Chai na Maandazi | NEON LIT

Mama Aisha hates me.

She's never said it outright—Swahili culture doesn't allow for such directness—but it's there in every look, every clipped word, every time she watches me with her daughter and her lips thin to a line.

"He's too skinny," I overheard her tell Aisha a week before the wedding. "What kind of man can't even grow a proper belly? He'll blow away in the first storm."

I'm six feet tall and one-ninety. In America, where I grew up, that's respectable. In coastal Kenya, where men are expected to show their prosperity through their bodies, I'm practically starving.

And now I'm living in her house.

It's a temporary arrangement.

Our apartment in Westlands flooded—burst pipe, extensive damage, six weeks for repairs. "Stay with my mother," Aisha insisted. "She has all that space since Baba died. She'd love the company."

She would not love the company. But Aisha is pregnant—four months along, our first child—and arguing with a pregnant Swahili woman is like arguing with the tide. You lose, and you get wet.

So here I am. In Mama Aisha's sprawling Kilimani home. Sleeping in her guest room. Eating her food. Trying not to notice that my mother-in-law is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.

Safia Mwangi. Mama Aisha to everyone.

Fifty-four years old. Widowed three years ago when her husband had a heart attack in their bedroom. She found him in the morning, cold, gone.

She wears her grief like armor—wrapped in modest dresses, moving through her days with efficient purpose. But sometimes, when she thinks no one is watching, I see her stop. See her face crumple. See the loneliness that lives beneath the disapproval.

She's also thick in ways that make my mouth water.

Two-sixty, easy. Maybe more. Wide hips that brush the kitchen doorframe. Breasts that strain against her modest blouses. A belly that rounds outward, soft and prominent. Thighs that I've glimpsed through the gap in her wrapper when she sits carelessly.

She looks exactly like Aisha will in twenty years.

That thought keeps me awake at night.

"You're up early."

It's 5 AM. I couldn't sleep—pregnancy hormones make Aisha snore like a wildebeest—so I came to the kitchen for water. Mama Aisha is already there, making chai.

"I always rise for Fajr," she says. "Even though I don't pray as often as I should."

"Can I help with anything?"

"You can sit and stay out of my way."

I sit.

She moves around the kitchen with practiced ease, boiling milk and water, adding tea leaves and cardamom. The maandazi are already frying—puffy, golden, filling the air with the smell of home.

"My daughter says you're a good man," she says without turning. "That you treat her well."

"I try."

"She says you're... attentive." The word hangs in the air. "In the bedroom."

I nearly choke on nothing.

"Mama Aisha—"

"She talks to me about everything. She always has." Now she turns, and her eyes are sharp. "She says things her father could never do. That you make her feel... ways she didn't know were possible."

"I don't think we should—"

"I'm not asking for details." She sets a cup of chai in front of me. "I'm asking what your secret is."

"My... secret?"

"My husband was a good man. I loved him. But in thirty years of marriage, he never once made me feel what my daughter describes after six months with you." She sits across from me, and the chair creaks under her weight. "So. What's your secret?"

The chai steams between us. The maandazi cool on their rack.

"I pay attention," I say finally. "I watch what works. What doesn't. And I don't stop until she tells me to."

Mama Aisha is quiet for a long moment.

"My husband always stopped," she says. "Before I was ready. Every time."

I don't know what to say.

"Eat your maandazi," she says, standing. "They're getting cold."

Something shifts after that conversation.

She's still sharp with me—still disapproves of my skinny body, my American habits, my failure to speak proper Swahili. But there's something else now. A curiosity. A hunger she can't quite hide.

I catch her watching me when she thinks I'm not looking. See her eyes linger on my hands, my arms, my mouth. She looks away quickly every time.

But not quickly enough.

Aisha goes to Mombasa for a week.

Her sister is having a baby—baby shower, then the birth. "Stay with Mama," she insists. "Keep her company. And be nice."

"I'm always nice."

"You're polite. There's a difference." She kisses me, her belly pressing between us. "Make her like you. Please? For me?"

I promise to try.

Day three without Aisha.

The house is too quiet. Mama Aisha and I orbit each other like wary planets, sharing meals in silence, retreating to separate rooms.

Until the power goes out.

"Mwenyezi Mungu."

Her voice comes from the hallway, frustrated and afraid. Kenya Power cuts are common, but it's 10 PM, the generator isn't working, and the darkness is absolute.

"Mama Aisha? Are you okay?"

"I can't find the torch—the cabinet—"

I follow her voice, navigate by memory. Find her in the hallway, pressed against the wall.

"Here." I take her hand. "Let me help you."

She flinches at my touch. Then relaxes. Her hand is warm, soft, larger than Aisha's.

"The sitting room," she says. "I have candles."

I guide her through the dark, her body close behind me. She stumbles once—grabs my arm—and I feel the weight of her press against my back.

We find the candles. I light them. And in the flickering glow, I see her face.

She's been crying.

"I'm sorry—" She wipes her eyes. "The dark, I—since Salim died in the dark, I can't—"

"It's okay. You're okay." I guide her to the sofa. Sit beside her. "I'm here."

"Why are you being kind to me?" She sounds almost angry. "I've been terrible to you. I've been—"

"Protective. Of your daughter." I take her hand again. "I understand."

"You don't understand." She's crying harder now. "I've been jealous. Of her. Of what she has with you. Of—"

She stops. Looks at me. The candlelight flickers in her wet eyes.

"Mama Aisha—"

"I've been so lonely." The words pour out like a dam breaking. "Three years of sleeping alone in that bed. Three years of no one touching me. And then you come into my house, and you look at me sometimes like—"

"Like what?"

"Like you're hungry." Her voice drops to a whisper. "And I recognize that look. Because I've been hungry too."

The candles flicker. The house is silent.

"This would be wrong," I say carefully.

"I know."

"Aisha would never forgive us."

"I know."

"We can't—"

She kisses me.

She tastes like chai and tears.

I should pull away. Should stop this before it goes further. But her mouth is hot and desperate, and her hands are gripping my shirt, and she's making sounds I've only ever heard from her daughter.

"Just once," she gasps. "Please. Just once, and then we never speak of it again."

"Mama—"

"Safia. Tonight, I'm Safia. Just a woman who needs—" She can't finish. Just pulls me closer.

I'm weak. I'm damned. I'm human.

I kiss her back.

I carry her to her bedroom.

The one she shared with her husband. The one where he died. She hesitates at the threshold.

"Are you sure?" I ask.

"No." She looks at me. "But I need this more than I need to be sure."

I lay her on the bed. The candles cast everything in gold.

"I'm going to undress you now," I say. "Tell me if you want me to stop."

She doesn't tell me to stop.

Her body is a revelation.

Bigger than Aisha's. Softer. More. Her breasts are enormous—heavy, dark-nippled, hanging to her waist when I free them. Her belly is round and marked with the stretch marks of children. Her thighs are thick, powerful, trembling as I spread them.

"It's been so long," she whispers. "I probably don't even remember how to—"

"Let me remind you."

I kiss my way down her body. Take my time. Show her what Aisha experiences—what she described to her mother in terms that made Safia ache with jealousy.

When I reach her cunt, she's already wet.

"You don't have to—"

"I want to." I look up at her. "Tell me what feels good."

"Everything. Everything feels good."

I lower my mouth.

She comes within minutes.

Screaming into a pillow, her thighs clamped around my head. I don't stop—push her through it, start again, make her come a second time before she begs for mercy.

"Inside me—please—I need to feel—"

I strip. Her eyes go wide.

"Aisha wasn't exaggerating," she breathes.

"Are you okay with—"

"Yes. Yes. Just—be gentle. At first."

I sink into her slowly.

She gasps—half pain, half pleasure—as I fill her. Tight from disuse, but wet enough to take me. I pause when I'm fully inside, letting her adjust.

"Okay?"

"Move. Please. Move."

I move.

It's different than Aisha.

Slower. Deeper. More desperate. Three years of loneliness channeled into every thrust. She cries beneath me—tears streaming, voice breaking—but the sounds she makes are pleasure, not pain.

"Yes—yes—don't stop—"

I don't stop. I fuck her until she comes around me, clenching so hard I see stars. And when I follow—burying myself deep, filling her—she holds me like she's afraid I'll disappear.

"Thank you," she whispers. "Thank you, thank you, thank you—"

I hold her until she falls asleep.

The morning is awkward.

The power is back. The candles are burnt to stubs. And we can't look at each other.

"Last night—" she starts.

"Never happened." I pour chai for both of us. "Aisha comes home in four days. We never speak of it."

"Agreed." She takes the cup. "It was a moment of weakness. Grief. Loneliness."

"Exactly."

Silence.

"But," she says slowly, "if you wanted chai in the mornings. Before Aisha wakes. Just to... talk. That would be acceptable."

I look at her. She looks at me.

"I do like chai," I say.

"I make it every morning."

"Then I'll be here every morning."

She almost smiles. "Good."

Aisha comes home glowing.

"Did you two get along?" she asks.

"Better than expected," Mama Aisha says. "He's not as useless as I thought."

"Mama!"

"What? It's a compliment." She catches my eye. "He makes good chai."

I smile. "I learned from the best."

We never speak of it directly.

But every morning, before Aisha wakes, I find myself in Mama Aisha's kitchen. Chai and maandazi. Quiet conversation. And sometimes—rarely—a touch that lasts too long, a look that says too much.

Aisha thinks we've finally bonded.

She's not wrong.

Just not in the way she imagines.

Some secrets are kept between mothers and sons.

Even when the son is only hers by marriage.

Chai na maandazi.

Tea and donuts.

And something sweeter still.