted Sesan and piggybacked him out of the room.

  ‘There’s breakfast in the kitchen,’ I called after him. ‘I made moin moin.’

  I stayed in the room, worrying what the next few days would be like. The more I thought about it, the more I hoped Babangida would manage to hold on to power, not because I liked the way he was running the country, but because the status quo was the devil we knew. If the new officers took over and really expelled the northern states, the situation would probably devolve into another civil war within a few weeks.

  Akin yelled something and I went out to the landing.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Dotun thinks he brought his transistor radio,’ he said. ‘He’s looking for it in his room.’ Akin was standing in the middle of the sitting room. Sesan was now sitting on his shoulders, stretching to touch the ceiling.

  I went downstairs. Since it was Dotun, it took forever for him to locate the radio and the right-sized batteries. When he finally switched it on, all the stations were playing instrumental pieces, signalling that things were still in a confused state and none of them was confident enough to return to regular programming. Dotun settled for a station that was playing what sounded like classical music. We sat unspeaking, surrounded by the sound of music, waiting for news. Suddenly the radio went silent and for a moment I thought the batteries were flat, but it soon crackled with static and a voice spoke to us.

  I, Lt-Colonel Gandi Tola Zidon, hereby assure you that the dissidents have been routed. You are all advised to remain calm and await further announcements. Thank you.

  Dotun got on the phone and spoke to Ajoke and the children. Then we all continued to listen to the radio until the batteries ran out. There were more announcements, speeches and broadcasts which told us that, yes, there had been bloodshed, but nothing had changed after all.

  Iya Bolu was now my tenant. She held on to her salon after I bought the building and her husband paid the rent on the first day of every month. She had hardly any customers, so there was no way she could have afforded the rent without her husband’s help. Yet she refused to close down the salon.

  ‘I cannot just be sitting down at home,’ she would say any time I suggested that she should let the salon go. ‘Let me be waking up and coming here until I know of another job I can do.’

  She continued to spend most of her time in my salon and I began to stop customers from sitting in the chair I came to think of as Iya Bolu’s chair. When her daughters returned from school in the afternoons, they ate lunch in her salon and did their homework there. If the girls wandered over into my shop, she shooed them away with the same words every time: Go and read your books.

  ‘That Bolu is going to be a doctor by God’s grace,’ Iya Bolu would say after the children had grumbled their way into the corridor.

  Usually, my customers would say ‘Amen’ as Bolu and her siblings disappeared down the corridor. But one day, one of my regulars, Aunty Sadia, was in the salon when Iya Bolu made her declaration. Instead of saying Amen, Aunty Sadia laughed.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’ Iya Bolu said, standing up. ‘What is funny?’

  I was removing Aunty Sadia’s weave, using a blade to sever the thread that held the attachments to her hair. She looked into the mirror as she replied to Iya Bolu.

  ‘That your yellow-skin daughter? Don’t you see? She is already becoming beautiful. You think the boys will let her rest?’

  She said the word ‘beautiful’ as if beauty was a bad habit Bolu had developed, something bordering on criminal behaviour for which she would one day be justifiably punished.

  Iya Bolu came to stand beside me, arms akimbo. ‘Ehen, so if Bolu is beautiful, she cannot read? She cannot go to the university?’

  Aunty Sadia smiled into the mirror. ‘Just wait until her breasts are sweet oranges and all the men that see her start standing stiff like soldiers. Small time, pregnancy will come. Then you will understand what I’m saying.’

  ‘Not my daughter. God forbid.’ Iya Bolu leaned closer to Aunty Sadia and raised her voice. ‘My own daughter will go to school.’

  I stared at Aunty Sadia, waiting for her to apologise or say something to pacify Iya Bolu. She did not speak.

  ‘There is nothing stopping a beautiful girl from facing her books, Aunty,’ I said finally, patting Iya Bolu on the shoulders. I was done removing Aunty Sadia’s weave, so I motioned a stylist to loosen her cornrows.

  I went to the corner of the salon where Sesan was asleep in his cot and held his wrist for a few moments, feeling the reassuring rhythm of his pulse.

  ‘I’m just saying that the hard thing is sweet. Abi? Even you, her mother, if it was not sweet, would you have given birth to her?’ Aunty Sadia had turned in her seat and was smiling at Iya Bolu. It was the closest thing to an apology that she would offer.

  Iya Bolu shook her head. ‘My own daughter is going to be a doctor. After that, she can enjoy all the hard things she wants.’

  ‘OK, then she will be a doctor before the stiff soldiers get her. Not that the world will end if they get her first and then she becomes a doctor.’ Aunty Sadia laughed and slapped Iya Bolu’s hand. ‘At least, we thank God it doesn’t kill people.’

  Iya Bolu joined in the laughter. ‘Some of us would be dead if it killed. We thank God the pestle doesn’t kill the mortar. If it did, how would we be able to enjoy wonderful pounded yam?’

  ‘But this God is a great God-o. Iya Bolu, you know when that thing is asleep, just soft like that, you can disrespect it anyhow. But once it stands like this?’ Aunty Sadia got up and stood at attention. ‘Hard like that? I just want to thank the God that made it that way.’

  Iya Bolu clapped. ‘It is that hardness that gives it value and honour, o jare.’

  ‘Abi?’ Aunty Sadia sat down. ‘What do we want to do with a soft pestle? Can it pound yam?’

  As they talked, I became uncomfortable. I thought about the last time Akin and I had made love and I wanted to ask Aunty Sadia questions – she seemed like the kind of person who would slap the back of my hand and give straightforward answers. But I bit my tongue because I was not the kind of woman who discussed her sex life with women in a salon.

  The stylist was now done with Aunty Sadia. I went to her and stuck a comb in her hair. ‘So, which style do you want?’ I asked.

  ‘Madam, why is your face hard like this? Abi, you don’t eat midnight-pounded yam?’

  ‘Don’t mind her – that is how she will be frowning as if she’s a virgin.’ Iya Bolu pointed at Sesan’s cot. ‘But we have evidence that she can do very well.’

  ‘Madam, which style do you want?’

  Aunty Sadia stared at me for a while, a smile still playing at the corner of her lips. I felt nervous beneath her gaze and was worried that she would keep talking about sex.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Just weaving, all back. Weave all back.’

  I began to rub pomade into her hair, grateful that she had dropped the subject. I pushed the questions I wanted to ask away and let her soft tresses slide through my fingers.

  She smiled into the mirror as I sectioned the hair. ‘I know your type. You will do your face as if you are Mary, but once the bedroom door is shut like this, you fire.’

  I bit my lower lip and said nothing.

  23

  About a month after Sesan started kindergarten, Akin took him to the hospital for some routine tests. It was the sort of thing Akin did, like buying hundreds of shares for Sesan on every birthday, or having a children’s school-fees savings account that he deposited money in every month from the day we got married, or a yearly medical and dental check-up for himself. So I was not surprised when my son came home and proudly showed me the invisible s
pot that had been pricked on his finger for blood samples. He told me that he had not cried, though the doctor’s needle hurt. I kissed the finger and told him he was the bravest boy in the world. He skipped away to Dotun’s room to continue to show off.

  By the time the test results were ready, Akin was in Lagos for a series of meetings that would last two weeks. I went to the hospital to get the results. Even then, I hated hospitals. The antiseptic smell that clung to one’s nostrils for so long after one left the place. The horrid white dresses and coats most of the workers wore, white like funeral shrouds. The blood that assaulted your eyes even in places where you least expected it. The screams of pain and loss that spiralled through the corridors. I did not want to be there.

  ‘Madam, where is your husband?’ Dr Bello asked before I could sit down.

  ‘Away. He is in Lagos at the moment,’ I said.

  The office was a cubicle that smelled of iodine.

  ‘I would actually prefer to discuss this with him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said I would –’

  ‘I heard. This is my son and you won’t give me his test results? What do you mean?’

  ‘OK, madam, please sit down,’ he said, inching back in his seat. ‘But you must tell your husband to come and see me.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. I knew then that he was not going to tell me everything that he knew.

  ‘So, madam, about your son . . . you know about red blood cells?’

  I swept through the recesses of my mind for some recollections from biology class. I remembered Mr Olaiya, the biology teacher whose oversized trousers fell down to his knees on a few occasions and brightened up his boring class. I remembered nothing about blood cells, red, green or blue as they might be. I shook my head.

  ‘Red blood cells carry oxygen to the –’

  ‘Oga, doctor, is anything wrong? With my son?’ I did not need a biology lesson. Besides my heart was beating so fast, I was sure I would die before the doctor came to the heart of the matter if he did not get on with it.

  ‘Do you know about sickle-cell disease?’

  My heart stopped. My brain stopped. Every organ in my body stopped. The room felt airless. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your son has sickle-cell disease.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘My God, no.’ For the next twenty-four hours I would mutter it, whisper it.

  ‘I’m sorry. But it is not a hopeless condition. There are things you must know. First you need to bring him in for a full exam . . .’

  The doctor’s mouth kept moving, wrapping itself around words that trailed by my ears instead of sliding into them. When he shut his mouth, I stood up and left the office. I dropped the key many times before I could unlock my car. It was 2 p.m. I drove across the road to the Franciscan Nursery and Primary to pick up my son.

  He wanted to walk to the car as I led him out of his classroom. I carried him, squeezing him close to me until he yelped. I held on tighter. I kept glancing at him during the ride home, taking my eyes off the road for dangerous periods of time. He was telling me something about school in his still-warbled tongue. He was excited about this thing. He smiled, gestured with his hands and drew shapes in the air. He bounced in his seat as he babbled. I tried to hear what he was saying, to listen to this thing he was so excited about. I heard nothing. I could only see him. His dirty fingernails, dimpled brown cheeks, his yellow shorts and shirt that had grass stains on them again. He was the most beautiful child in the world. I wanted to tuck him back into my stomach and keep him safe from life, from hospitals, from stiff white caps and ward coats.

  ‘Momma, what’s wrong?’ Sesan asked, holding up my bunch of keys. He looked irritated.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said after we got inside.

  I fed him lunch, and helped him with homework. I watched him watch television, gave him dinner, and bathed him. I sat on the rugged floor. I watched him watch more television until he fell asleep on the sitting-room couch. There were no curfews for him that night.

  ‘Why are you crying?’ Dotun asked. He had just come into the house.

  I touched my cheeks. They were wet. When did I start crying?

  ‘He is going to die too. Sesan is dying.’ Nervous laughter bubbled inside me. I clamped my lips together to keep it down. If I laughed, I knew I would laugh through eternity.

  Dotun hurried to my side, put his ear to Sesan’s chest and sat beside me frowning. ‘He’s fine.’ His breath smelled like alcohol and cigarettes.

  ‘He’s a sickler. Sickler.’ The bubbling inside me broke free. Tears flowed, not laughter. It blurred my vision and clogged my nose. The only sounds I could hear were my sobs. They blocked out Sesan’s soft snores. I needed to hear those snores. The sound was my life. I crawled to the couch to listen for them. But my sobs became louder and my eyes were blurred. I could barely see my son. My sobs swallowed Sesan’s snores, swallowed me.

  ‘It is OK. OK, he’s OK.’ I felt Dotun’s hand on my neck. Stroking. Calming.

  I felt his arms around my waist. I was falling, drowning in my sobs.

  He was there, holding me in his arms, his mouth whispering that it would be OK.

  I kissed him to swallow that word ‘OK’. To catch it from his lips and tuck it safely inside me, in the place where Olamide had been ripped from my navel. I wanted the word. I got it. Then I wanted more, needed more, craved more, feverishly. More. More. More.

  His tongue, his hands, his hardness deep inside me again.

  When later his hardness became limp inside me, it still was not enough. I craved more than ever.

  He rolled off me. I crawled to the couch, placing my face beside my son’s. His eyes were closed.

  Did he see us? How could I have exposed him? Had he seen us? Oh God, please let him think it was a dream if he did. Oh God, please. Please. Please.

  I sat there until dawn, naked, listening to my son snore, loathing the woman I had become.

  24

  I had been taught and I believed that education, the best that money could buy, was the greatest thing I could give my son. I was ready to indenture myself if necessary to give Sesan a good education. I revered degrees and the people who held them. The more, the better. The minute I felt he was old enough, I shipped my son off to the best primary school in town, a Catholic school that would teach him the fear of God too.

  The day after his diagnosis, I wanted Sesan to stay at home, in bed where I could feed him, fan him and just watch him. I did not care if for the rest of his life my son was unable to add two and two to get four. It did not matter any more if he never spoke English without the heavy Ijesa accent that refused to quit the tongues of some of his aunts and uncles. I did not care if he never became an engineer or a lawyer, or an accountant like his father. If, for the rest of his life, he did nothing but stay alive, that would have been enough for me.

  At some point in the night, Dotun had thrown a wrapper over me. Then he left the house without telling me where he was going. I did not ask. As sunlight seeped in through an opening in the curtains, I tied the wrapper across my breasts and tapped my son awake; it was time to get him ready for school. I let him go that day, even though I did not want to let him out of my sight, because a mother does not do what she wants, she does what is best for her child.

  My hands shook on the steering wheel as I drove Sesan to school. I stood in the parking lot and watched him run to his class. My son did not even look my way.

  I drove to the roundabout, parked in front of the courthouse beside the Owa’s Palace and went into the public library. I couldn’t find a single volume on sickle cell. I read biology textbooks. I read about blood, red blood cells and haemoglobin. I read the textbooks again and again until it was almost 2 and I had to go and pick up Sesan. I moved him out of his room that night and reinstated him in the room I shared with Akin. He would sleep beside me, where I could watch him vigilantly.

  Dotun came to me on a Saturday night, a night when he should have been out as usual drinking at Ijesa Sports C
lub on Akin’s membership. He did not knock; he just walked in as though from the other side of the door he could see that I was sitting up in bed with my back against the wall. I had not seen him since the night he teased my body to orgasm after orgasm while my son slept on the couch. His brother was still away, due back in a few days.

  Dotun’s eyes were bloodshot, the irises stood out against the redness.

  ‘Let’s talk,’ he said, standing by the half-open door.

  ‘Please go away.’ I did not want to talk to him.

  He sat near my feet. He looked sorry, guilty and a little afraid. He could not even meet my eye. Instead he focused on my forehead as though it was a television screen. I never imagined that the loud-mouthed Dotun knew the meaning of guilt. I expected some remorse; I was his brother’s wife after all. But the way the sides of his mouth dipped towards his chin suggested shame. Shame was something I had never associated with him, he always appeared above it with his easy smile, his inappropriate remarks, and the way he picked his nose and scratched his balls in public.

  ‘What we did –’

  ‘Will not happen again,’ I said.

  ‘I just . . . I don’t know what came . . . the devil . . . Akin . . .’

  It was the first time I would hear Dotun say his brother’s name just like that, just the name, stripped of the honour due to his older brother, unprefixed with ‘bros’ or ‘brother’. Not Brother mi, not egbon mi or Bros Akin – just Akin, as if somehow my husband had become his equal in age at some point during the week, perhaps while Dotun lay with me on the sitting-room rug.

  I leaned forward and grabbed his chin. ‘Your brother will never ever know about this.’

  The downturned lips were now trembling and it looked as though he would cry. I hissed, gripping his chin harder until my nails dug into his skin, ‘Stop shaking like waist beads o jare.’

  Perhaps it was guilt that loosened his tongue, a need to justify the desire that leapt into his eyes the moment my hand touched his chin, a way to excuse the naked need he struggled to swallow. Perhaps he assumed that I knew the things he was going to say, the secrets that Akin had hidden from me while carefully feeding my insecurities.