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Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Jos, December 2008”
In 2008, Yejide spends a sleepless night preparing to visit her estranged husband, Akinyele, or “Akin,” for his father’s funeral. Believing that his invitation is a sign, she has sold her salon and prepares to forget the acquaintances she has made. She recalls a conversation they had early in their marriage, where she realized that she would rescue nothing from her house if it were on fire, and feels similarly about her current situation.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “Ilesa, 1985 Onwards”
The narrative shifts back in time to 1985. Yejide’s stepmother and in-laws arrive to introduce her to Akin’s second wife, Funmilayo, or “Funmi,” whom he has secretly married after four years of pressure from his family to produce a child. Though everyone believes that Yejide is to blame for their childlessness, Akin hides his own infertility and impotence. He tells Yejide that the arrangement is only to appease his relentless mother, but she feels like he has betrayed his pre-marriage promise to eschew polygamy. She scolds him publicly in English, flouting hospitality conventions before her in-laws.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary
Akin compares Yejide and Funmi, whom he has married to force his mother to stop visiting him at his bank office on the first Monday of each month with a new wife prospect. He chooses Funmi because she claims to understand the need to live separately and accepts her secondary status, as he believes that this may help Yejide acclimate to polygamy. He has done this despite pursuing Yejide doggedly while in college and promising to avoid polygamy if they marry because he must keep appearances and hide his impotence, which he will not directly acknowledge in the narration until Part 3.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary
Yejide’s marriage returns to a shaky sense of normality. However, following a coup that deposes General Buhari and instates Ibrahim Babangida, Funmi arrives at her salon and shares her marital status and fertility issues with everyone in the guise of a social call. Yejide sees her as a true rival, resolving to outplay her by getting pregnant first.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary
After fighting with Akin about Funmi’s visit, Yejide takes the day off to visit her mother-in-law to see if she will accompany her to visit another holy man she has heard about. She hopes that the holy man can help her conceive. Her mother-in-law accuses her of selfishness, advising that she remove herself as an obstacle to Funmi’s pregnancy.
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary
Yejide fasts and goes to see the Prophet Josiah on her own. She climbs the Mountain of Jaw Dropping Miracles with a spotless goat and engages in dance and prayer that fill her with spiritual ecstasy. Prophet Josiah swaddles the goat and tells her to treat it like her baby. She rocks and nurses it and truly believes the holy man when he tells her that she will get pregnant within the month.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary
Akin realizes how obsessed Yejide has become with getting pregnant when she reveals to him that she is pregnant, which he knows is impossible due to his secret impotence. He determines to save her from the miracle workers and from herself by getting her pregnant, implying that he is the reason she has not gotten pregnant.
Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary
Yejide’s faith manifests in real pregnancy symptoms, including a rounding belly, missed period, and aching breasts. She does not know about false pregnancy, known as pseudocyesis, which is her true condition. Before her first antenatal class, Akin accuses her of cheating, but she uses his marriage to Funmi to deflect.
After her class, Funmi again visits the salon. Believing that she is victorious and full of motherly love, Yejide welcomes her and announces her pregnancy publicly. However, when her in-laws and Funmi arrive later to congratulate them, Funmi offers to help by moving in when the baby comes. Though Yejide knows that Funmi will never leave if she allows her in, she fears that making enemies will harm her child’s relationship with the family. She therefore agrees, feeling outplayed.
Part 1, Chapter 9 Summary
Though ultrasounds confirm that she has pseudocyesis and is not pregnant, Yejide cannot accept the truth. She creates a nursery. A rift forms between her and Akin; even when President Babangida executes 12 generals and she desires comfort from the civil unrest charging the country, she cannot go to him for fear of his patronizing questions and accusations.
When she has experienced pregnancy symptoms for 11 months, she revisits the Prophet Josiah, only to find him having sex with her friend in a shed on the mountain’s top. She sinks into a depression and stops going to work, until Akin tells her that she must maintain her health for the baby and keep up her routine.
After a year of pregnancy symptoms, Funmi arrives, accusing her of holding a calabash under her dress. Since she cannot make Funmi understand, she placates her by allowing her to move into the playroom.
Part 1 Analysis
Adébáyọ̀ uses Part 1 to set expectations and establish Akin and Yejide’s childless marriage as the central conflict. Beginning the novel in 2008 with Akin and Yejide openly estranged for many years, but not revealing why or how they have separated, Adébáyọ̀ creates a sense of mystery surrounding how they have reached this point.
When the narrative shifts back to 1985, Adébáyọ̀ establishes infertility as the source of conflict in their marriage, with various hints that foreshadow the eventual reveal of Akin’s impotence later in the novel. Told primarily through Yejide’s point of view, Adébáyọ̀ focuses the early narrative around the pressure that childbearing expectations have put on Yejide. Yejide’s frustrations with her marriage frame Akin as a passive son overburdened by his mother Moomi’s social expectations and conditional love. These scenes thus introduce the theme of The Pressures and Limitations of Tradition, with both Yejide and Akin struggling to assert themselves in the midst of intense familial and social pressures. Yejide must treat her in-laws humbly regardless of how frustrated she feels, listening to their advice in discussions that “consist of them talking and [Yejide] listening while on [her] knees” (7), with the subservient imagery underscoring the painful impact of conforming to tradition.
Despite Yejide’s dedicated efforts to conform and repeated visits to traditional healers, Moomi still rejects Yejide, believing that she must be the reason Akin has not had children. Moomi’s declaration that “women manufacture children and if you can’t, you’re just a man” exposes the stakes of being unable to conform to gender expectations (40), suggesting that Yejide will face continual social ostracism if she is unable to bear children. This pressure to fulfil a maternal role fuels Yejide’s insecurity, leading to her pseudocyesis. The fact that Akin is never once suspected of being the source of the couple’s fertility struggles reflects the patriarchal hierarchies in Nigerian society, with Moomi automatically placing all the blame on her daughter-in-law instead of considering her son as the culprit.
The narrative contains many clues about Akin’s impotence, foreshadowing the continued complications the couple will face. Akin’s reaction to Yejide’s pseudocyesis is to “decide it [i]s time to get her pregnant” (48), implying that Akin is the one who has postponed their family planning in some way. Adébáyọ̀ chooses to hide direct references to Akin’s impotence, breadcrumbing the reader along as if writing a mystery novel. These hints imply that Yejide’s situation is not quite what it seems, introducing the theme of The Power of Self-Deception. In desperately trying to persuade herself that she is pregnant, Yejide experiences new pressures and an intensifying rivalry with Funmi, all while her self-deception leads her further away from the truth. Similarly, in assuring himself that “it [i]s time to get her pregnant” (48), Akin deceives himself into thinking that he can solve the issue without being honest with Yejide about his impotence.
The novel also explores The Pressures and Limitations of Tradition through the various ways in which religious and political authorities are problematic in Yejide’s and Akin’s lives. Yejide’s experiences with Prophet Josiah lead to disappointment and her phantom pregnancy, as she places her trust in a religious figure who cannot give her anything but false promises. When she discovers him having sex with her friend on her later visit, Prophet Josiah’s lack of true holiness and moral authority is exposed, further deepening her sense of disillusionment. Similarly, the reference to the execution of the generals in Chapter 9 introduces the fraught historical context in which Yejide and Akin live, setting in motion the novel’s important motif of political unrest (See: Symbols & Motifs). Yejide and Akin are thus navigating their lives in a world in which both religious and political authorities can be deceptive or even dangerous, adding a further sense of instability to the couple’s married life.
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