I never felt this way before I came to this coastal town, from my village 490km away.
My mother had left us there with our grandparents, my two brothers, my sister and I, to come and make a way for herself. We frequently heard my grandfather's disapproval of my mother's actions. "These young people have no sense!" he would say. "Why did she leave her husband because he had little money? How much did we have when bringing up our children?"
Without giving my grandmother time to reply, he continued, "Very little. Did I ever chase you away because of that?"
"My husband, you know she wasn't chased away..."
He interrupted her. "It is no reason to break up a family. Right now these children would be in their own home, enjoying the love of both parents the way our own children, herself included, did. Don't tell me you support her going off like she did!"
"Don't let us argue in front of the children like that. I think the cows need more feed." And out she went.
At night we heard them grunting and their bed creaking. My siblings and I did not know what to make of these things.
One evening, my grandfather's hand would not stay still. He kept touching my grandmother every time she passed near him. I think he noticed I had seen some action of his.
"What are you looking at? You have the same heat as your mother, couldn't keep her skirts down long enough!" He snatched a cooking spoon, as if to hit me with it. I fled into the night and only came back when grandmother called that supper was served.
At night on my bed I could hear my brothers' giggles while my sister and I tried to keep as quiet as mice. Suddenly we realised the creaking had stopped and we couldn't hear any human sounds. Then grandfather was roaring at the door, shining his torch into the room, "What are you worthless children doing to the girls? John, James come here!"
Loud slaps rang out. They screamed. "I don't want to hear that noise again. Do I make myself clear?"
Many years later in adulthood I realized that from then on, they must have pretended not to hear anything going on in the next room. They never told us what they thought was happening.
It was only when we reached high school that I gathered from the older girls a few hazy facts about sex. It still did not dawn on me that the noises we heard from their room meant that he fucked grandmother very regularly. When as a grown woman I came to the full realisation, I was outraged that he accused my mother of being sex-crazy; that he had hit my brothers so brutally for being curious about sex. Yet this was only what he himself had passed down to our mother and she to us!
After school my mother told her parents that she wanted us to join her in Mombasa. My grandmother could not hide her worry about our future, while her husband could barely mask his relief. Once in that town, I frequently felt restless at night, a tingling set up house between my legs especially near the date of my periods. I did not connect it all with either the sexual eye-opening by my older schoolmates, or with what we used to hear my grandparents doing at night.
A man who I recognised as a former neighbour back in the village came to see my mother. Eric was of an age with my eldest brother, and his mother had been my mother's friend. He was staying with his father who had a job with an oil company in Mombasa. He came quite regularly to bring greetings or other messages from his mother.
Then one Sunday my world came crashing noisily about my ears. Eric came accompanied by a tall, dark gentleman in a grey Kaunda suit. He seemed to hit me somewhere below my navel. When he looked at me, my bowels did a somersault. He was, apparently, also from the same village. His mother, Eric said, was a teacher of some repute.
Even I seemed to remember her teaching at my primary school, though she kept to the lower classes and did not teach my class. A tall, regal figure, she was also very beautiful. I vaguely recall wishing I would grow up to be like her. But she was famed for her strictness and being a stickler for cleanliness, being polite and respectful. In 'Kaunda suit' I saw some of her features. That night my dreams were populated with images of the tall man's face. My tingling rose to a new level. I hardly slept that night and several nights after that. He came again with Eric on Sunday. I only wanted to take him aside and talk to him alone, though that was highly unlikely. I could not understand what had happened to my body since coming to Mombasa. It was behaving in a very queer way.
I cannot tell you the full extent of my joy when he came by himself one evening to visit. He joked with my mother how he almost got lost in the narrow, twisting streets coming to our house. His flat was on the main thoroughfare of the town, only a walking distance from our home. I tried to hide my fascination for him and almost succeeded. I fear that he picked it up from how I behaved all evening.
That week as we prepared the dishes that my mother and I took to the city council market to sell to the traders therein, I could not keep my mind off him. While serving our regular customers I kept pretending that one or other of them was 'Kaunda suit'. I would imagine the smile I would have on my face when handing him his plate. But the truth of the matter was that as a company executive he would never be found eating the fare we sold, nor be found anywhere in that market! My fantasy came true one evening, however.
Dennis came to visit. He joked with my brother; my mother came and went to the kitchen, then she sent me to get something from the shop. I groaned inwardly. But I went as fast as I could go half-fearing that he might be gone by the time I came back. I found him sitting in the same place with no apparent intention of going anywhere. I was between the kitchen and the sitting room all evening. Then my mother called me.
"Take that to Dennis, please!" I almost jumped up and down with joy. I straightened my skirt, and patted down my hair. I walked out of the kitchen with a swing in my step. I caught a look from her, and she made a noise with her lips. Undaunted I pulled out my best smile and plastered it on my face as I walked into the sitting room. I looked straight at him as I placed the plate on the table in front of him.
"Thank you Soni!" He smiled! It was like the sun had come out again after a hard day's work, just for my pleasure.
I sat down, unmindful of anything else. "Soni, come and get your plate. Who do you think will serve you?" Dennis made as if to get up and go to the kitchen. This tickled me so much I was laughing uproariously as I entered the kitchen. "You are in a funny mood tonight!" my mother flung at me. No words were needed.
I could hardly wait for bedtime so that I could savour my memories of that evening. I did not know whether he came to visit my mother, all of us, or he wanted to see me particularly. I held a fantasy that it was the latter. But he came often enough, making me wonder what would happen to the evening meal that his houseboy had made for him, while he ate our poor fare?
*****************************
Why did he ask that I should see him to the door when leaving that Sunday evening? For one thing it was not late at all. In fact dusk was just falling. It puzzled me for many a year. In the event, we talked as we walked and I hardly realised that we had arrived at his flat. He opened the door and welcomed me to walk up the stairs with him. So he intended for us to spend more time together. The only drawback was a niggling at the back of my mind because my mother knew I had left with Dennis. What would she say? But my steps led me up one stair at a time until we came to a large door. He used his key to open it, and ushered me in, placing one hand in the small of my back. It caused a violent shiver up my whole frame.
I was astonished at the size of the place! This was the sitting room looking large enough to swallow a small house whole. Against the far wall, the long one, were ranged sofa seats of a design I had never seen in my life. Facing them was such a huge TV that I wondered idly if I could climb into. I smiled at the craziness of the thought. He pointed in the direction of the kitchen whose door seemed so far away from where we stood in the middle of the sitting room. He said the bath and toilet were down the corridor from the kitchen. Behind us was a door, which he said led to his bedroom. I itched to see it. He pointed in the direction of three other bedrooms adjacent to his, down their own corridor.
"How many bedrooms do you have here?" I could not restrain my curiosity.
As if he were talking about spoons in his drawers, "This is a five-bedroomed flat."
I fell to thinking that each of us, my mother, my brothers, my sister and I could each have their own bedroom. What would I not give to have my own room? Then he turned, as if he had heard my earlier thought, and opened the bedroom door. A double bed stood along one wall without touching any other. I had never seen such a sleeping arrangement. Even in the village, my grandfather's house was bigger than we had in my mother's, yet one side of the bed had to be against a wall, meaning that you got into the bed from the side furthest from the wall.
He pushed the door closed. "Where is your houseboy?" I asked.
"He had gone to see his family, and will return this evening. In fact any time now."
