. "I'm sorry, but you'll have to go back to your dorm alone. See you tomorrow," I said. I clasped my hands together in apology, though I wasn't sorry. I never would be. And I left her standing th

with one of her candidates, nor would she tell Yejide about her efforts. When my mother threatened to start visiting my wife every week with a new woman if I didn't choose one of the candidates within a month, I was forced to make a decision. I knew my mother wasn't a woman to make empty threats. I also knew that Yejide couldn't handle that kind of pressure. It would have destroyed her. Of all the girls my mother paraded through my office during those months, Funmi was the only one who didn't insist on living with Yejide and me. Funmi was the obvious choice because she didn't want much from me. At least not at first. She was an easy compromise. She accepted a separate apartment, miles away from Yejide and me. She asked for nothing more than one weekend a month and a reasonable allowance. She agreed that she would never be the wife who accompanied me to parties and public engagements. I didn't see Funmi for months after I agreed to marry her. I told her that I had a lot of work to do and wouldn't be able to visit her for a while. Someone must have convinced her that "a patient wife wins her husband's heart in the end." She didn't argue; she just waited until I accepted the idea that she was now part of my life. With Yejide, everything had been more immediate. I spent the first month after meeting her driving two hours every day just to spend time with her. I would leave the office at five and drive about thirty minutes to Ife. It would take another fifteen minutes to cross the city and reach the university gates. I would usually check into room F101 in Moremi Hall about an hour after I left Ilesa. I did this every day until one night Yejide walked out into the hallway and closed the door behind her instead of inviting me in. She told me never to come back, that she never wanted to see me again. But I wouldn't give up. Every day for eleven days, I showed up at room F101, smiling at her roommates and trying to persuade them to let me in. On the twelfth day, she opened the door and came out to talk to me in the hallway. We stood side by side as I begged her to tell me what I had done wrong. A mixture of smells from the kitchen and bath