Stay with Me
There were no incisions on my daughter's body, no lacerations, no scars, not one single lash mark from a previous life. Still they named her Rotimi, a name that implied she was an Abiku child who had come into the world intending to die as soon as she could. Rotimi – stay with me.
Bailey's Prize-nominated Stay with Me is an interesting look into what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman – and can you fully be either until you've produced a child? – in modern-day Nigeria. Set against the unsteady historical backdrop of President Ibrahim Babangida's military rule of the country from 1985 to 1993, the main characters consider themselves to be fully modern – living in what they presume to be a stable democracy, receiving higher educations, embracing modern gender roles – but also find themselves beholden to the advice, superstitions, and demands of their traditional families. Author Ayobami Adebayo has written an intriguing story of Nigeria here; one that is as informative as it is emotionally touching.
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.
As the book opens, the year is 2008 and Yejide hasn't seen her husband, Akin, in fifteen years. Now that his father has died and Akin has sent Yejide an invitation to the funeral, she must decide whether or not to go; it will take the entire book to learn what caused the apparent rift between the couple. The narrative then rewinds to 1985, where Yejide is a loving and accommodating young wife; happy to receive yet another visit from meddlesome inlaws with their latest treatment for her apparent barrenness. But while Yejide has always smiled and bowed and gone along with whatever the family has suggested in the past, this time is different: this time they have brought along an even younger wife for Akin: if Yejide can't, or won't, produce an heir, Funmi surely will. I loved this introductory scene – Yejide is helpless in the face of her inlaws' logic (You're not being asked to stand up, just to move along the bench to make room for another), and although she and Akin had been a perfectly happy love match who “didn't believe in polygamy”, Akin is also helpless to oppose his family's wishes; Funmi herself feigns meekness and uses the honorific for “First Wife” when addressing Yejide, which only underlines that Akin now has more than one. But this isn't what causes them to split.
The reasons why we do the things we do will not always be the ones others will remember. Sometimes I think we have children because we want to leave behind someone who can explain who we were to the world.
Under pressure to produce a child before Funmi, Yejide endures more treatments – using both Western medicine and traditional methods – and she experiences joy and grief and redemption and mental breakdown. The point-of-view switches often between Yejide and Akin, and in their interior monologues, they each reveal the personal histories (her mother having died in childbirth, Yejide's father's many other wives ostracized her within the family) and specific pressures (as the oldest, Akin is meant to be shamed by the four sons his younger brother has produced) that force them to act the way they do. Traditional stories are narrated in full and in the background, the radios and televisions give frequent updates on the coups and countercoups that made life in Nigeria at the time an unstable affair. No wonder the couple eventually splits.
It would take a while for me to realise that each of my children had given me as much as they took. My memories of them, bittersweet and constant, were as powerful as a physical presence. And because of that, as a bus bore me into the heart of a city I did not know, while my last child was dying in Lagos and the country was unraveling, I was not afraid because I was not alone.
There are plenty of twists in the plot (much of which I saw coming) but it was the Nigerian setting and its specific social drivers that make this book special. I found both Yejide and Akin to be likeable and sympathetic characters, so it felt heart-wrenching to watch them be manipulated by others; to see them defenseless in the face of family and tradition. There is tragedy here, but also some grins, and I'm pleased to have entered Adebayo's world. Rounding up to four stars.
