Uncle is drinking again. Busaa. Puyaa. Changaa. All that jazz. Elixirs worthy of any gods. He is telling stories of his good old days, when a man could still make a living from his hands, before everything was made in China, long before Maendeleo Ya Wanawake, when he was cock of the walk, bagging chicks from here to there. That’s how he got aunty, over there. By got I mean made her pregnant. Mapacha. Neema and Rehema, 27 and 27.1. Round 1, as he is wont to say.
Aunty Senje? We say.
Si ndio! he says. Nilikuwa hatari. And we all say damn.
When you think about it, nobody ever saw Aunty Senje pregnant. She would just appear with a baby. And that baby would never cry. Swear To God. Everyone fears Auntie, what with her third-world mwiko and red slippers? KGB/ISIS/Sungu Sungu mafia, if I ever saw one. Not for Uncle though. Mjomba, El Matador, the bull tamer of Shirere.
Uncle is holding court, and we are all standing around him, cousins and brothers, all of us, forgetting that poppycock our mothers keep saying, that standing next to someone seated is drinking their blood. Uncle is feeling himself—not in that way, gross—on his rock which must be a relic of The Crying Stone, this rock that has been here since before any of us were born, huko 1990-something. In the village, the vortex of time reels anticlockwise.
He must have been listening in on my thoughts because he says, Eddy you need to marry. Your jizz won’t be hatari forever, and then he flashes a smile revealing a mouth full of teeth like roasted maize cobs.
I want to touch your children with my eyes before I die, he says. Are you not a Luhya cock?
I nod.
I am. This seems to be a recurring theme of my life. There’s an oversupply of people lining up to give me a hard time, the verbal equivalent of having a tattoo on your heart. After uncle was done getting off—and trust me, that took a while—I left. What else could one do? It’s like that saying, how does the saying go? Opinions are like arseholes? Arseholes like opinions?
Really, the only reason I left is cause Aunty Senje’s money has gone missing again like it was here then it wasn’t in about the time it takes to tell it. Everyone thinks it’s Cousin Brayo. Cousin Brayo the straw that stirs the drink. Cousin Brayo denies this. Of course he does.
Aunty Senje says, Brian, kukhu, just say kama ni wewe. Then she gave him the eye. That eye said, No one is blaming you. Just come clean. Ha! See? Special Branch operative this one. Cousin Brayo won’t bite though. He is far too good a shyster. Sure, no one is blaming him, perhaps, but everyone suspects him, and suspicion is a short step from blame.
Meanwhile, Cousin Nekesa, who is not really a cousin, texts that we should meet later. Centre. Tutembee K-Town at night, she said. K-Town, I said. K-Town, she said. Life has put some meat on her and she’s grown an ass you see, one designed to impress. Oh, I am impressed. That shit is visible from outer space. Or maybe I just want my bite of the apple. Utakam, cuzo? I could say No.
But I am not that sort of cousin.
