Shangazi wa Kambo
"Father remarries a younger woman. Her thick sister visits constantly—not to see her sister, but to see him. The step-aunt becomes something more. Something forbidden. Something addictive."
My father remarries at sixty-three.
His new wife, Rehema, is forty-two—young enough to be my older sister. I don't approve. I don't have a choice.
Then I meet Rehema's sister.
Suddenly, I approve of everything.
Bi Salama is forty-six.
Divorced, no children, visiting her sister "to help with the adjustment." She's thick in ways that make Rehema look malnourished. Heavy breasts, wide hips, a belly that demands attention. She's everything my new stepmother is not.
"You don't like your father's marriage," she says the first time we meet.
"Is it obvious?"
"To everyone." She sits beside me on the family couch—too close for a new relative. "But maybe I can help you... adjust."
She visits every weekend.
"Helping Rehema," she claims. But Rehema doesn't seem to need help. She and my father are happy, disgustingly so.
Salama, meanwhile, keeps finding reasons to be near me.
"The garden needs attention." She stands too close while I work.
"This door sticks." She presses against me as I fix it.
"I'm cold." She sits beside me when the evening cools.
Always an excuse.
Always contact.
"I know what you're doing," I tell her.
We're alone in the kitchen. My father and Rehema are at dinner with neighbors.
"What am I doing?"
"Finding excuses to touch me."
"Am I?" She moves closer. "And do you mind?"
"You're my step-aunt—"
"I'm your father's wife's sister." She touches my chest. "That's barely related. It's not like we share blood."
"It's still—"
"Still what? Forbidden?" She leans in. "The best things always are."
She kisses me in my father's kitchen.
Deep, hungry, a divorced woman who knows exactly what she wants. I should push her away. I should remember who she is.
I kiss her back.
We don't stop at kissing.
She leads me to the guest room—her room for the weekend—and locks the door. My father won't be home for hours. Rehema won't check on us.
"I've been watching you for months," she says, undressing. "Since the first time I visited. Thinking about this."
"About what?"
"About what it would feel like." Her body emerges—thick, soft, inviting. "To have my sister's stepson inside me."
She's everything I imagined.
Heavy breasts that overflow my hands. Belly that ripples when she moves. Thick thighs that wrap around me and won't let go. I take her in the guest room while my father dines with neighbors.
"Yes—this is what I wanted—"
"Your sister—"
"Has a husband. I have nothing." She bounces on me harder. "Let me have this. Let me have you."
Every weekend after that.
She arrives Friday evening. By Friday night, she's in my room. Saturday and Sunday, we find moments—the garden, the storage room, once in the car while my father napped.
"People will notice," I warn her.
"People notice nothing." She's riding me in broad daylight, curtains drawn. "Your father is obsessed with my sister. My sister is obsessed with being a wife. No one looks at us."
"I look at you."
"I know." She comes, shaking. "That's why I keep coming back."
Rehema notices something.
"You and Salama seem close," my stepmother observes.
"She's family now. We're adjusting."
"Adjusting." Rehema smiles. "That's good. She needs someone. She's been lonely since the divorce."
If only she knew how we're addressing that loneliness.
"I want more," Salama tells me.
We're in the guest room, tangled together. It's Sunday afternoon. She leaves in hours.
"More what?"
"More time. More you." She traces my chest. "I hate leaving. I hate waiting a week to see you."
"Move here."
"What?"
"Tell Rehema you want to be closer. Family helping family. There's room."
She stares at me.
"You want me here? All the time?"
"I want you whenever I can have you."
Salama moves in.
The family room above the garage—"temporary," she says, while she "gets back on her feet." My father approves. Rehema is delighted. And I have my step-aunt under the same roof.
Every night becomes available.
"This is dangerous," she whispers.
We're in my room. My father sleeps twenty feet away with her sister. We're breaking every rule.
"I don't care."
"Neither do I." She pulls me inside her. "That's what scares me."
The arrangement continues for two years.
Salama "temporarily" lives above the garage. My father ages, grows tired, goes to bed early. Rehema tends to him. And every night, I climb the stairs to Salama's room.
"Your father thinks I'm rebuilding my life," she says one night.
"Aren't you?"
"I'm building something." She mounts me. "But it's with his son, not with anyone appropriate."
"Does that bother you?"
"It should." She rides me harder. "But nothing about you bothers me anymore. I've given up fighting it."
My father dies at sixty-eight.
Heart attack. Peaceful. Rehema is devastated. Salama is supportive. I'm... conflicted.
At the funeral, Salama stands beside me.
"What happens now?" I ask.
"Rehema will need me. More than ever."
"And me?"
"You'll always have me." She squeezes my hand—publicly, a comforting aunt. Privately, something more. "Nothing changes. Except now we don't have to be as careful."
Rehema mourns for a year.
Salama tends to her—the dutiful sister. But every night, after Rehema sleeps, Salama comes to my room.
"This is our house now," she says. "Yours and mine."
"And Rehema?"
"Rehema will remarry eventually. Move on. She's young enough." Salama straddles me. "But I'm not going anywhere. Your father brought me into this family. I'm staying."
Rehema does remarry.
Two years later, to a businessman in Nairobi. She moves out. Salama stays.
"Just you and me now," she says.
"Step-aunt and stepson."
"Not anymore." She's in my bed permanently now—our bed. "Now I'm just yours. And you're just mine."
"What do we tell people?"
"We tell them I'm family. That I stayed to help my late sister's stepson." She smiles. "The truth, more or less."
Less, definitely.
But close enough.
And that's all that matters.