I once had a sugar mammy that was bang jealous and dramatic. She never entertained me when I went out to fall in love with girls of my age. I could not afford to maintain relationships with any girlfriend. I don’t know how she used to find out. Whenever she did, She would cause drama or threaten to cut her financial support if I kept on seeing the girl.
This was offbeat, unlike sugar mammies’ natures. It wasn’t what I thought I would find in our relationship. I raved in the anticipation of an open relationship devoid of emotional commitments. I had read, heard, and watched sugar mammy and sponsor stories. They never got emotionally entangled with their sugar boys and slay queens. All they wanted was deep tissue massage and the sugar boy’s company. In the exchange, they would financially pamper the boy or the girl. Sometimes, I had heard, sugar mammies were sufficiently philanthropic to the extent that they gave their sugar boys money to spend on their girlfriends. Some days, they gave their sugar boys time to spend with their girlfriends.
Josephine was the exact opposite. She never disclosed if she wanted my love, but she never wanted me to have girlfriends or fall in love with girls of my age. Her degree of jealousy sometimes made her volatile and emotionally violent. Sometimes bang childish. She acted like a teenage jilted lover experiencing a heartbreak for the first time ever.
One day, two months after we started our symbiotic relationship, she took me out of my Lumumba Drive one-bedroom on a shopping spree in TRM’s Carrefour. The shopping was smooth. I was pushing the trolley, while she picked all that I asked for. Well, until a young girl appeared in one of our shopping rows.
She was dressed in a generous kitenge bralette and a booty short that was sufficiently philanthropic to reveal her butt cheeks when she bent. She appeared on almost every row that we moved into. And each time she appeared on our row, I would stop to stare and admire the beauty that she flaunted to my lewd eyes.
My lust kinda infuriated my Josephine. She pulled me aside with an incensed face like a mother would pull a rogue kid in a supermarket and asked me to return everything that we had picked on their shelves. ‘We are leaving,’ she announced. She stormed out of the mall as I returned the goods we had picked. In the process, while I was alone, I traced the girl then flashed the latest iPhone that Josephine bought me. The sight of the phone was enough to earn her number, I presumed.
I joined Josephine in her BMW. She was still maddened and refused to talk to me for three minutes. I serenade my questions with sweet words, ‘Sweetheart, my love et al. They promptly elevated her spirit to finally engage me in a conversation. She asked me outrightly if I liked the girl. I denied, harder than Peter the disciple.
‘Just be honest, Sakwah. I know I am too old for your love, and I will understand if you crave the warmth of younger skin.’ I stood my ground and lied to her that her age was just a number and that I loved her nonetheless.
‘Why can’t I just find a man that loves me alone,’ she started lamenting and crying. I was forced to calm her down. I lied that my stares were inspired by the wonder of meeting a girl dressed so skimpily in a public shopping place where people frequented with kids. ‘I was looking at that girl, dressed that way in a public place, without an ounce of shame. Who raised her? Doesn’t she know that people frequent malls in the company of their kids to come looking almost naked?’ She agreed with what I said, and together, we cursed, slut-shamed, and insulted the girl.
In the TRM’s parking lot, she narrated to me how her late husband used to cheat on her with younger girls, and how that used to hurt her. She burdened me with all his infidelity stories and how that made her hate men. ‘I also used to be young and beautiful, you know.’ she added, much calmer. She leaned towards me and showed me her phone photos when she was younger and asked for my thoughts.
She used to be beautiful, very beautiful, but age had wiped her youthful beauty away. Still, I was forced to lie to her that even at her advanced age, she still maintained her youthful beauty. This, to win her favor back. In the end, at the end of my complimentary lies, she took me to Garden City Mall to shop.
‘Young girls will just use you, confuse you and hurt you,’ she kept on saying, warning me to stay away from girls. This situation was confusing because I didn’t want such a relationship with her. She was 34 years my senior. Her last-born daughter was only 3 years my junior and her second born, a son, was my age.
Back home, I got hooked on the young girl that I had slut-shamed. We exchanged texts from time to time. At one point, she asked me about the women in my company at the mall. I lied that Josephine was my mother.
The girl stayed at Lumumba Drive and went to USIU university. After a few weeks of wooing and lying to her, she agreed to visit me on the Saturday of the week. I couldn’t have been happier, at least I needed a weekend away from Josephine. I cleaned my house, cleaned my sheets, prepared a chicken stew, and bought some condoms in preparation for the grand visitation.
Patricia turned up dressed to kill my senses, and looked sluttier, if I am allowed to use that adjective to describe her dressing.
She twanged and tried so hard to sound like the Americans, but her Kirinyaga Kikuyu accent betrayed her big time. She sounded like a cocktail of the Jamaican Patwa and the Nigerian Pidgin, more than she sounded like the American Twang. And she talked about the American politics, weather, celebrities, and American football. I was excited when she asked me if I was a fan of football. She quickly wiped away the fun when she said that Tom Brady is the greatest football player of all time and that she was waiting for the greatest football event, the Super Bowl. Who follows the American football outside North America? I should have kicked her out of my house at that time, yet I tolerated her because I desperately craved the warmth of a younger skin.
As we ate, she started watching Wild N’ Out. I could not get any of the jokes that made her laugh out wildly.
Unfortunately, our theater session and date were interrupted by a knock, soft as it sounded. I did not expect anyone to be visiting me on that day.
On the door, Josephine stood with a wicked smile. I froze. The freeze on my face widened the smile on her face. She was dressed like an old-schooled rich woman. She walked into the house and called Patricia, ‘msichana wangu umetembelean kijana yangu’ when greeting her.
Patricia quickly sat upright, in a lady-like manner, and tried in vain to pull her short skirt down to cover her yellow Kirinyaga thighs. Josephine was quick to introduce herself as my mother. Another surprise. I had anticipated a lashing out, shouts, or a fight between the two or the three of us. It was an awkward situation, which Josephine momentarily pulled me away from when she sent me to get her fruits and soft drinks from the grocery shop a few blocks away.
A lot went through my mind. What was she up to? Why didn’t she notify me that she was coming like she always did? Why was she acting all cool? Had she got a whiff of my intentions to bed Patricia?
I rushed to the grocery and when I came back, I found Patricia crying, walking down the stairs on her way out of our apartment. I held her hand to stop her. She pushed me away and kept on walking down, cussing and hissing with rage and anger. I ran after her and blocked her way.
‘What is up, Patricia?’
‘Your mother is a sicko, that is what is up, b’tch.’
‘What has she done?’
‘She is so tribalist and so archaic she should have been born during the reign of the Mwene Mtapa Empire.’
‘What has she done to you?’
‘She called me a gold digger chasing after you because your mother is rich. F*ck her and your tribe for thinking that all girls from my tribe are gold diggers. I just wanted to vibe with you, ain’t interested in your shit. My dad is rich. Does she think that I am at USIU through a harambee or scholarships?’
‘I am sorry, Patricia. We can talk this through.’
‘I am not shitting with you anymore. Grow some up, mama’s boy. Ain’t tripping with a n*gga that tags her mama on a date. F*ck that shit, Corrins.’ All along, she vented in a perfect N. American Twang until she had to pronounce my name, Collins. That is when the American Twang drew her line and the Kirinyaga accent took over. From there henceforth, she changed her intonation and tone, making her sound like a peak Joyce Wamama.
She stormed out of the apartment, ranting and hurling all kinds of insults. She had picked some of the insults from the Wild N Out show. I ran back to my house and found Josephine pacing around the sitting room. On one of the couches were my clothes bundled up inside a shopping bag. That is all I owned when we met. She owned the apartment. Her son used to live in the house that I had inherited. I moved into it after he moved to study abroad.
What followed was a spirited effort to apologize to her, and accuse Patricia of seducing me. ‘She only came over to hang out, nothing serious, darling. You are all that I love.’
‘You are using the phone that I got you to seduce girls, and use my house to impress them.’ She went into another lamentation, accusing men of using her and wondering why all her life she never had a man that loved her alone. They lied to me that older women are calmer. Sometimes, she sounded like my mother when scolding me.
Eventually, she agreed to let me stay, and I promised to stay away from young girls. Well, I did, I tried to do, but Akinyi was just too good to ignore. Akinyi was voluptuous. She exhumed a unique vibrancy that was too attractive to ignore. She was romantic, she was beautiful and has a curvaceous body that I loved flaunting to my friends.
It wasn’t hard to convince Akinyi to love me. I flaunted everything that Josephine bought me, including her cars. Sometimes she allowed me to drive her cars. But there was trouble, I could not invite Akinyi into my house because I was scared Josephine would catch us again. I used to visit her home instead. Initially, she didn’t have a problem inviting me into her house. As our love grew stronger, however, she got weary of a man visiting her home without visiting his. She started complaining and questioning why I did not invite her to my house.
On some occasions, she shared Kenyans memes that mocked and ridiculed men with the habit of visiting their girlfriend’s house. On another day, she shared a video of a Ugandan man who had been shot dead by his lover’s husband after the husband found him in his bed, with his wife, and in his home. She serenaded the video with an ‘Ogopa nyumba yenye haulipi rent’ caption. Eventually, I yielded to her mind-games and nags to visit my home.
Akinyi arrived armed with a large handbag to spend the weekend at my home. She was wowed by how I had furnished it. She loved my TV, my home theater, and almost everything. Every time she asked me how I had amassed the properties at such a young age, including the cars, I always told her, ‘ni God maze, and hard word.’ Indeed, I used to work hard to impress Josephine to get everything I asked for.
Akinyi took several photos in my house to flaunt its opulence to her online friends. One of her posts boasted of how her boyfriend was rich, and how her hard work had earned her a rich boyfriend. ‘Rich attracts rich, hard work attracts hard work.’ she said.
I left the sitting room to blend some fruit juice in the kitchen, raving in the compliments that she had posted about me. Rudely, my perambulating thoughts were disrupted by a knock on the door. Akinyi rushed to the door to welcome the visitor, acting like the woman of the house that she was.
She rushed into my kitchen to say that Mama Fua was at the door to clean my clothes. I had not invited anyone to do my laundry on that weekend, although I had a mama fua. I was shocked to find Josephine standing in my sitting room, looking like a 2000s Mama Fua.
When I emerged into the sitting room, Josephine said, ‘sorry, nimechelea kukuja. Mtoto alikuwa mgongwa kiasi. Nitolee nguo za kufua nimalize haraka haraka nirudi nyumbani.’
I suggested that my Mama Fua goes back home to tend to her sick kid. Akinyi pulled me inside the kitchen like a wife should do and gave me a scolding down. ‘What if the mama fua needed the money to take the sick baby to the hospital?’
Reluctantly, and praying so hard, I went into the bedroom and piled my dirty laundry in the bathroom. True to her identity, Josephine went down to wash my clothes. I was tensed, and Akinyi was sick mad when we were left alone in the sitting room because I had invited a mama fua in the house when I knew she was coming over. She needed the day just for us.
‘Na by the way, let me give the mama fua the clothes which I came wearing to clean them.’ I protested. I did not want them to spend time in one place. I was trying to figure out how to get Akinyi out of my house.
She went and changed into my T-shirt, the same that Josephine wore whenever she was in my house, and took the dress she came in with to Josephine.
I don’t know what transpired in the washroom, and nothing out of the ordinary had happened to alert me to a possible quarrel. However, when Akinyi came into the sitting room, she was carrying her handbag in her hands. She was leaving.
I stopped her and asked her what was going on. ‘You are a cheat, Sakwah.’ She accused. ‘I took my dress to your mama fua and she thanked me for being decent enough not to burden her with my underwear like most of the girls that you bring in the house. She even said that the last girl whom you brought in the house last week asked your mama fua to wash her pantie with blood stains. Disgusting. Is that why you have been stalling when I asked to visit you? Because you invite ill-mannered ladies in your house every weekend to force an old woman to clean their panties.’
She hipped insults on my miserable self and dumped me. Some insults were in Dholuo. I loved Akinyi, so much. I followed her outside to try and salvage my relationship. She couldn’t listen to me.
Back in the house, I met my belongings inside a shopping bag sitting at the door. Josephine pushed me outside the door and locked the door from the inside.
Akinyi witnessed the embarrassing ordeal. She was back to pick a toothbrush that she used to align and design her facial baby hair. Which she had forgotten in the house. She watched in shock and disgust as her rich boyfriend’s true self was aired in the public. She literally ran away after learning that Josephine was my sugar mammy, and she owned everything that I flaunted.
On that occasion, Josephine kicked me out of the house, for good, and forever. Later on, I came to learn that she installed an invisible phone cloning application into the phone that she bought me. The application was able to transfer all the information from my phone into one of her phones. She had been monitoring whom I chatted with, talked to, and everything else I did with the phone.
I became homeless and more miserable than she had found me.
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