Bibi's Secret
"Sent to care for his ailing grandmother, he discovers she's not as frail as the family believes. Bibi has secrets—and appetites—that span sixty-seven years."
My grandmother is dying.
At least, that's what the family says. Sixty-seven years old, bedridden after a fall, alone in the family compound in rural Nyanza. Someone needs to care for her.
I'm the only one without a wife, a job, a reason to say no.
So I drive four hours from Kisumu, down dirt roads and past mango groves, to spend what everyone assumes will be Bibi Akinyi's final months.
I don't expect what I find.
She's standing in the courtyard.
Not bedridden. Not frail. Standing, both hands on a cane, watching me with eyes that still hold mischief.
"You look surprised, mjukuu." Her voice is stronger than I remember. "Did they tell you I was at death's door?"
"They said you couldn't walk."
"I couldn't. For a month. Now I can." She gestures at the house. "But let them keep thinking I'm helpless. It keeps the vultures away."
"Vultures?"
"Your aunts. Your uncles. All circling, waiting for me to die so they can divide my land." She snorts. "I'm sixty-seven, not ninety. I've got years left."
She does look good. Better than good. She's lost weight since her fall—now maybe two-fifty instead of the two-eighty I remember—but she's still built like the women in our family always are. Wide hips, heavy breasts, a belly that speaks to a lifetime of good cooking and better eating.
"Come inside," she commands. "I'll show you where you're sleeping."
The arrangement is simple.
I help around the compound. Fix things that have broken. Run errands to town. In exchange, I get to live rent-free, save money, figure out what I'm doing with my life.
And I get to spend time with a grandmother I barely know.
"You never visited," she says one evening. "Even as a child. Your mother kept you away."
"She said you were... difficult."
Bibi laughs. "That's one word for it. Your mother and I never agreed on anything. Not on how to raise children. Not on how to treat men." Her eyes glitter. "Not on what women should want."
"What should women want?"
"Pleasure, mjukuu. The same thing men want." She sips her chai. "But in this culture, we're supposed to pretend we don't. To be modest. Obedient. To give and never take."
"And you never believed that?"
"I practiced it for fifty years. Doesn't mean I believed it."
Week two.
I come home from town to find her bathing.
The outdoor bathroom—just a shed with a bucket and privacy walls—is on the path from the gate. She didn't hear me arrive. And I stop, frozen, watching through the gap in the boards.
She's naked. Scooping water over herself. Her body glistens in the afternoon light—heavy breasts swaying, belly round and soft, thighs thick as tree trunks. She's humming something, some old song, completely unaware she's being watched.
Or so I think.
"Enjoying the view?"
I freeze. She hasn't turned around. How did she—
"I can hear you breathing, mjukuu." She keeps washing, not covering herself. "You breathe like your grandfather. Heavy. Hungry."
"I'm sorry—I didn't mean—"
"Don't apologize." Now she turns, and I see all of her—the front, the dark nipples, the grey thatch between her legs. "I've been wondering when you'd look."
"Bibi—"
"Do you know how long it's been since a man looked at me like that? Like I'm something worth seeing?" She steps out of the tub, water streaming down her body. "Your grandfather died fifteen years ago. Fifteen years of nothing."
"I shouldn't be—"
"No. You shouldn't." She wraps a kanga around herself. "But you are. And I'm tired of pretending I don't want to be seen."
That night, she comes to my room.
"Bibi—"
"Shh." She closes the door. "I'm sixty-seven years old. I've been a good wife, a good mother, a good grandmother. I've done everything right for everyone else." She moves toward my bed. "Just once, I want to do something for myself."
"This is—"
"Wrong? Haram? Forbidden?" She laughs quietly. "I've lived long enough to stop caring about those words. The question is: have you?"
She's at the edge of my bed now. Her kanga falls open.
In the moonlight, she's magnificent.
I should stop this.
She's my grandmother. She's sixty-seven. She's—
She's taking my hand and placing it on her breast.
"Feel that? Still warm. Still soft. Still alive." Her voice drops. "Make me feel alive, mjukuu. Show me I'm not just waiting to die."
I'm hard. Painfully hard. She feels it through the sheets.
"There he is." She smiles. "Your grandfather used to get hard like that. Just looking at me."
"This is wrong."
"Everything worth doing is." She pulls back the sheet. "Now show your bibi what you can do."
I worship a sixty-seven-year-old woman.
I start at her feet—kissing ankles spotted with age, calves thick from decades of walking. I work my way up, and she trembles above me.
"No one has—in fifteen years—"
"Then fifteen years is too long."
I spread her thighs. She's grey there, wiry, but beneath—wet. Swollen. Ready.
I taste her.
She screams like a girl.
Her voice breaks on sounds she probably hasn't made in decades. Her hands grip my hair—still thick, still strong—and pull me closer.
"Mwenyezi Mungu—there—there—"
She comes on my tongue, shaking so hard the bed moves. And I don't stop—I push her through, make her come again, show her what fifteen years of waiting should have earned her.
"Inside me," she gasps. "Please—I need to feel—"
I climb up her body. Position myself.
"Are you sure?"
"I've been sure since you walked through my gate." She pulls me down. "Take your grandmother, mjukuu. Give her what she's been dreaming about."
I sink into a woman old enough to be my grandmother.
Because she is.
She's tight—fifteen years of nothing—and wet, and burning hot. She gasps as I fill her, her nails digging into my back, her legs wrapping around my waist.
"Yes—na'am—I forgot what this felt like—"
I move slowly. Carefully. She's sixty-seven, and I'm aware of her fragility even as I'm buried inside her.
"Don't be gentle," she whispers. "I'm not glass. I'm your bibi. I've survived childbirth five times. I can survive you."
So I'm not gentle.
I fuck my grandmother on the bed where my grandfather used to sleep.
She matches me stroke for stroke, her hips moving with a rhythm that speaks to decades of experience. Her moans fill the room. Her body clutches mine.
"I'm going to—again—already—"
She comes around me, and I feel it—feel her clench and pulse and milk me. And I let go, burying myself deep, filling her while she sobs with relief.
We collapse together.
Grandmother and grandson.
Bibi na mjukuu.
"This is our secret," she says afterward.
"Obviously."
"No one would understand. They'd say I'm senile. That you're taking advantage."
"Are they wrong?"
"They're completely wrong." She pulls me close, and I feel her weight settle against me—soft, warm, alive. "I'm taking advantage of you. And I intend to keep doing it."
I stay for six months.
The family thinks I'm a devoted grandson, caring for my dying grandmother.
They don't know she's never been more alive.
They don't know what happens every night, in the bed where my grandfather used to sleep.
They don't know Bibi's secret.
But I do.
And I intend to keep it.
Siri.
Secret.
Between us.
Forever.