Stay with me CEO

lanned to take with me to the funeral and a leather bag filled with gold jewelry. Musa can carry the rest of the luggage for me another time. So that's it: fifteen years here, and although my house isn't on fire, all I'll take with me is a bag of gold and a change of clothes.

The things that matter are inside me, locked in my chest like a tomb, where they will remain forever, my trunk of buried treasures. I leave the house. The air is chilly, and on the horizon the dark sky is turning a violet hue with the rising sun. Musa is leaning against the car, cleaning his teeth with a toothpick. He spits into a mug as I approach and puts the toothpick in his jacket pocket. He opens the car door, we shake hands, and I climb into the backseat. Musa turns on the radio and searches for a station. He chooses one where the day's broadcast is beginning with the national anthem. The doorman waves as we pull out of the condominium. The road stretches out before us, shrouded in a blanket of darkness that fades into the dawn as it leads me back to you. 2 ILESA, 1985 ONWARDS I soon realized that they had come prepared for war.

I could see them through the glass panels of the door. I could hear them chattering. For almost a full minute they didn't seem to notice that I was standing on the other side. I wanted to leave them outside and go back upstairs to sleep. Maybe if they stayed out in the sun long enough they would melt into puddles of black mud. Iya Martha's buttocks were so big that if they melted they would completely cover the cement steps leading up to our door.

Iya Martha was one of my four mothers; she was my father's eldest wife. The man with her was Baba Lola, Akin's uncle. Both of them had their backs bent against the sun and their faces set in a grimace of determination. But as soon as I opened the door, they stopped chattering and smiled. I could guess the first words that would come out of the woman's mouth. I knew it would be an exaggerated display of a bond that had never existed between us. "Yejide, my precious daughter!" Iya Martha said with a big smile, covering my cheeks with her damp, fat hands. I smiled back, kneeling down to greet them. "Welcome, welcome. God must have woken up thinking of me today. That's why you're here," I said, bowing again after they'd entered and settled into the living room. They laughed. "Where's your husband? Did we find him at home?" Baba Lola asked, looking around as if I might have hidden Akin under a chair. "

Yes, sir, he's upstairs. I'll call him, but first I'll get you something to drink. What should I prepare for you to eat? Mashed yam?" The man glanced at my stepmother as if, while rehearsing the drama that was about to be performed, he hadn't read that part of the script. Iya Martha shook her head emphatically. "We can't eat. Go get your husband. We have important things to discuss with you both." I smiled, left the living room, and headed toward the stairs. I wondered what "important things" they had come to discuss. Several of my husband's relatives had already come to our house to discuss the same issue. The discussion consisted of them talking while I listened on my knees. On these occasions, Akin would pretend to listen and take notes while in reality he was writing down a list of things to do the next day. No one in that series of delegations could read or write, and everyone felt intimidated by those who could. They were impressed that Akin wrote down his words.

And sometimes, when he stopped writing, the person who was speaking at the time would complain about his lack of respect for not taking notes. Many times during these visits, my husband would plan the entire week's schedule while I felt terrible cramps in my legs. The visits irritated Akin, who wanted to tell his relatives to mind their own business. But I wouldn't let them. The long discussions did give me leg cramps, but at least they made me feel like part of his family. Until that afternoon, no one in my family had paid me such a visit since I got married. As I walked upstairs, I thought Iya Martha's presence meant a new argument was about to be made. I didn't need her advice. My house was fine without the important things they had to say. I didn't want to hear Baba Lola's hoarse voice straining between coughing fits, or see another flash of Iya Martha's teeth. I thought I had heard all there was to hear, and I was sure my husband felt the same. I was surprised to find Akin awake. He worked six days a week and spent most of his Sundays sleeping. But when I walked into our bedroom, he was pacing back and forth. "Did you know they were coming today?"

I looked at his face for the familiar mix of horror and irritation that he showed whenever a special delegation came to visit. "Are they here?" He stopped and clasped his hands behind his neck. No horror, no irritation. The room was beginning to feel stuffy. "You knew they were coming? And you didn't tell me?" "Let's go downstairs." He left the room. "Akin, what's wrong? What's going on?" I asked as he left. I sat down on the bed, put my head in my hands, and tried to breathe.

I stayed that way until I heard Akin's voice calling me. I went down to join him in the living room and smiled, but not so wide that I showed my teeth, just a slight lift at the corners of my mouth. The kind that said: Even if you old folks don't know anything about my marriage, I'm happy, no, ecstatic, to hear all the important things you have to say about it. After all, I'm a good wife. I didn't notice her at first, even though she was perched on the edge of Iya Martha's chair. She was pale, a pale yellow like the inside of an unripe mango. Her thin lips were smeared with blood-red lipstick. I leaned toward my husband. His body was rigid, and he didn't put his arms around me to pull me closer. I tried to figure out where the yellow woman had come from, and for a crazy minute I wondered if Iya Martha had kept her hidden under her clothes when she came in. "Dear wife, our people say that when a man has one thing and that thing becomes two, he doesn't get upset, does he?"

Baba Lola said. I nodded, smiling. "Well, dear wife, this is the new wife. It takes a child to call another child into this world. Who knows, maybe the king in heaven will answer your prayers because of this wife? When she gets pregnant and has a son, we're sure you'll have one too," Baba Lola continued. Iya Martha nodded in agreement. - Yejide, my daughter, we have thought about this matter and postponed this decision many times, your husband's family and I. And your other mothers. I closed my eyes. I was about to wake up from my trance.

When I opened them, the yellow-mango woman was still there, a little blurry, but still there. I was stunned. I expected them to talk about the fact that I still had no children. I was armed with a million smiles. Apologetic smiles, compassionate smiles, God's-will-be-done smiles-think of all the fake smiles it takes to survive an afternoon with a group of people who claim to want your best while poking their finger into your open wound:

husband's family and I. And your other mothers. I closed my eyes. I was about to wake up from my trance. When I opened them, the yellow-mango woman was still there, a little blurry, but still there. I was stunned. I expected them to talk about the fact that I still had no children. I was armed with a million smiles.

Apologetic smiles, compassionate smiles, God's-will-be-done smiles-think of all the fake smiles it takes to survive an afternoon with a group of people who claim to want your best while poking their finger into your open wound: I had them all prepared. I was ready to hear them tell me that I needed to do something about my situation. I expected them to recommend a new pastor; a new mountain where I could pray; an old healer in a remote village or a distant city with whom I could consult. I was armed with smiles for my lips, the appropriate sheen of tears for my eyes, and sniffles for my nose. I was prepared to close my hair salon for the next week and go in search of a miracle with my mother-in-law in tow. What I didn't expect was another smiling woman in the room, a yellow woman with a blood-red mouth who smiled like a new wife. I wished my mother-in-law were there. The only woman I had ever called Moomi. I visited her more often than her own son. She was there with me when my newly done perm was washed away in a river by a priest whose theory was that I had been cursed by my mother before she died, minutes after giving birth to me. Moomi was there with me when I sat on a prayer mat for three days, chanting over and over words I didn't understand until I passed out on the third day, interrupting what should have been a week of fasting and vigil. As I lay recovering in a ward at Wesley Guild Hospital, she held my hand and asked me to pray for strength. The life of a good mother is hard, she said, and a woman can be a bad wife, but she can never be a bad mother

. Moomi told me that before I asked God to give me a child, I should ask for the grace to be able to suffer for that child. She said that if I fainted after three days of fasting, it was because I was not yet ready to be a mother. I realized then that she had not fainted on the third day because she had probably fasted that way many times for her children, to please God. At that moment, the deep lines around Moomi's eyes and mouth seemed sinister to me and began to mean much more to me than just signs of age. I was torn apart. I wanted to be what I had never been. I wanted to be a mother, I wanted my eyes to shine with secret joys and wisdom like Moomi's. But all your talk of suffering terrified me. "She is much younger than you," Iya Martha said, leaning forward in her chair. "As they like you, Yejide, your husband's relatives know your worth. They tell me that they recognize you as a good wife in your husband's house." Baba Lola cleared her throat. "Yejide, I want to pay you my respects personally. I want to acknowledge your efforts to ensure that our son, when he dies, will leave a son as his legacy. That is why we know that you will not consider this new wife a rival. Her name is Funmilayo, and we know, we trust, that you will welcome her as a younger sister."

"A friend," Iya Martha said. "A daughter," Baba Lola added. Iya Martha patted Funmi on the back. "Oya, go greet your iyale." I winced when Iya Martha referred to me as Funmi's iyale. The word crackled in my ears, iyale: first wife. It was a title that marked me as a woman who was not enough for my husband. Funmi came to sit beside me on the couch. Baba Lola shook her head. "Kneel, Funmi. Even twenty years after the train began its journey, the earth will always be ahead of it. Yejide is ahead of you in every way in this house." Kneeling, Funmi placed her hands on my knees and smiled. My hands itched to slap the smile off his face. I turned to look into Akin's eyes, hoping that somehow he was not complicit in this ambush. His eyes met mine in silent supplication. My smile, already shy, faded. Anger gripped my heart, wrapping its fiery hands around it. My head throbbed right between my eyes. "Akin, did you know about this?"

I asked in English, excluding the two elders, who spoke only Yoruba. Akin said nothing, just scratched the bridge of his nose with his index finger. I looked around for something to focus on. The white lace curtains with blue trim, the gray couch, the matching rug with a coffee stain I'd been trying to remove for over a year. It was too far from the center to be covered by the table and too far from the edge to be hidden by the armchairs. Funmi was wearing a beige dress, the same shade as the coffee stain, the same shade as the blouse I was wearing. Her hands were just below my knees, wrapped around my bare legs. I couldn't look past her hands, past the long, puffy sleeves of her dress. I couldn't look at her face. "Hold her, Yejide." I wasn't sure who had just spoken. My head was on fire, growing hotter, on the verge of boiling. Anyone could have said those words: Iya Martha, Baba Lola, God. I didn't care. I turned back to my husband. "Akin, did you know about this?" You knew and you didn't have the heart to tell me. Did you know? You son of a bitch. After everything! You miserable son of a bitch! Akin caught my hand before it could hit him in the face. It wasn't the outrage in Iya Martha's scream that silenced me. It was the tenderness with which Akin's thumb stroked my palm. I looked away. "What did she say?" Baba Lola asked, asking her new wife to translate. "Yejide, please," Akin said, squeezing my hand. "She said he's a son of a bitch," Funmi translated in a whisper, as if the words burned and weighed heavily on her lips. Iya Martha screamed and covered her face with her hands.

I wasn't fooled by her act. I knew she was gloating inside. I was sure she would spend weeks repeating what she had witnessed to my father's other wives. "You must not disrespect your husband. No matter what happens, he will always be your husband." What more could he possibly want for you? Wasn't it because of you that he got Funmi an apartment to stay in, when he has a rather large two-story house?" Iya Martha looked around, stretching out her arms to indicate my large residence in case I hadn't caught her reference to the house I paid half the rent for each month. "You, Yejide, should be grateful to your husband." Iya Martha had stopped talking, but her mouth was still open

. When you got close enough, you could smell an unbearable stench from that mouth, the smell of stale urine. Baba Lola had chosen to sit a safe distance away from her. I knew I should kneel, bow my head like a little girl being punished, and say I was sorry for insulting my husband and his mother in one breath. They would have accepted my apology-I could have said it was the devil's fault, or the weather, or my new braids, which were too tight, making my head ache and forcing me to disrespect my husband in front of them. But my whole body was stiff as an arthritic hand, and I simply could not force it to take shapes it did not want to take. So for the first time, I ignored a relative's insult

something for each person, so I made them what I wanted. I served them a bean stew. I mixed beans I had made three days earlier, and had been planning to throw away, into the freshly cooked broth. I knew they would notice that the mixture tasted a little off, but I was counting on the guilt that Baba Lola was masking as indignation at my behavior and the joy that Iya Martha was hiding beneath her displays of dismay to keep them eating.

To help them swallow their food, I knelt down and apologized to both of them. Iya Martha smiled and said that she would have refused to eat if I had continued to behave like a street urchin. I apologized again and, to make it even more so, I hugged the yellow woman; she smelled of coconut oil and vanilla. As I watched them eat, I sipped some malt from the bottle. I was disappointed that Akin refused to touch the food. When they complained that they would have preferred mashed yam with vegetable stew and dried fish, I ignored Akin's glare. On any other day, I would have gone back to the kitchen to mash the yam. That afternoon, however, I felt like telling them to get up and mash the yam themselves, if mashed yam was what they really wanted. I swallowed the words that burned in my throat with sips of malt and told them that I couldn't mash the yam because I had sprained my wrist the day before. "But you didn't tell us any of this when we arrived," Iya Martha said, rubbing her chin. "You yourself offered to serve us mashed yam." "She must have forgotten about the sprain. She was in a lot of pain yesterday.

I even thought of taking her to the hospital," Akin interjected, backing up my rather obvious lie. They devoured the beans like starving children and advised me to go to the hospital to have my pulse checked. Only Funmi grimaced after eating the first spoonful of beans and looked at me suspiciously. Our eyes met, and she smiled broadly, rimmed in red. After I had collected the empty plates, Baba Lola explained that since he was not sure how long the visit would last, he had not bothered to arrange with the taxi driver who had driven them there to come back and pick them up. He had assumed, as relatives often do, that Akin would take responsibility for taking them home. Soon it was time for Akin to drive them all home. I walked them to the car, and Akin, jingling the keys in his pants pocket, asked if everyone was okay with the route he intended to take. His intention was to drop Baba Lola off at Ilaje Street and then drive Iya Martha to Ife. I noticed that he had not mentioned where Funmi lived. When Iya Martha said that the route my husband had chosen was the best option, Akin unlocked the car doors and got into the driver's seat. I fought the urge to rip Funmi's jheri curls out of her as she plopped down on the front seat next to my husband and pushed the small pillow I always kept there onto the floor.

I clenched my fists as Akin drove off, leaving me alone in the cloud of dust he'd kicked up. "What did you give them?" Akin shouted. "Welcome back, husband," I said. I had just finished dinner. I gathered up the plates and went into the kitchen. "Did you know they all have diarrhea? I had to stop next to a bush so they could shit. A bush!" he said, following me into the kitchen. "And what's so unusual about that? Do all your relatives have bathrooms in their homes? Don't they shit in the bushes or in dunghills?" I shouted, throwing the plates into the metal sink. The sound of the dishes breaking was followed by silence. One of the plates split in half. I ran my finger over the broken rim. I felt it cut me. My blood stained the jagged edge. "Yejide, try to understand. You know I didn't mean to hurt you," he said. "What language are you speaking? Hausa or Chinese? Because I don't understand. Start saying something I can understand, Mr. Husband." "Stop calling me that." "I'll call you whatever I want. At least you're still my husband. Oh, but maybe you're not my husband anymore. Did I miss that news too? Should I turn on the radio, or is it on TV?

Or in the newspaper?" I dropped the broken plate into the plastic bin next to the sink. I turned to face him. His forehead was glistening with beads of sweat that ran down his cheeks and collected on his chin. He tapped his foot in time with some furious pounding in his head. The muscles in his face moved in time with his jaw clenching and unclenching. "You called me a son of a bitch in front of my uncle. You disrespected me." The anger in his voice shook me, offended me. I had thought the trembling of his body meant he was nervous-it was usually like that. I had hoped it meant he was sorry, that he felt guilty. "You brought a new wife into this house and you're the one who's angry? When did you marry her? Last year? Last month? When were you planning on telling me? Huh? You son of a-" "Don't say that, woman, don't say that word. I should put a padlock over your mouth." "Well, since I don't have one, I'll just say it, you damn son-" His hand covered my mouth. "Okay, I'm sorry. I was in a tight spot. You know I have no intention of cheating on you, Yejide. You know I won't, I won't. I promise." He started to laugh. A broken, pathetic sound. I pulled his hand away from my face. He took my hand in his, rubbing his palm against mine. I wanted to cry.

"You took another wife, paid the bride price, and bowed down to your family. I think that was already a betrayal." He placed my palm over his heart; it was beating fast. "This isn't cheating on you; I don't have a new wife. Believe me, it'll be better this way. My mother will stop pressuring you to have children," he whispered. "Nonsense and lies." I snatched my hand away and left the kitchen. "If it makes you feel any better, Funmi didn't make it to the bush in time. She soiled her dress." I didn't feel better. I wouldn't feel better for a long time. I was already falling apart, like a hastily tied scarf that comes loose and falls to the floor before its owner notices. 3 Yejide was created on a Saturday. When God had enough time to paint her a perfect ebony. There was no doubt about it. The finished work was living proof. The first time I saw her, I wanted to touch her knee through her jeans and tell her right then and there, "My name is Akin Ajayi. I will marry you." Yejide had an easy elegance. She was the only girl in the row who didn't slouch. She kept her chin up instead of leaning sideways to lean on the orange arm of the chair. She sat straight, her shoulders square, her hands clasped together in front of her exposed belly button.

I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed her down there in the ticket line. Yejide glanced to her left a few minutes before the lights went out, and our eyes met. She didn't look away like I expected, so I sat up straight. She looked me up and down, assessing me, but it wasn't enough that she smiled at me before turning back to the movie screen. I wanted more. She didn't seem to realize the effect she was having. She seemed oblivious to how I was staring at her, fascinated, already thinking of the best wo