#59: How Much Is Too Much?

A Review of Ayobami Adebayo's Stay With Me

Set in South West Nigeria in the the 1980s, during the country’s military era, Stay With Me is the heartfelt story of Yejide and Akin, a young couple who resort to other means after four years of marriage with no children. It is the author’s debut novel, published in 2017.

“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.”

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I read this book about five years ago and read (well, listened) it again last month for my bookclub. It is one of those books I feel like everyone has read. It explores the common but taboo topic of infertility. The book begins with one of Yejide’s stepmothers bringing another wife for Akin. From the beginning, it is clear that the extended family blames the wife for the couple’s childlessness.

“‘I don’t manufacture children. God does.’
She marched towards me and spoke when her toes were touching the tips of my shoes.
‘Have you ever seen God in a labour roomgiving birth to a child? Tell me, Yejide, have you ever seen God in the labour ward? Women manufacture children and if you can’t you are just a man. Nobody should call you a woman.’ She gripped my wrists and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘This life is not difficult, Yejide. If you cannot have children, allow my son to have some with Funmi. See, we are not asking you to stand up from your place in his life, we are just saying you should shift so that someone else can sit down.’”

From numerous hospitals visits to seeking prophetson prayer mountains, Yejide had seen it all in her quest to be a mother. When Akin’s new wife arrives that fateful morning, there was nothing else she could do but go into the kitchen and return with plates of beans for the unwanted guests.

We see the pressure married women face when they don’t have children and for many readers, Yejide’s plight is not far-fetched. She once returned from a visit to a prophet covinced she was pregnant. Akin was sure she wasn’t and considered her mad. She was actually suffering from a rare condition of false pregnancy.

“I had seen that smile before, on my father’s face. It was a small smile that looked like his mouth was prepared to burst into a loud cry for help at any moment. It was a special smile reserved for his third wife, the one who once went into the marketplace naked. The one who was always talking to people no one else could see.”

Tired of his wife’s distress and desperate for a solution, Akin goes to his brother, Dotun, for help. Soon afterward, Yejide becomes pregnant and everyone is over the moon. Except Funmi. She knew there had to be some foul-play and when she confronts Akin, she pays the ultimate price.

When Yejide delivers a baby girl she named Olamide, they throw a huge party to celebrate her arrival on the eighth day as is customary with the Yorubas. This joy, however, does not last long as the girl dies before her first birthday. Yejide blames herself, sure that she must have missed the signs somehow. Little did she know.

“A mother must be vigilant. She must be able and willing to wake up ten times during the night to feed her baby. After her intermittent vigil, she must see everything clearly the next morning so that she can notice any changes in her baby.”

As Yejide mourns her daughter, a new life is growing within her. She soon has another child, a boy she named Sesan. There was no party for this child. Soon after his first birthday, Akin takes their son to the hospital for some tests. When he is diagnosed with Sickle Cell Disease, Yejide knew that like Olamide, this child would not stay. Abiku, Akin’s mother called him. Born to die. The child’s body was severely whipped before burial so it could be recognized if it ever came back.

When their third child is born, she is named Rotimi. Stay with me. Her name was a prayer, a plea, that she would not go the way of her siblings before her. As fate would have it, she also has Sickle Cell Disease. Yejide refuses to stay with Rotimi at the hospital during her first crisis.

When she’s away with her friend and Rotimi and Akin are in Lagos, Rotimi has another crisis. Akin calls Yejide to ask what he could do as he couldn’t get her to a hospital and Yejide tells him she wouldn’t be going back home to Ilesa. She didn’t have it in her to mourn another child. She was going to live as a childless woman.

Besides the primary theme of infertility, the book also explores themes of deception, betrayal, and mental health, amongst others. It’s a well-written and delicate story that stays with you long after you turn the last page. I often find myself wondering why Yejide suffered so much; the poor woman didn’t even know what was amiss and wasn’t even in the right frame of mind to piece things together.

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Have you read this book? What did you think about it? Leave a comment, maybe? 😊

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