Stay With Me

by AYÒ. BÁMI ADÉBÁYÒ.

  And so, from that day on, I looked forward to coming home. Yejide didn’t bother to explain the increasing number of baby items she was leaving behind in my room, just handed Rotimi over to me as soon as I walked through the door.

  Every morning, Rotimi woke me up at 5. Her wails were as punctual as an alarm clock. I would lean against a wall and hold her for about an hour. I watched her face daily, looked into her eyes and felt something like faith, knowing even then that this one would live, she would stay. She was not a playful child; there was already something serious in the way she held her chin. She seldom babbled. Initially, our morning hours were quiet as long as I didn’t try to sit down or let her go. And then one morning she looked up at me, one fist beneath her chin as though she was pondering what she was about to say, and said ‘Baba’. She said it two more times before she went back to sleep, as if she knew that I needed to hear the word again. Each time she said it, it was like an absolution. That simple word lifted the crushing weight of Dotun’s letters and all my mistakes just a bit.

  I felt as though she’d given me a gift, something almost divine because it was perfectly timed. She’d claimed me as her father. Yes, she was just a child who knew nothing about the workings of the world. But still, she claimed me as her father. I felt compelled to give something of myself back to her, to forge some connection that would last as long as we both lived. I started to whisper stories to her, told her the stories Moomi used to tell Dotun, Arinola and me.

  I didn’t have any favourites, but there was a story I still remember telling Rotimi very often. Moomi often began each tale with a saying. For this story, she always started by saying: Olomo lo l’aye – He who has children owns the world.

  In the time of Forever, when most animals walked upright and humans still had their eyes on their knees, Ijapa the tortoise had a wife called Iyannibo.

  They loved each other and lived happily together. They only had each other – they did not have a child, not even one solitary child. They begged Eledumare for a child for many years, but none came. Iyannibo cried every day. Every day people ridiculed her everywhere she went, pointing their fingers and laughing behind her back in the market.

  Iyannibo wanted a child more than anything else, more than life itself. So one day Ijapa got tired of seeing his wife cry, and he went to a far-away land where there was a powerful Babalawo. He had to cross seven mountains and seven rivers to get to this far-away land. It was a long road, but Ijapa did not mind. This Babalawo was the most powerful one in the world at that time. Ijapa was sure that if there was a solution under heaven, he would find it with the Babalawo.

  When Ijapa got to the Babalawo, he begged the Babalawo for help. The Babalawo prepared a meal. He put it in a calabash and asked Ijapa to take it back to his wife. The Babalawo assured Ijapa that once the wife ate the meal she would get pregnant. He warned Ijapa not to taste the meal at all or open the calabash before he got home. Ijapa thanked the Babalawo and left with the meal.

  On his way home, Ijapa had to cross the seven mountains and seven rivers again. The meal smelled so delicious, the sun was hot and he was tired. After the third mountain, he stopped beside the third river to rest and drink some water. There was nothing for him to eat, no fruit-bearing trees around, not even grass. Ijapa was starving.

  Ijapa decided to take a look at the meal, just one look. He was not going to eat the food at all; he would just look at it. He opened the calabash and saw that it was asaro. And it was rich asaro; as well as the mashed yam and palm oil, there was fish, meat, vegetables and crayfish.

  Ijapa was tempted. His stomach grumbled very loudly. But he thought of his wife’s empty arms and closed the calabash. He continued his journey. The sun became hotter, he became hungrier and even more tired. So he stopped after the fifth mountain just beside the fifth river to rest.

  Ijapa thought to himself: I will just touch the meal with a finger and feel how the palm oil rubs against it. I can tell if the Babalawo used good quality palm oil that way. I don’t want Iyannibo to eat anything that will upset her stomach.

  Ijapa touched the asaro with just one finger. Just to tell the quality of the palm oil. He rubbed the oil between his hands. It felt right. It feels right, he said to himself, but it might still not taste right. So he took a tiny bit more and tasted it. Immediately, his stomach began to rumble like thunder and he wolfed down the meal in a few minutes. He could not resist or stop himself once that small taste passed the gate of his lips. He smacked his lips after the meal and washed his hands off at the stream.

  Ijapa fell into a deep sleep immediately.

  When he woke up, three days had passed, but he did not know this. He felt as though he had been sleeping for just an hour. He decided that he would head back to the Babalawo’s house. I will just tell him the asaro fell and poured away, Ijapa said to himself. I am sure he will make another one for me, he is a kind man.

  Ijapa tried to get up and realised it was a struggle. He looked down and, behold, his stomach was big. In fact, it was as big as that of a woman who had been pregnant for nine months.

  As fast as he could, he ran back over the five mountains and four rivers that he had crossed. When he got to the Babalawo’s house he sang:

  Babalawo mo wa bebe

  Alugbirin

  Babalawo mo wa bebe

  Alugbirin

  Oni n mama f’owo b’enu

  Alugbirin

  Oni n mama f’ese b’enu

  Alugbirin

  Ogun to se fun mi l’ekan

  Alugbirin

  Mo f’owo b’obe mo fi b’enu

  Alugbirin

  Mo wa b’oju w’okun

  O ri tandi

  Alugbirin

  Babalawo, I’ve come to beg you

  Babalawo, I’ve come to beg you

  You told me not to put my hand in my mouth

  You told me not to put my feet in my mouth

  The medicine you made for me the other time

  I touched it and put my hand in my mouth

  Then I looked at my belly

  And it was big

  Rotimi always fell asleep before I finished the song, so I’d stop telling the story then. I never began the story with Moomi’s Olomo lo l’aye saying. I’d believed her once, I’d accepted – like the tortoise and his wife – that there was no way to be in the world without an offspring. I had thought that having children who called me Baba would change the very shape of my world, would cleanse me, even wipe away the memory of pushing Funmi down the stairs. And though I told Rotimi the story many times, I no longer believed that having a child was equal to owning the world.

  36

  Although lightning did strike the same spot twice, I didn’t think it would leave destruction in its wake the second time around. I took Rotimi in for her genotype test shortly after her first birthday, then had my worst fears confirmed when I picked up the results on my way back from work a couple of days later. But I was calm by the time I got home, was sure my daughter would survive in spite of the red-lettered SS verdict on the result sheet. Still can’t explain where the assurance came from, but it was there, firm as the ground I walked on. Yejide covered her eyes with her hands when I told her the results – other than that she showed no reaction to the news. And when Rotimi had her first sickle-cell crisis, she refused to stay with her in the hospital.

  ‘Me? I should spend the night with her? Akin, I’m exhausted, totally exhausted,’ Yejide said, just before leaving the ward after Rotimi was admitted. ‘I need to rest.’

  I blamed myself for the way she spoke, as though all possibility of joy had been wrung out of her. I watched her trudge out of the ward, wondering if she just needed a good night’s sleep or whether her tiredness had morphed into a permanent weariness.

  After about two hours, I was allowed to sit with Rotimi. She looked so small, out of place in the hospital bed. She was hooked up to an IV drip. I wondered if it was enough, if the doctors knew what they were doing, using a single drip to
battle something that had already snatched a son from us. I sat in a chair beside her bed, keeping my hands on the edge of the mattress, afraid to touch her.

  ‘Mama?’ she said after a while, lifting her free hand. ‘Mama mi?’

  I cleared my throat and stared at the bedpost. ‘Your mother is tired, she is sleeping.’

  I couldn’t look into her big brown eyes while I lied. Even with my eyes glued to the bedpost, the lies felt so wrong, like something I needed forgiveness for, forgiveness from a child whose face was a miniature version of Yejide’s own. So much so that looking at her felt as if I was looking at Yejide through a minimising glass. Every feature on Rotimi’s face belonged to Yejide, except for the nose. Her nose was already flat and wide, exactly like mine. I loved it when people noticed this, when they said This child has taken her father’s nose. Her father’s nose.

  Later that evening, a doctor trailed by students carrying notepads came in to check on Rotimi. I’d wanted to be a doctor once when I was a little child, before my right hand was long enough to touch my left ear, before I was old enough to start school. It was at a time when I didn’t even know there were other professions, when I thought it was the only thing that people who went to school could become.

  After the others had moved on to another patient, one of the students spoke to me in a hushed tone. ‘I’m carrying out a research, sir. It’s about sickle-cell disease. It will help pre-marital counselling. I would be glad if you could fill –’

  I nodded like an agama gone mad, snatched the questionnaire he was holding out to me, eager to get him out of my face. I wondered how many questionnaires Yejide had filled out during the days she’d spent in the hospital with Sesan. The questions were tightly packed on a single page as though the student was trying to save money on photocopying; just trying to read the words gave me a headache.

  ‘Baba mi.’

  ‘Yes, dear. What?’ I welcomed the distraction and put aside the questionnaire.

  ‘Mama mi?’ she asked, her voice barely audible. She breathed heavily as though saying that one word had sapped all her strength.

  I held her hand, looked into her eyes this time. ‘Your mummy is coming, soon, very soon, but while we wait, let me tell you a story. It’s about Ijapa the tortoise and his wife Iyannibo.’

  I repeated the beginning of the story, about the barren couple and the futile attempts to get pregnant. I described Ijapa’s visit to the Babalawo, the pot of stew he couldn’t resist, his shameful return to the Babalawo after he had ruined his only solution with his own hands. Rotimi was still awake when I finished the song, so I continued the tale.

  When Ijapa got back to the Babalawo, he begged and begged. He rolled and rolled on the floor, begging for forgiveness, pleading for another chance.

  ‘No, I cannot help you,’ said the Babalawo.

  ‘Help me, not for my sake. Think of Iyannibo, my wife. Help me, no, help my poor wife, help her.’

  The Babalawo thought of poor Iyannibo. And though Ijapa had done something horrible, had disobeyed instructions, for the sake of poor Iyannibo, the Babalawo had mercy on him. He gave Ijapa a potion to drink. Soon after Ijapa drank it, his stomach was flat again.

  The story Moomi told me doesn’t stop there. Apparently the tortoise and his wife couldn’t just stay as Mr and Mrs Tortoise, that wouldn’t be enough. It goes on to tell how the tortoise’s wife has a baby so that everyone can live happily forever and ever. I didn’t bother to tell my daughter that part. It was the lie I’d believed in the beginning. Yejide would have a child and we would be happy forever. The cost didn’t matter. It didn’t matter how many rivers we had to cross. At the end of it all was this stretch of happiness that was supposed to begin only after we had children and not a minute before.

  Rotimi spent a week in the hospital that first time. I could only take two days off work to sit with her, but I spent the nights in the hospital, sleeping on a wooden chair in front of the ward, dreaming again for the first time in years about Funmi.

  Funmi had been on my mind since Rotimi had been diagnosed. It was impossible not to wonder if Olamide and Sesan had died as a form of retribution. Whether, on some universal scale of justice, by some skewed process of karma or esan, the children had paid the price for my sin. Whenever I woke up from nightmares about Funmi, I couldn’t help but wonder if the dreams were an omen about Rotimi’s fate, if three children equalled an adult on the universe’s scales of justice.

  The thoughts never lasted beyond the dark hours before dawn. As the sun rose and I went in to check on my daughter, I was able to dispel them. This child was going to survive every crisis, be the exception to every rule – live – I was sure of it. If there was indeed a universal hand doling out justice, it would take me instead of the innocent children.

  Besides, I’d never intended to kill Funmi.

  On the night Funmi died, the night of Olamide’s naming ceremony, all I’d wanted was to make it to my bedroom without tripping on the stairs. Thanks to the bottles of beer I’d downed, the steps swam before my eyes. I held on to the banister as I climbed. Funmi was right behind me, slurring her words.

  ‘So how did Yejide get pregnant?’

  I didn’t have to think before I answered, ‘The way people get pregnant.’

  Funmi laughed. ‘Do you think I’m a fool? Your lies and the fake nonsense you’ve been doing in bed, you think I don’t know? Is it because I’ve not decided to expose you?’

  I kept walking up the stairs. Whether I was too drunk to respond or I trusted that my silence would be interpreted in a way that favoured me, I can no longer tell for sure.

  I do remember that Funmi grabbed my trouser-leg from behind, but that didn’t bother me.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Tell me how a penis that has never been hard makes a woman pregnant? And don’t tell me again that it only happens when you are with me. I don’t believe that any more.’

  I’ve never been sure if Funmi whispered those words or shouted them. But that night it sounded as though the words were being bellowed, it felt as though they were echoing through every room in the house. She’d already let go of my trousers when I turned around to cover her mouth with my hand. And my palm did touch her face, cover her mouth for a fleeting moment before she staggered, fell backwards, and tumbled down the stairs.

  When she finally sent for me, Moomi didn’t ask me to come and see her at home. She asked me to come to her stall in the market. It was a well-calculated insult. A move meant to remind me that she had never stepped into the shop I bought for her after Dotun left the country.

  Moomi had always complained about the market. She hated the ground because it was slippery and muddy during the rainy season, hard and dusty in the dry season. She despised the market women who dumped their trash right into the street, hated the persistent din, the unbearable heat of several people pressing into each other, trying to make it through the narrow streets. She loathed how every day someone’s hand, handbag or oversized ass would knock over her wares. How hurrying feet crushed her tomatoes and peppers before she could pick them up and put them back in the tray. But above all, she hated the stench – she never stopped noticing it. Her nostrils never adapted to the disgusting odour of too many things decaying in a single space.

  All her life, even as a young bride whose husband refused to give the money for a wooden stall, Moomi had always believed that her place in life was worth more than a street-side stall in the market. In her heart, she knew her place was with the women who could afford to sell their wares in a shop, protected from the wicked heat of the marketplace. That was why I got her the biggest shop in the most expensive section of the market. Yet, when I visited her in Ayeso and gave her the keys to the shop, she threw them back at me.

  When I showed up at her stall, she acted as if she didn’t know me, refused to acknowledge my greeting. I sat down on a wooden bench for the next half-hour while she attended to customers.

  I knew she was ready to talk to me when she pulled a tra
nsparent piece of nylon over her trays of tomato and pepper. She sat on the wooden bench, as far from me as she could possibly sit without sitting on air. She greeted me with the only words she’d deigned to speak to me since she had asked me to cut her legs off if she ever entered my house again. ‘Where is my son? When is Dotun coming home?’

  Even though I’d told her Dotun was safe in Australia, doing very well too, if his letters were to be believed, she acted as if I’d locked him away in a basement, just so I could make her life miserable. I’d learned the hard way that there was no good way to answer her questions. All the answers I’d tried only fanned the flames of her anger. Ignoring her questions was the best thing to do, the easy thing to do.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me to meet you at home? What can we talk about in the market?’

  ‘Why? Akin asks me why. Let me tell you why, I have to come here and sell my goods because I don’t want to eat grass and sand. You know that is what people eat when they don’t have any money? I thank my God for your sister.’ She tilted her face to look at the skies. ‘My Maker, I thank you for Arinola, she always remembers her poor old mother. If I had given birth to just Dotun and this one here, I would have been boiling sand for breakfast now.’

  I sighed. ‘Moomi, is this what you have called me here to discuss?’

  ‘And so? If that is what I want to say, are you going to walk out on me? It will not amaze me if you do. My words are meaningless to you now.’

  ‘Moomi, what do you want?’

  She folded her arms across her chest. ‘You can perform any magic you want, keep tricking me. You’re your father’s son and you too can tell enough lies to wake the dead.’

  ‘Why do you want to see me?’

  ‘Why are you shouting? Is that how you talk to your mother? Like a child with no home training?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, Ma. Don’t be angry, please.’

  ‘How is your wife?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘She didn’t even send her greetings? So it has come to that now? You know she has not visited me in over a year? And we live in this same town, this same town.’