Mama ya Binamu
"Staying with his cousin's family for work. The cousin leaves for school every morning. His thick mother stays home. She's been lonely since the divorce. She stops being lonely when he arrives."
My cousin Hassan got me a job in Mombasa.
Entry-level, but a foot in the door. The only problem: I need somewhere to stay. Hotels are expensive. Hassan offers his family home.
"My mother has extra rooms," he says. "She'll love the company."
His mother loves the company.
More than Hassan imagines.
Bi Zaituni is forty-seven.
Hassan's mother, divorced three years ago when her husband left for a younger woman. She raised Hassan alone since. He's twenty-three now, focused on his studies, barely home.
I'm home constantly.
With her.
She's thick in ways that speak of comfort.
Years of good living before the divorce, years of stress eating after. Heavy breasts that strain her house dresses. Wide hips that fill doorways. A belly soft from solo meals and lonely nights.
"You'll be comfortable here," she says when I arrive.
I become very comfortable.
The first week is proper.
She cooks my meals, shows me the neighborhood, helps me prepare for the new job. We're family—nothing inappropriate.
But I notice things.
The way she watches me eat. The way her hand lingers when she passes plates. The way her eyes follow me when I leave for work.
And the way mine follow her.
"Hassan won't be home until late," she says one evening.
We're eating dinner together—our fifth night, our tenth meal. The house is quiet. The city buzzes outside.
"He studies hard."
"He's never home." She sets down her fork. "I've been alone in this house for three years. Cooking for one. Sleeping alone. Waiting for someone to notice me."
"Bi Zaituni—"
"Just Zaituni." She stands, moves around the table. "You're not a child. I'm not your aunt by blood. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging what's happening between us."
"What's happening?"
"You tell me." She's standing beside me now. "You look at me. I look at you. We're dancing around something. I'm tired of dancing."
She kisses me at the dinner table.
Her mouth tastes like the dinner she cooked—spices and heat and something hungrier. Her thick body presses against mine while I sit frozen.
"I haven't been with anyone since the divorce," she whispers. "Three years. I'm dying here."
"Your son—"
"Is never home. Is too focused on his future to notice his mother fading away." She pulls me up from the chair. "But you're here. Every day. Looking at me like I matter."
"You matter."
"Then prove it." She starts unbuttoning her dress. "In my bedroom. Tonight. Prove I still matter to someone."
I take my cousin's mother in her matrimonial bedroom.
The bedroom where Hassan was conceived. The bedroom her husband abandoned. I spread her across the sheets and worship every inch of her thick body.
"Yes—finally—someone who sees me—"
I see everything.
Her heavy breasts, dark and sensitive. Her belly, soft and welcoming. Her thick thighs that part for me willingly.
"Inside me—please—I've been empty for so long—"
I fill her.
She comes like she hasn't come in years.
Screaming, crying, her whole body shaking. I don't stop—I push her through that orgasm into another, give her three years of compensation in one night.
"Don't stop—don't ever stop—"
I don't stop until dawn.
Hassan notices nothing.
His mother glows now—smiling more, cooking better, full of energy. He thinks she's finally recovering from the divorce.
He doesn't know why.
Every night after he leaves for his girlfriend's.
I come to Zaituni's bedroom. She's waiting—undressed already, eager, starving for what I give her.
"My son thinks I'm better—"
"Aren't you?"
"I'm alive." She pulls me onto her. "For the first time in three years, I'm alive."
The job goes well.
I'm promoted. I can afford my own place now. I should move out.
I don't.
"Stay," Zaituni says. "Hassan expects you here. And I need you here."
"People will talk—"
"People already talk." She mounts me. "The divorced woman with her nephew staying indefinitely. Let them talk. I don't care anymore."
Hassan graduates.
Gets a job in Nairobi. Moves out. Leaves me alone with his mother.
"Just us now," she says.
"I could find my own place—"
"This is your place." She's in my arms—we don't pretend to have separate rooms anymore. "I'm your place. You're not leaving."
I'm not leaving.
We marry quietly three years later.
Hassan is shocked—his mother, marrying his cousin. But he adjusts. Gives his blessing eventually.
"She's happy," he tells me. "I've never seen her this happy. Whatever you did..."
He doesn't want to know what I did.
What I do every night.
What I'll keep doing until one of us can't anymore.
Zaituni is fifty-four now.
Still thick. Still hungry. Still grateful every morning that I'm beside her.
"Thank you," she says sometimes.
"For what?"
"For seeing me. When no one else did." She pulls me close. "For being here. When everyone left."
I'm here.
I'll always be here.
My cousin's mother.
My wife.
My everything.