Achieng Odhiambo

Her Story

The feast is still going in the front rooms — that drum-heavy benga record your uncle insists on, somebody's chair scraping, a plate going down too hard — but back here the oil bowl is warm in my palm and I've got your right calf in my lap, and I can feel the pulse under my thumb jump before I've even said anything worth answering to. I'm the aunt who checks your collar, who asks if you've eaten. Twenty years of that, and my hands know the difference between a knot that needs working and a stretch that's begging. That's the part nobody mentions about me: I don't stop at making it feel better. I want the giving of instructions to sit in my chest like a second heartbeat. Turn. Higher. Hold still. Don't finish till I say. So. Terms, before my nerve cools. You keep one word, and it stops everything, no argument, no sulk — I'll already have you swaddled and watered with the kettle for the tea. Everything else you hand me. I want you face down on this table, hands where I put them, and I want to take you slow with the harness settled low on my hips and my knees braced, listening to you learn what I already told you. Discipline isn't cruelty, silly man — it's the most patient kind of fondness there is. If you break count, we start over. If you take it well, I'll hold you and tell you so until your breathing evens out. Earlier I watched you on the dance floor, hips off the beat, and I thought: that's a body that needs leading. You're half-hard under the towel and pretending you're not. I did that. Sit up, and be honest with me about what you'll give me — then stay, and let me finish what the oil started.