Bibi's House | NEON LIT

The bus drops me at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere.

Three hours from Dodoma, four from anywhere else. Red dirt stretches in every direction. Baobab trees dot the horizon like ancient sentinels.

"Someone is coming for you?" the driver asks doubtfully.

"My aunt."

He shrugs, closes the door, and the bus disappears in a cloud of dust. I'm alone. Completely alone, in a way I've never been in my life.

Then I hear the motorcycle.

She appears over the hill like a vision—a massive woman on a battered Honda, kanga flying behind her, grinning like a maniac.

"Daudi!" She pulls up, kills the engine. "You made it!"

"Bibi Hadija." I haven't called her aunt since I was small. In our family, she's always been Bibi—grandmother—even though she's only fifty-three and has no grandchildren. It's a title of respect for the matriarch of the shamba.

She dismounts, and I'm reminded of just how much woman she is.

Bibi Hadija was always the biggest woman in our family—not fat, my grandmother used to say, substantial. Years of farm work have made her strong as well as heavy. Her arms are thick, her thighs like tree trunks, her belly round and firm beneath the kanga. She must be two-seventy, maybe more, but she moves like someone half her size.

She pulls me into a hug that cracks my spine.

"Too skinny," she pronounces. "City life is killing you."

"Good to see you too, Bibi."

The shamba is an hour's ride down dirt paths.

I cling to her back on the motorcycle, trying not to notice the width of her hips between my thighs. The land opens up as we go—fields of maize and cassava, groves of mango trees, the kind of prosperity that takes generations to build.

"Your grandfather started all this," she shouts over the engine. "Sixty years ago. Just him and ten acres. Now it's five hundred."

"And you run it alone?"

"What choice do I have?"

Her husband died eight years ago—farming accident, tractor overturned. No children. Her brothers are in the cities, her sisters married off to other regions. So Bibi Hadija runs the family shamba alone, managing workers, selling crops, keeping the legacy alive.

"You should have help," I say.

"You're here, aren't you?"

The house is larger than I expected.

Colonial-era construction, expanded over decades. Verandas on every side. A courtyard with a well and a chicken coop. Kerosene lamps hanging from hooks because electricity is unreliable this far out.

"Your room is in the back," she says. "Near the outdoor bathroom. It's primitive, but—"

"I'll manage."

She shows me around. The kitchen with its wood-burning stove. The sitting room with furniture older than my parents. Her bedroom—door left open—with a massive bed draped in mosquito netting.

"We wake at five," she says. "Sleep by eight. The roosters don't care about your city schedule."

"I'm ready to work."

She looks at me. Really looks—the way she did when I was a child and she was deciding whether to let me ride the tractor.

"We'll see."

The first week nearly kills me.

Hauling water. Clearing brush. Repairing fences. By sunset, I'm so tired I can barely eat the food she prepares—and she prepares a lot, plates piled with ugali and sukuma wiki and whatever meat the workers have brought.

"Eat," she commands. "You're no use to me as a skeleton."

I eat. And slowly, my body adapts.

The second week is better. My muscles harden. My hands callus. I start waking before the rooster, ready for the day's labor.

"You're stronger than you look," Bibi Hadija admits one evening.

We're on the veranda, watching the sun set over the maize fields. She's been softer with me lately—more smiles, more conversation. Less the stern matriarch, more the woman she must have been before her husband died.

"You're alone out here," I say.

"I have the workers."

"That's not what I mean."

She's quiet for a long moment.

"No," she agrees. "It's not."

I start noticing things.

The way she watches me when I work shirtless in the heat. The way her hand lingers when she passes me water. The way she looks at night, silhouetted in the lamplight, her body a landscape of shadows and curves.

I tell myself it's nothing. She's my father's sister. She's fifty-three. She's practically my grandmother.

But the nights are long in rural Tanzania. And the walls are thin.

I hear her.

Third week. Past midnight. The sound drifts through my window from hers—soft at first, then louder. Moaning. The creak of her bed.

She's touching herself.

I lie frozen, listening. Knowing I should block it out. But I don't. I listen to every gasp, every whimper, every desperate sound of a woman who's been alone too long.

When she comes, she says a name.

My name.

"Daudi—"

I don't sleep that night.

"We need to talk."

Breakfast. She looks tired too—shadows under her eyes, a tension in her shoulders.

"About what?" I ask carefully.

"You heard me last night." It's not a question. "The walls are thin. I forgot."

"Bibi—"

"Don't." She holds up a hand. "Don't tell me it's okay. Don't pretend you weren't listening. And don't—" Her voice cracks. "Don't leave. Please. I know it's wrong. I know I'm too old and too heavy and too related to you. But it's been eight years, Daudi. Eight years of this land, this house, this loneliness. And you're the first man who's looked at me like I'm still a woman."

"I have looked at you."

"I know." She finally meets my eyes. "I've seen. That's why I—last night—I couldn't stop thinking about—"

"What were you thinking?"

She tells me.

In detail.

I cross the kitchen in three steps.

She rises to meet me. And when our mouths connect, it's like a brush fire—sudden, consuming, unstoppable.

"We shouldn't," she gasps.

"I know."

"You're my nephew—"

"I know, Hadija."

Using her name—just her name—breaks something in her. She pulls me closer, her weight pressing against me, her hunger unmistakable.

"The bedroom. Now."

Her body is a revelation.

Thick everywhere—arms, thighs, belly—but strong from years of labor. Her breasts are heavy, dark-nippled, swaying when I free them. Her belly is round and firm, not soft like city women. When I spread her thighs, I see her—wet, swollen, aching.

"It's been so long," she whispers.

"I'll take care of you."

I eat her until she screams.

No neighbors to hear. No workers at this hour. Just her voice, echoing off the walls, as I learn what eight years of deprivation tastes like.

She comes so hard she nearly throws me off the bed. I hold her down, push her through it, make her come again.

"Inside me—please—I need to feel—"

I strip. Her eyes go wide.

"Like your uncle," she breathes. "He was built like that. I thought I'd never have—"

"You have it now."

I slide inside my aunt, and she sobs with relief.

I fuck her like the land she loves.

Deep. Thorough. Taking my time because we have nothing but time out here. No schedule. No interruptions. Just her body beneath mine, her walls gripping me, her voice calling my name.

"Daudi—yes—harder—"

The old bed slams against the wall. She screams with every thrust. And when she comes—clenching around me, her whole body shaking—I follow her over.

We collapse into the tangled sheets.

"Stay," she says later.

The kerosene lamp flickers. Outside, the African night is alive with sound—insects, birds, the distant lowing of cattle.

"Bibi—"

"I'm serious." She props herself up. "Stay. Help me run the shamba. This land needs young blood. I can't do it alone forever."

"I have a life in the city—"

"Do you? A job you hate? A flat you rent? What's waiting for you there?" She takes my hand. "What's waiting for you here is five hundred acres, a house, a future. And me. If you want me."

I think about Dodoma. The cubicle. The noise and pollution and emptiness.

I think about this. The land. The quiet. The woman.

"What would we tell people?"

"That my nephew came to help with the farm. That's all they need to know." She smiles. "People out here don't ask questions they don't want answered."

I call my boss the next morning.

Tell him I'm not coming back. Tell him to ship my things.

He thinks I'm crazy.

Maybe I am.

The seasons turn.

We work the land together. We sleep in the same bed. The workers think I'm devoted to my bibi—to my grandmother figure—and in a way, they're right.

I'm devoted to Hadija.

To her body, her strength, her laugh, her hunger.

To the life we're building in the middle of nowhere.

Some land requires careful cultivation.

Some women do too.

And some nephews find their purpose where they least expect it.

Bibi's house.

My house now.

Ours.