Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo
I started this book with an unfair prejudice towards Akin. After I read the synopsis, I started the book already sympathizing with Yejide. The prejudice grew stronger when Yejide learned that he was aware of his parents intent to bring another woman into her home, and turn her from his only wife to his first wife. She, like many Nigerian women in real life, have dealt with the stress and pressure of needing to produce children, so their feet can be firm in their matrimonial home. What Ayobami did beautifully was have me also feel for Akin by the end of the novel, and in a weird, nonsensical kind of way, understand why he went through with a plan that went horribly wrong, but also produced what ultimately was the goal.
I didn’t understand why Stay With Me began the way it did until I reached the end. Throughout the book, Ayobami adds one more layer of clarity to what would be the culmination of the novel, Yejide coming to Akin’s father’s funeral at the request of his invitation, after over 15 years of leaving for Bauchi and never returning home. She comes home to learn that the child she thought was long gone, her reason for leaving, was not only alive, but well.
The struggle Yejide and Akin went through with their parents and family is one I’m familiar with, but am not a fan of. Nigerian culture allows parents and extended family to believe they are entitled to involve themselves in sensitive marital affairs such as difficulty in having children. I have not experienced this myself, but I’ve seen this make things worse. It did, in my opinion, as Moomi was relentless in her pursuit of finding a way to “help” Yejide and Akin have children.
Stay With Me shows what can happen when the pressure becomes too much to bear. Yejide develops pseudocyesis, a condition where she believes she is pregnant, and feels the symptoms of pregnancy, but it is all in her imagination. She seeks out a native doctor at the recommendation of a neighbor to help her get pregnant, and the ritual performed is the catalyst for the pseudocyesis. Akin convinces his brother Dotun to have sex with Yejide so she can get pregnant. He does not anticipate the dark journey ahead, the shock of losing two children because his brother and Yejide are genotypically incompatible, and Yejide giving birth to two children who die from Sickle Cell Anemia. Akin is responsible for the death of Funmi, the second wife that his family brings to bear his children. In the midst of the chaos, Yejide gives birth to her third child, Rotimi, the namesake of the novel. Yejide acts indifferent towards Rotimi. She fools herself into thinking that distancing herself from her daughter physically will help weaken the bond, because she does not want to get her hopes up that she will live. She feels justified in these actions when Akin calls her while she is in Bauchi and tells her that Rotimi is in the midst of a crisis. It is then Yejide reveals she has no plans to come home.
No one is blameless in the novel. But everyone, including Dotun (which may be an unpopular opinion) has me wishing better for them, hoping that by the end there is a resolution befitting the emotional rollercoaster that is the story. That at the end, everyone can find peace. This seems to be a possibility when Yejide reunites with Akin and Rotimi at his father’s funeral. The novel ends with a door open, and an implication to the reader that the family may try again.
