The Fisherman's Widow

Every morning, I bring my catch to Mama Mariam.

She's been selling fish on Malindi beach since before I was born. Sixty years old, thick as the fishing nets, still beautiful in the way the sea is beautiful—powerful and dangerous and impossible to ignore.

Her husband drowned ten years ago.

She never remarried.

And somehow, she always pays me more than my fish are worth.

"Good catch today, Juma." She weighs my basket with expert hands. Two-sixty of practical authority, wrapped in faded kanga, standing barefoot in the sand. "Tuna. Snapper. Even some lobster."

"The waters were kind."

"They usually are, to you." She counts out shillings—more than the market rate, as always. "You have a gift."

"My father taught me."

"Your father was a drunk who couldn't tell a net from a noose." She says it without malice. "The gift is yours. Always has been."

I take the money. Turn to go.

"Juma."

I stop.

"I need help with my boat. After market closes. Can you come?"

Her boat is beached behind her house.

A small dhow, barely seaworthy, that she's kept since her husband died. I don't know why—she doesn't sail anymore. But every few months, she asks me to help maintain it.

"The hull needs checking," she says. "The monsoons are coming."

I inspect the boat while she watches. There's nothing wrong with it—there never is—but I make a show of examining every plank.

"It's sound," I tell her.

"Are you sure? Maybe you should look closer."

"Mama Mariam—"

"Come inside." She turns toward the house. "I need to pay you for your work."

Her house is small and salt-worn.

One room, a bed, a cooking area. The walls are covered with nets and hooks, relics of a life that ended when her husband's boat never returned.

"You've been good to me," she says, closing the door. "Three years of bringing me your best catch. Three years of helping with the boat."

"It's nothing."

"It's not nothing." She sits on the bed, looks up at me. "Do you know why I pay you more than the other fishermen?"

"I assumed—"

"You assumed wrong." She begins unwrapping her kanga. "I pay you because you're young. Strong. Because you remind me of what I had before the sea took it."

"Mama Mariam—"

"Do you want to know what I really need help with?" The kanga falls away. She's massive beneath—breasts heavy and dark, belly round with age, thighs thick from decades of standing on sand. "Not the boat. Never the boat."

I should leave.

She's old enough to be my mother. She's my employer, in a way. She's the widow of a fisherman who died in the same waters I sail every day.

But I've been watching her too.

Three years of watching her move through the market. Three years of wondering what she looks like beneath the practical clothes. Three years of taking her extra shillings and pretending not to understand why.

"I understand," I say.

"Then come here."

She tastes like salt and loneliness.

Her mouth on mine is hungry—ten years of sleeping alone, ten years of watching young men come and go while she stayed rooted to the beach. When she pulls me toward the bed, I don't resist.

"I haven't—since Ibrahim—" She stops. "It's been so long."

"I know."

"You don't know." She pulls at my clothes. "You can't know what it's like to sleep alone for a decade. To watch your body age without anyone seeing it. Without anyone touching it."

"I'm seeing it now."

"Then look." She lies back, spreads herself before me. "Look at what ten years of nothing has made me. And tell me if you still want it."

I want it.

I lower myself onto her, my young body pressing into her aged one. She gasps when I enter her—tight from years without, but wet, ready, desperate.

"Yes—ndio—I'd forgotten—"

I move slowly at first. Her body needs time to remember what it's for. But the memory returns quickly, and soon she's matching my rhythm, her hips rising to meet mine.

"Harder—the way Ibrahim—the way men used to—"

I give her what she needs. What ten years of widowhood have denied her. She comes twice before I let go, and when I spill inside her, she cries.

"Thank you," she whispers. "Thank you for seeing me."

It becomes our arrangement.

Every few weeks, after market, I help with the boat. She pays me in ways the other fishermen don't understand—why Juma always brings his catch to Mama Mariam, why she pays him more, why he stays so long after market closes.

"They'll talk," I warn her one evening.

"Let them talk." She pulls me close. "I've given this village forty years. They owe me this."

"And when I marry? When I have a wife?"

"Then you'll stop coming. Or you'll find a wife who understands." She traces my jaw. "But until then—you're mine. The sea took my husband. It gave me you instead."

Years pass.

I do marry—a young woman from Mombasa who knows nothing of Malindi's arrangements. But even then, I still bring my catch to Mama Mariam. Still help with the boat.

My wife asks once why I spend so much time at the old widow's house.

"She was my father's friend," I lie. "She needs the help."

She accepts this. Why wouldn't she?

And when market closes, and the beach empties, and Mama Mariam leads me inside her salt-worn house—

The sea keeps its secrets.

Mjane.

Widow.

Paid in catch.

Paying in kind.