My Sister, My Husband, My Son

(All persons engaged in sexual activity are over 18 years of age and any similarities between this story and real life are purely coincidental).

Were it not for my late father's constant exhortation that we should love each other, I think I would have had major problems with my younger sister. I have just caught her in my son's house in broad daylight. She was to fetch some maize for me to boil, but it took longer than I would have supposed. When I went out to see what the problem was, she was nowhere to be seen. Instead I heard grunts, which I soon realized were coming from my son's house. I felt hot all over, my thoughts running back some decades before.

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When we were much younger, with small children, Abigail's marriage to her high school sweetheart suddenly ended. My father tried to shore it up, so that a bad reputation did not attach itself to his family, but to no avail. She had nowhere to stay, and I talked my husband into letting her stay with us for a while. She came with her two small sons; the two elder ones were in boarding school. I immediately noticed a few things about her.

First she was very extravagant with money. She bought her children expensive sweets where my husband and I discouraged our children from eating sweets. She brought them in quantities enough that our children were also given. I tried to counsel her not to give the children so many of them at a go, and to keep some for another day. But she retorted that they had been bought to be eaten.

Secondly, she performed at her tasks at great speed, be it washing clothes, cleaning the house, or even eating. If she was sitting down, she would have her legs spread apart, and even though her dresses or skirts were not the short minis that were just then coming into fashion, she pulled hers up so that her knees and part of the thighs were uncovered. I could not understand where she had picked this bad habit of sitting. This happened even when my husband was around.

"Abigail, please stop showing your nakedness like that! What would our late father say were he to know that you sit spread-eagled like that!"

"But Salome, my sister, I am only getting my clothes out of the way as I work!" She would then remember one of the lessons drilled into us by our parents, that of respecting the one who was older than yourself. She would pull her dress to below her knees as she worked. But a short while later, she would have forgotten and exposed herself again.

At other times she worked bending forward. At such times she bent over so far that her back made a steep angle, with legs planted straight, even with a backward bend. This would cause whatever she was wearing to climb so high that the backs of her thighs were in full view. This may have been as bad, if not worse, in my opinion. I worried that if my husband were to come upon her in that position, anything might happen.

I began to notice that the two were almost of a kind. They seemed to have their own private store of jokes to share, some of which seemed to me a bit off-colour in front of the kids.

"This very white sugar is not as sweet. You have to add another teaspoon to get it to taste," Abigail once commented.

"You know, the dull-coloured type comes from the sacks that were at the top as they were transported by lorry to Nairobi," Kevin, my husband began.

"So what?" Abigail had a very naughty look on her face.

"You see, the turnboys who load and unload do not stop the driver to relieve themselves on the way..."

"Kevin, the children!" I interrupted him. By now Abigail had gotten the drift and was laughing her head off. I did not dare join them in the laughter lest all the children thought I approved of this kind of talk.

Next I caught them brushing against each other, or a fleeting touch that would have passed as being very innocent had it not been for this rapport I had already picked up on. In the car, even though I sat in the front passenger seat, he would have more to say to her than his wife. My sister did not seem to mind that my husband was giving her an unnatural level of attention. I was caught between relief that he was hardly ever at home, being a railway engineer, and missing him in bed on some nights.

Some evenings they would come home together, which I at first appreciated. Kevin would be on his way home and passed by the busstop to see if she had already left. Luckily she had not. I thought him very kind. But one evening their arrival was later than if she had actually come home by bus as usual. I decided not to let it bother me too much. How could my sister, from the same womb, snatch my husband away from me? What would be his payoff, anyway? We had four children, three of them girls, while Abigail had four, all sons. It did not look to me the kind of move that would be beneficial to him, since he would have to find brideprice to pay for all the boys, while here he stood to gain from the brideprice brought by his daughters suitors. Thus I thrust the thought from my mind.

While he used to leave for, or come from, work at all hours, with increasing frequency he would now leave in the morning, giving my sister and her sons a lift to town, or come in the evening, coinciding with when she would be coming from work, after picking her sons from school. Much as I wanted to rely on the good upbringing by our parents, my sisters behavior with my husband began to really bother me. I tried to play it down, but time and again it reared its ugly head. Worst of all, since we were all living under the same roof I could not really have it off with my husband as she might overhear us arguing.

Matters came to a head during the August school holidays that year. Their arrival in the evenings had slid more and more into the twilight hours, and then into the night. When they came in past 8pm, I just had to know! I was so furious that I did not let the children eat and go to sleep before I launched into Kevin and Abigail. I served supper and as we were at the dining table, I started.

"Kevin, why have you come so late? Where have you been with this woman?" At that moment I saw my sister more as a wicked home destroyer than my sibling.

"You look different today, my dear!" he tried to mollify me. But they even seemed to smell different to me that evening.

"Abigail, where have you been with my husband until such an hour? You left work at 4:30, and you arrive here before 6 on normal days. Why is it that when my husband comes with you, it is getting later and later? Last week, what time did you two arrive? After 7? True or false?"

Before she could answer, Kevin stepped in between us. "Salome my darling, calm down."

Suddenly I remembered something. "Children, go to bed right now!" They obeyed instantly albeit with dragged feet.

"What do you mean calm down, Kevin? Explain to me in simple language why this habitual lateness." My sisters eyes were shifty, looking this way and that. Kevin was being uncharacteristically diplomatic.

"Salome dear, the Nairobi we used to live in 5 or 6 years ago is no longer the same. It is more crowded, there are more cars on the roads and it is developing at a very fast rate. Today we were stuck in a traffic jam on Kenyatta Avenue for a long time." His eyes did not have their usual fire when we would have an argument. Obviously he did not want one this evening. I decided to back down.

"Abigail, I will want to speak to you in the morning."

Kevin fucked me much more fiercely than he ever had that night. I did not bring up the subject of late arrivals again.

Abigail did not work on Saturdays. After Kevin had left for work, I told Abigail to look for a house and move at the end of the month. I saw clearly that if I let things continue as they were, we would all be sorry. Let that one time they had fucked (if indeed they had) be enough. At least if they saw each other it would not have to be in my face. But I thought they would not keep so hard at it; they would tone down.

The following weeks' relations between Abigail and my husband cooled somewhat, but I could see they were still on good terms with each other. Perhaps they realized that they had overplayed their hand so that I nearly caught them in the act. On the day of the move, my husband was not around to help with the moving to the new place she had found, but in any case it would have been awkward all round.

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Six years later, my son shocked his father and myself when he told us that he did not see any reason for going on with education, as he had decided to become a preacher. We tried to bring him to see sense but he was obstinate. The lucky thing was that he had not set a date to stop going to school. My husband suggested calling in Abigail who by now had become the Chief Matron in the national hospital. I was very doubtful of this strategy, as I did not see her as a very reliable person given her conduct in the few months she had lived with us.

Amazingly she reasoned with Keith gently, and seemed to be able to reach into that stubborn core. Finally she asked him, "Keith, do you really think anybody would take you seriously if you were unschooled? Would you preach to poor uneducated people only? Would decent people like your parents listen to you?" This seemed to wake him up and he started to take his studies more seriously. It seemed that from that time, Abigail and Keith built a connection between themselves.

Even after finishing school, he liked to visit her at home. Often he would volunteer to help me take eggs from my chickens to her workplace where her colleagues would buy them.

In later years after he married a serious-minded teacher with whom I struck a nice relationship, he kept his friendship with his aunt alive. Both his wife and I noticed the bond, without it worrying us too much. He would pass by her house, on his way from work, remember her birthday, and never failed to see her if it was reported that she was ill. My husband, however did not seem to like the situation and made a fuss whenever he was home and saw his son with my sister. This is what eventually opened my eyes to the danger that Abigail could have transferred her liking for Kevin onto our son.

We never caught them in any unbecoming behaviour but everyone in the family soon knew that Keith was close to his aunt. It even spread to church, where it was said that a man and his aunt were friends, above being related by blood. None of these people, however, were privy to the knowledge of how uncomfortable Abigail's relationship with my husband had made me those many years ago. She, on her part seemed unperturbed by this undercurrent of feeling about her nephew's apparent closeness to her.

My husband passed away when my son's children were still quite young. She was very deeply affected by the death, almost as if she were in my place. She kept herself very busy throughout the mourning period prior to the funeral. Most of the burden lay on my son's shoulders being the eldest and also the only son of his dead father. She accompanied him and the men who went to select a coffin, and would have done more with him, had it been possible. I was both grateful for her support, and wary of her motives.

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I had no preparation for what I witnessed that afternoon in my son's house. My sister grunting with pleasure given to her by my son! I knocked loudly on the door calling out both their names. My son did not respond, but Abigail came out tucking her blouse into her skirt and her hair disheveled. I stomped back to my house with her in tow. But before I turned the corner I could not hear her footsteps any more. Turning round I saw her standing in a confused stance. "Come with me, Abi!"

"What happened between you and Walter back then?" I felt the ground giving way under my feet. I walked back towards her.

"What are you talking about in front of the children, Abi?"

"Ah, so you know what I am talking about, eh?" She glared at me with undisguised belligerence. "You and your husband are not the only ones who know about you and Walter." Walter was the husband of our older sister, who had been my lover before Simon showed up with his car and a job with the Railways, at the time rivalling the Government in revenue and extent of network. It was said that in the earliest days, the Government needed the profits made by the Railways to balance its budgets. So Simon had the financial muscle to bamboozle a simple teacher like me.

But what Abi was referring to was that it was very hard for Walter and I to forget one another. We saw each other a number of times after his marriage to my sister, and even after I married Simon. There was considerable doubt if Kevin was Walter's son or Simon's. It took a number of years for it to be buried deep in our secret hearts. How could Abigail have found out that dark secret? If she opened her mouth, it could create major upheaval in the family.

At a stroke, from being the small sister who had been caught with her pants down, literally, she had become blackmailer. How ironical to find myself in her power.

"You make any fuss about what you saw today, I will spill the beans," she confirmed my worst fears.

I tried bluster. "Ha, what would you do?"

"Imagine if I proved to your sons and daughters that who they take to be their eldest brother was born in the sin of incest. Can you imagine the rivalry that would erupt between Caleb and Kevin?"

'Oh no! My carefully constructed web would unravel right before my eyes!' I thought. "Never! You would never do that. Do you think the repercussions would leave you unscathed?"

"Look Salome, you would be the first to be injured, and the most. So if you want peace, you will not breath a word of what you have seen today." She glared at me like she was about to bite me. "Or will see after this."

"Kevin will wonder what we are doing here instead of going to the house." With that I resumed my progress to my house. This time Abi followed me. We resumed the cooking as if nothing had happened. After she went home I began to wonder how I would relate to my son, now that my sister knew so much about him and us. I would probably talk myself into accepting that she saw Simon in the young man, to the point of threatening his marriage. If they could take such high risks of fucking in his house, how long had they been having sex, and where?

More puzzling was this: what did Kevin see in a woman 20 years his senior? Did he somehow know of his father's liking of Abigail? Surely not from anything he had seen! Do these things travel by ESP? How confused I was getting!