• Not even a week in jail could get Sophia to fess up to alleged murders
Being very newly married, I know zilch about running a household, and none of it from experience. My father disappeared when I was very young, so there goes that avenue.
The only man in our village famous for running a house was nicknamed Wa Banana (few knew his real name). Also famous for siring nine girls, he ran a tight ship based on the assumption that every visitor and passer-by had designs on one of his daughters, for which reason he owned six dogs the size of small horses.
So much did I fear him that I believed it was only a matter of time before he unleashed hell fire and brimstone upon me. You see, his daughter was my classmate and one of the smartest pupils in school. Our teacher felt that yours truly, being only a step away from a garden toad intellectually, could benefit from being her desk mate. Every time our knees touched under the desk I’d shake like a wounded leaf.
As a grown man, I have to blindly plot my way around relationships, and it doesn’t help much when my wife Sophia (a police officer like myself) learned to fend for herself since she was 12 years old and has the temperament of a bulldog.
A month ago, she was accused of killing a family of four long before we met. And it is believed that she only came to Jiji Ndogo to hide from the authorities.
All through the ordeal, she said nothing in her defence, which gnawed at my conscience like termite on wood. Could she be guilty? I mean, I never met a person (guilty or otherwise) who didn’t plead innocence for all and sundry.
Sophia was arrested and then suddenly released without any explanation, but she still insists on staying mum as if she didn’t just spend the last one week as a guest of the State, eating clumpy ugali and runny beans.
Channelling Wa Banana, I decide it’s time I put my foot down. After all, I’m supposedly the head of this household, aren’t I?
“I can’t take this anymore,” I declare. “You need you to come clean, Sophie.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She continues working the ugali for supper. “Come clean about what?”
“You know bloody well what I’m talking about. Murder accusations don’t just fall from the sky like manna.”
She points the mwiko at me, her eyes squinted. “Makini, did you just swear at me?”
“Okay, I apologise for —”
“And then you referenced the Bible after using such foul language?”
I’m taken aback not by her threatening me with a weaponised utensil, but her remark about religion. “Oh my God! You really were in prison, weren’t you? You even did the most jailbird thing and became a devout Christian. What did you expect — the death penalty?”
The joke softens her attitude a tad and a faint smile forms on her lips. “I was accused of quadruple murder. What do you think?”
“Come on, hun,” I push. “Why won’t you talk about it? It’s driving me nuts.”
“You still think I did it?”
“Of course not, but there has to be a fire below all this smoke.”
She says nothing more until she has the slightly burnt ugali on the table. “Drat! See what you made me do? Alright, if I tell you, will you promise to let it be?”
I toughen my bosom. “I solemnly do.”
“Okay. It’s true a family of four was murdered by a police officer. It’s also true that I came here to hide, but only because I’m in the witness protection programme.”
Oh, boy!