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.
I sat up when she switched off the lamp. Waited for her to deliver the punch line so I could slide back beneath the covers. But she just stood beside the bed, grinning. I wasn’t amused. She was violating my Sunday policy. I practised strict observance of the day of rest, never voluntarily opening my eyes before noon. She knew that.
‘I’ll get you a cup of coffee.’ She pulled back the curtains a bit, let in a slice of sunlight.
I got up when she left the room. Went to the bathroom, turned on the cold water and put my head beneath the shower head for a couple of minutes. I went back into the room without a towel. Let the water trickle down my chest and back. Let it soak the waistband of my shorts a little.
She was back in the room when I got there. Sitting in bed with her legs crossed at the ankles. I noticed then that she was not in her nightgown. She was dressed in shorts and a blue T-shirt. Looked like she’d been awake for some time.
There was a tray beside her. Laden with plates of fried yam, a bowl of fish stew and two cups of coffee. The woman who could spend weeks complaining if I had a sandwich in bed had brought a bowl of stew into the room. I should have realised then that something was wrong.
I sat on the bed, took a sip of coffee. ‘When did you wake up?’
‘Akin, I think it’s going to be a girl.’
Nothing had prepared me for a Yejide who thought she got pregnant on a mountain. Didn’t know what to say to her. I ate my breakfast and watched her closely. Listened to her talk. By the time the last fried yam was gone, it was obvious she didn’t think she’d got pregnant on that damned mountain. She was convinced she had.
I placed the tray on the bedside table, pulled Yejide close. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘You need to rest, sleep a bit more.’
‘You don’t believe me.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
She wriggled out of my arms. ‘You haven’t said you believe me either, you’ve just been eating all this time. You are not even excited or happy. You haven’t said congratulations yet and you’ve had your coffee, so it’s not that.’
She wanted me to congratulate her. For getting pregnant on a mountain.
‘Akin?’ She gripped my hand, her nails dug into my palm. ‘Do you believe me? Tell me, do you believe me?’
‘Things like that don’t happen. You need to stop going to those places with Moomi. I’ve told you that before. All those people are liars, total conmen.’
She let go of my hand. ‘Your mother did not go with me.’
‘What? You are going to those crooks all by yourself now?’
‘You need to believe.’ She frowned, shook her head. ‘Sometimes I feel sorry for you.’
‘What?’
‘You don’t believe anything.’
‘What is all this? Because I don’t believe a man in a green robe waved a wand and made you pregnant?’
She sighed. ‘He didn’t use a wand, I carried a – Never mind, you’ll just think it’s bizarre.’
‘I already think it’s bizarre. What did you carry? God, I can’t believe we are having this conversation.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She smiled, laying a hand on her belly. ‘You know what? I’ll go and get tested at the hospital soon and then you’ll believe too that something special happened on that mountain. I really think I might be pregnant.’
‘My God.’ I felt like I was talking to a stranger. ‘Yejide, let me make this clear. You did not get pregnant on that mountain. If you were not pregnant when you went up, you were not pregnant when you came down.’ I put a hand on her knee. ‘Do you understand me?’
‘Akin. In nine months, you’ll know they are not crooks.’ She held my chin, kissed my nose. ‘You’ll see. Now, let’s talk about something else.’
The nose-kissing did it. Opened my eyes to the fact that I needed to do something before she lost her mind. At some point that Sunday morning, I decided it was time to get her pregnant. End all the crazy visits to priests and prophets once and for all. But first, I had to wait until she was ready.
‘I may be going to Lagos next weekend,’ I said.
‘What are you going to do in Lagos?’
‘I need to see Dotun about some investments.’
‘Dotun and investments? Just be careful with your brother; sometimes I think he is nothing but trouble.’
She was wrong about being pregnant, but she was right about Dotun.
8
My period was due the week after my visit to the mountain. It didn’t show. By the end of the month my breasts were so tender that putting on a bra aroused me. I was vomiting every morning at 7 a.m. like clockwork.
I was sure that I was pregnant and I believed my body was telling me things a test would soon confirm. I knew the test had to come before any form of real celebration, but I was excited about how wonderful everything would be as soon as the doctors confirmed that I was pregnant. I did not talk to Akin about what was going on in my body because I did not want him to puncture my hopes. We were not exactly speaking to each other. He spent most evenings at the flat he rented for Funmi. I spent some of my evenings examining my stomach from different angles in the bathroom mirror.
‘What are you doing?’ Akin asked some weeks into my pregnancy. I had not seen him come into the bathroom.
‘How is your wife?’ I said, pulling down my blouse.
He moved closer and lifted the blouse. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
I yanked the blouse down. ‘Why does there have to be something wrong with me?’
‘I’m just concerned. Why were you –?’
‘I told you. I am pregnant.’
Akin stepped back as though I had hit him in the jaw. He stared at me as if I had grown a horn on the bridge of my nose. Then he laughed. It was a short sound that would haunt me in my sleep.
‘Have you been having sex . . .’ The laughter died with a gurgling sound in his throat. ‘. . . with another man?’
‘I do not understand what you are saying.’
His Adam’s apple bobbed furiously, threatening to burst through his skin and splatter blood all over the white tiles on the bathroom floor.
‘We both know you can’t be pregnant. I have not even touched you in months. Except you . . . you . . .’ His mouth hung open, but no words came out.
I walked out of the bathroom, dashed downstairs and out of the house before he could follow me. I needed the fresh night air to clear my head and the moon in the sky to renew my faith.
Akin did not respond when I greeted him the next morning. His hand trembled as he stirred sugar into his coffee.
‘I am starting antenatal today,’ I said.
The cup of coffee