When we parted ways here last week, Maskwembe, the illegal husband of my sister Caro, had failed to show up to officially ask for Caro’s hand in marriage and pay the first instalment of dowry. Instead, he feigned sickness and asked that Caro goes back to take care of him.
“How do you people expect our son to make money and pay dowry if he is bedridden and you do not want your daughter to take care of him? Should he look for another wife?” His uncle had the audacity to ask us. They had all forgotten that this Maskwembe had landed on Caro a slap that measured 9.6 on the Kidero Slap scale.
Even though Caro showed a willingness to go back to the slapper, we stood our ground and said she would not go. Having been the only one in our family who had spent money on an event that never was, I was the most pained. The rest had felt nothing, it would seem.
Because, despite the knowledge that Maskwembe was not coming, Senje Albina, my aunt, proceeded to slaughter all the seven chickens we had bought. They also went to the shopkeeper and took two crates of soda, bread, milk, rice and others, all under my name.
Bereaved
“What do we do now? We can’t let visitors go back hungry, can we?” Asked Senje Albina when I complained. But Caro, Mwisho wa Lami’s Minister for Misinformation, Miscommunication and Broadcasting, was telling everyone that I was mourning more than the bereaved.
“I am just his sister yet he is complaining how he has spent a fortune. What if I was his daughter? He would kill someone,” she was heard saying. “I really feel for Fiolina, because I can’t stay with such a man.”
I wasn’t the only one about whom she talked badly.
“Some people should say if they have been fired,” Caro said about my brother Ford, who has been on leave since October last year. “Yes, Maskwembe did not come, but how can your sister have visitors and you do not even give a shilling towards the event, yet you have a government job, you don’t rent. What kind of meanness is that.”
This did not go down well with Ford. He confronted Caro: “I am not Dre that you keep playing with. I do not warn people, I just make them regret forever.”
We all remembered the last time Ford had an altercation with someone, he drew a gun.
Come Sunday and another conflict was brewing between Caro and me. She asked me for money to give to her friends as fare. I was not going to give out any more money. In any case, I did not have it.
“So, what do you people want from me?” She asked me. “You do not want me to go to my husband, you just want me to stay here cooking for you yet you can’t even give me Sh500 as transport for my friends? Where do you want me to get the money from?” Caro was shouting and even passers-by could hear. For my own peace, I parted with Sh400.
That was just the beginning of more problems. With Fiolina, the laugh of my life away in Kakamega, Caro would at times bring food to my house and she cleaned my house twice. It was nice until we heard what she said after.
“There is no difference between my brother and a bachelor,” she told anyone she met. “From what I have seen, I don’t think Fiolina will ever return to Dre! And who can live with such a mean man anyway.”
The problem was that Caro told just anyone, many who ended up telling us.
On Tuesday last week, Fiolina called me to say she did not want to hear that Caro was in our house at all. This was after Caro had claimed to have cleaned the house much better than Fiolina ever did. “My brother built a good house for a dirty woman,” she had told Rumona, Ford’s wife, who told Fiolina.
“What kind of woman is this Fiolina? She does not want to stay with her husband and now doesn’t want me to help him. How does she expect her husband to survive? Time has come for my brother to look for a proper wife.”
This reached both Fiolina and myself, and surprisingly Fiolina blamed me for all these
“How can you blame me for Caro’s loose tongue?” I asked her.
“You should have let Caro go back to her husband,” Fiolina told me. “It doesn’t matter what you do, you can’t offer her what Maskwembe offers, just let her go.”
Choir practice
I told her that we had no problem letting Caro go, but she couldn’t just go like that. From last Wednesday, Caro started attending The Holiest of All Ghosts church’s choir practice. My father and I were happy as this kept her busy, and out of trouble.
Until yesterday when Apostle Reverend Dr Elkana visited me.
“I have some complaints about your sister Caro,” he went straight to the point. “She has started spreading rumours that I am sleeping with Anindo and another choir member. This has caused a storm and no one came for choir practice yesterday.”
“So, what do you want me to do?” I asked him. “Go and talk to her father, he is still alive.”
Apostle Elkana told me he had talked to my father, who had said it was me who was keeping Caro around. If it had been up to him, he would have let Caro go back to her illegal husband.
“In the whole planet, only Maskwembe can live with Caro,” my dad had allegedly said.
When I confronted Caro, she asked for fare to go back, adding that no one seemed to want her. I gave her Sh200 as fare to go back to her illegal husband.
“So, you expect me to get to the house with nothing yet you know my husband is sick? What kind of people will they think I live with?” She asked.
For my own peace, I borrowed Sh500 from the Hustler Fund and gave it to her. But she dilly-dallied and said she would go the next morning.
Maskwembe, you can have my sister, Caro. For free! BY DAILY NATION