‘You have another wife, you paid her bride price and prostrated in front of her family. I think you are already cheating.’
He placed my palm over his heart; it was beating fast. ‘This is not cheating on you; I don’t have a new wife. Trust me, it’s for the best. My mother won’t pressure you for children any more,’ he whispered.
‘Nonsense and rubbish.’ I snatched my hand away and walked out of the kitchen.
‘If it makes you feel better, Funmi couldn’t make it into the bush fast enough. She soiled her dress.’
I did not feel better. I would not feel better for a very long time. Already, I was coming undone, like a hastily tied scarf coming loose, on the ground before the owner is aware of it.
3
Yejide was created on a Saturday. When God had ample time to paint her a perfect ebony. No doubt about it. The finished work is living proof.
The first time I saw her, I wanted to touch her jeans-clad knee, tell her there and then: ‘My name is Akin Ajayi. I am going to marry you.’
She was effortlessly elegant. Only girl on the row who didn’t slouch. Held her chin up, didn’t bend sideways to lean on the orange armrests. Sat straight, shoulders squared, hands linked and held in front of her bare midriff. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed her in the ticket queue downstairs.
She glanced to her left some minutes before the lights went out; our eyes met. She didn’t look away like I expected and I straightened up under her gaze. She looked me up and down, sized me up. It was not enough that she smiled at me before turning to face the big cinema screen. I wanted more.
She seemed unaware of her effect. Appeared oblivious to the way I was gawking at her, enthralled, already thinking about the words that would convince her to go out with me.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t talk to her at once. The lights went out right after I came up with the words I had been trying to find. And the girl I was going out with at the time was seated between Yejide and me.
I broke up with the girl that night, right after the movie. I did it while we stood together in the foyer of Oduduwa Hall in Ife as the crowd that had come to watch the film show flowed past us.
I said to her, ‘Please find your way to your hostel. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ I clasped my hands together apologetically, though I didn’t feel sorry. Would never feel sorry. I left her standing there with her mouth slightly open.
I pushed through the throng. Searched for a beauty in blue jeans, platform sandals and white T-shirt that showed off her belly button. I found her. Yejide and I were married before the end of that year.
I loved Yejide from the very first moment. No doubt about that. But there are things even love can’t do. Before I got married, I believed love could do anything. I learned soon enough that it couldn’t bear the weight of four years without children. If the burden is too much and stays too long, even love bends, cracks, comes close to breaking and sometimes does break. But even when it’s in a thousand pieces around your feet, that doesn’t mean it’s no longer love.
After four years, nobody else cared about love. My mother didn’t. She talked about my responsibility to her as a first son. Reminded me about the nine months when the only world I knew was inside her. She focused on the hardship of the last three months. How she couldn’t get comfortable in bed and had to spend her nights in a cushioned armchair.
Soon, Moomi began talking about Juwon, my half-brother, the first son of my father’s second wife. It’d been years since Moomi had used him as an example. When I was much younger, she was always talking about him. Juwon never comes home with dirty uniforms; why is your shirt dirty? Juwon has never lost his school sandals; this is the third pair you’ve lost this term. Juwon is always home by three; where do you go after school? How come Juwon came home with prizes and you didn’t? You are the first son in this family, do you know what that means? Do you know what that means at all? Do you want him to take your place?
She stopped talking about Juwon when he decided to learn a trade after secondary school because his mother couldn’t afford to pay his university fees. Guess Moomi felt there was no way a boy who was training to become a carpenter could ever measure up to her university-trained children. For years, she didn’t talk about Juwon, and appeared to have lost interest in his life until she wanted me to marry another wife. Then she told me, as if I didn’t already know, that Juwon already had four children, all boys. This time she didn’t stop with Juwon but reminded me that all my half-brothers now had children.
After I’d been married to Yejide for two years, my mother began to show up in my office on the first Monday of every month. She didn’t come alone. Each time, she brought a new woman with her, a potential second wife. She never missed a first Monday. Not even when she was ill. We had an agreement. As long as I continued to let her bring the women to my office, she would never embarrass my wife by showing up at our home with any of her candidates; she would never mention her efforts to Yejide.
When my mother threatened that she would start visiting my wife each week with a new woman if I didn’t choose one within a month, I had to make a decision. I knew my mother was not a woman who made empty threats. I also knew that Yejide couldn’t bear that kind of pressure. It would have broken her. Of the string of girls my mother paraded through my office every month, Funmi was the only one who didn’t insist on moving in with Yejide and me. Funmi was the obvious choice because she didn’t want much from me. Not in the beginning.
She was an easy compromise. She accepted a separate flat, miles away from Yejide and me. Didn’t ask for more than a weekend every month and a reasonable allowance. She agreed that she would never be the one to go with me to parties and public engagements.
I didn’t see Funmi for months after I agreed to marry her. I told her I had a lot going on at work and wouldn’t be able to see her for a while. Someone must have sold the ‘a patient wife wins the husband’s heart in the end’ line to her. She didn’t argue with me; she just waited until I came to terms with the fact that she was now a part of my life.
It had been more immediate with Yejide. I spent the first month after I met her driving two hours every day to be with her. I’d leave the office at five and spend about thirty minutes driving down to Ife. It took another fifteen minutes to get through the city to the university gates. Usually, I would enter F101 in Moremi Hall about an hour after leaving Ilesa.
I did this every day until one evening Yejide came out into the corridor and shut the door behind her instead of letting me in. She told me never to come back. Said she did not want to see me again. But I didn’t stop. I was at F101 every day for eleven days, smiling at her room-mates, trying to convince them to let me in.
On the twelfth day, she answered the door. Came out to stand with me in the corridor. We stood side by side as I begged her to tell me what I had done wrong. A mix of odours from the kitchenette and toilets wafted in our direction.
It turned out that the girl I’d been dating before I met her had been to Yejide’s room to threaten her. The girl had claimed that we had had a traditional wedding.
‘I don’t do polygamy,’ Yejide said on the evening she finally told me what was going on.
Another girl would have found a roundabout way of saying she wanted to be an only wife. Not Yejide, she was direct, up-front.
‘I don’t either,’ I said.
‘Look, Akin. Just let us forget it. This thing – us. This thing.’
‘I’m not married. Look at me. Come on – look at me. If you want to, we can go to that girl’s room right now and I’ll confront her, ask her to produce the wedding pictures.’
‘Her name is Bisade.’
‘I don’t care.’
Yejide