The iniquity of my father

My father was a complicated man—at least to us. We were.. we are a family of fourteen: ten siblings, three mothers from three different homesteads, and one very large piece of land ruled over by one very large father. He was a towering presence, both in stature and in the way he commanded attention when he entered a room.

I say were because, in reality, we were never truly a family. We were three separate, disjointed units, only tenuously linked by my father’s existence. He was the sole bridge between three complete strangers who happened to share bloodlines. And to make matters worse, the three homesteads were separated not just by deep-seated resentment, but also by thick fences of ojuok (I don’t know how the plant is called in English, Google it). Those fences did more than divide the land; they cemented our separateness.

Growing up, we were strangers living parallel lives. We never played together as children, never attended the same schools, and our mothers never exchanged anything but glares—if they even looked at each other at all. The only times we saw our stepmothers were when it was their turn to spend the night with my father, or when he chose to visit them. He operated on a strict rotational schedule, like some sort of conjugal clockwork. Each wife got her allotted time, and each time he came to my mother’s home, he barely acknowledged me.

He would arrive at around 8pm, perfectly timed to ensure the food was just off the kendo (the three-stone fireplace). With his old radio murmuring the evening news beside him, he’d devour his meal in near silence before giving my mother the look. That was our cue. We were promptly shooed off to our uncle’s place in the next compound so that he could have his "alone time" with my mother. At the time, I had no idea what that meant—"grown-up stuff," I was told. Looking back, it's painfully obvious. Our house was less of a home to my mother and more of a prison, and his visits felt like supervised conjugal visits.

What infuriated me most wasn’t being kicked out in the middle of the night, but coming back in the morning to find fresh bruises on my mother’s face, or body. She would do a terrible job of trying to hide them, and my endless questions about them only earned me beatings of my own from my father for "meddling in adult affairs." But I always kept score. I knew how many times Mzee had beaten my mother, and I hated him for it.

We called him Mzee because, believe it or not, we didn’t even know his full real name. The village folks called him ‘Zack,’ but we always knew that was just a nickname. His real name in full, Ezekiel ****** Agutu, was only revealed to us on the day he died, when it appeared on his hospital records.

Mzee was a respected businessman in the village. He ran a small but successful duka, owned vast lands (which we also only discovered after his death), and, of course, had three wives. It was the wives, I suspect, that earned him most of his respect. Because as a father and a husband, he was a failure. He never spent time with his children or wife, never acknowledged us, and seemed to care for nothing beyond his land, his shop, and his desire to produce sons.

The first wife bore him three daughters—three beautiful, curvaceous, fair-skinned daughters, the kind that made village men forget their wives. Mzee loathed them. Every fiber of his dry, wrinkled body seemed to resent their existence. They were older than me, aloof, and inherited their mother’s sharp attitude, so we never spoke. They eventually got married to rich men who arrived in sleek cars to take them away. The last one left when I was fourteen. After that, I never saw them again—until Mzee’s funeral, where they arrived in glamorous outfits. One even got married to a Nigerian man (judging by her attire, at least).

The first wife’s failure to produce a son led Mzee to take a second wife—my mother. Another light-skinned curvaceous woman. Mzee clearly had a type, and he went for his type always. My mother is from Mbita, a woman of the water, skilled in fishing and swimming. When she was brought to the occasionally flooded lands of Kano, she quickly learned how to navigate the rising waters. During the rainy seasons, our homestead was the driest, and Mzee took advantage of this. Cold weather, it turns out, makes a man seek warmth (who knew?), and so my mother’s hut became his favored stop during those months. I was sent to my uncle’s house more often than I can count.

I was the firstborn of this second marriage, and I was a regret. Mzee had left his first wife because she couldn’t bear him a son, and yet here I was—a girl and his fourth disappointment. He barely acknowledged me. The mere sight of me seemed to sour his mood. If I entered a room, he would shift uncomfortably. If I brought him his drink or newspaper under a tree, he’d grunt in irritation. If he could have had the power to erase me from existence, I suspect he would have. But he kept trying for a son.

Then came Ben. Benedict. The golden child. The long-awaited son. Mzee adored Ben more than anything—more than his cattle, more than his shop, more than all of us. He carried Ben everywhere. Under the canopy shade, contemplating as men do, while sipping his local brew? Ben was playing beside him. Counting his livestock? Ben’s tiny hand was in his, watching on as if to see first-hand all that would eventually be left in his charge. Inspecting his vast farms? Ben was riding in the back of the truck. Ben got to know of the farms before any of us, before the three sisters or myself. Ben only told me this after the burial; it was their little secret of just how much my father owned. Ben was his son. His heir. His everything.

In a misguided attempt to replicate this joy, he tried again with my mother. I don’t know if he loved my mom that much. He never spoke a word when around her, maybe it was because I was also around? But if my math is correct, he spent more time at our place than the other two wives, so yea, maybe he might have loved her more. Or maybe it was just Ben, who knows?

The result of this excitement? Amanda, another daughter. Mzee acted in denial of her existence too. When Amanda died at five years old, having barely walked the entire perimeter of our little homestead, he didn’t flinch. We buried her in silence, and by the fifth day after her death, he was back to business as usual. He even chased away mourners, calling them bad luck, and instructed my mother to focus on raising Ben. My mom was the epitome of a submissive wife; she never said a word even amidst all this.

I personally loved finally having a sister, and I’d taken care of Amanda every single day since her birth. I did this to not only give my mom a break from being a mother, but also to have someone to talk to, to befriend and to feel loved by. Amanda was all that and a bundle of cuteness. I longed for her to grow up so that we’d do everything together—braid our hair, go for water by the river together, fetch firewood together, have dinners with our husbands together. But I’d thought too far ahead, and now I was back to being the daughter my father did not want.

Shortly after, Mzee married a third wife—a timid, young, shapely girl who was barely older than me. Mzee would have full control over her, and he did. She never as much as crossed over into our side of the boma even when Mzee was not around. And even the nights when Mzee and the brother were busy with their wives, and we would be sent to her house, she didn’t speak to us much. She was around my age when she was brought in. I was ready to finish my high school and hopefully join college. She was young, even the fullness of her breasts were nothing compared to mine.

She gave birth to his next great hope: a son, Ken. Ken was a rough child since day one. He had rough skin and tough eyes, like someone who was born to endure trouble. Then another son, Clinton. She was lucky. Her ability to bear sons spared her the worst of his wrath. At first Mzee liked her most because she was the youngest of the three wives. But in time, Mzee lost interest in her too. He used her for what he needed, and once he had enough sons, she became invisible, discarded like a worn-out jembe after harvest. That bastard.

She was neglected. When we returned home for Mzee’s funeral, her house was exactly as I had left it years ago—if not worse. The same grass-thatched mud hut stood at the edge of the vast compound, its walls riddled with holes, a lone latrine nearby. Meanwhile, the other two wives had their homes rebuilt into concrete houses, each with a proper compound and a thriving garden at the back. My mother even had a car, and the first wife was living large, showered with gifts from her wealthy sons-in-law. But the third wife? She was a forgotten figure, pushed to the fringes of the homestead. Absolutely no one cared about her or the crumbling house she still lived in.

She was frail, worn down by the burden of giving birth to three more sons after Ken and Clinton. Yet, those sons were taken from her—Mzee had claimed he was 'showing them the world,' but in reality, they lived with him and the first wife, leaving her completely alone.

One time, she fell sick, and no one even noticed. If not for one of her sons visiting by chance, she might have died right there in that mud house, her absence going unnoticed. It was as if, once Mzee had achieved his purpose—having sons with her—he discarded her, treating her as nothing more than a stranger. It was heartbreaking to witness.

Like the other three step-sisters who were married off, Mzee had little interest in my education. Instead, he handed over money and resources to his wife, making her responsible for funding my schooling. But not akina Ben and Ken—he personally ensured they attended the best schools in Kano and later the top high schools. Ben went to Lenana School and Ken to Friends School Kamusinga. I only got into St. Mary’s Mumias after my mother convinced him of the importance of my education. I imagine she reasoned that sending me to boarding school would keep me out of his sight—a thought that likely made him smile.

By the time Mzee died, I was a lawyer, building a life in Nairobi with a thriving career, a new car, and a loving boyfriend. Mom was well-off feeding off Mzee’s wealth, so no black tax. Ben was a university student, an ambitious civil engineer making a name for himself in campus politics. He was the one who called to tell me Mzee was gone. I was sad, of course, but not devastated. I had learned to live without him long before his death.

His funeral was a grand affair. My elder sisters arrived, dripping in wealth, with their husbands and children in tow. Ben was doing great and even building muscle. Even though he was younger than me, he was growing into a mature and reliable man. Mzee had taken his time to mould him into a man. He was the single uniting force of our side of Mzee’s family; loved by mom, dad and myself.

The third wife’s sons were there too, each so different from the other. Aside from Ken and Clinton, I barely knew the other three. Ken, it seemed, had been fully assimilated into the first wife’s family—he even sat on their side of the tent throughout the ceremony. Clinton, along with one of his brothers, sat with us. At the time, they were both living in Oyugis, managing one of my father’s businesses—one I had never even heard of. He only shared such things with his sons.
Honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if, at some point, another woman had come forward with a son, claiming to be yet another one of his wives. Fortunately, no such revelations surfaced at the funeral.
As for the remaining two sons of the third wife, they didn’t show up. They had been sent off by some relative to Nairobi for ‘some work’—the details of which remained a mystery, even to Ben.
The third wife herself was a ghost—physically present, but completely ignored.

Then came the reading of the will. He had left enough wealth and land to the entire family. But obviously, not a single woman got a piece of land. Everything went to the sons. Ben received the largest share, Ken and his brothers took the rest. My mother and the first wife got money—turns out Mzee had bank accounts we never knew about. The third wife was left with the scraps of his smaller accounts. And in his final decree, Mzee ensured that his family remained divided. Each branch was to continue as if the others did not exist.

And so we did.

The first wife’s daughters returned to their rich lives. The third wife vanished back to her people with the little she got from Mzee, but with none of her five sons, who barely even recognize her now. My mother, Ben, Clinton, the brother, and I called one roof a home during the holidays. Ben took charge—not just of our home, but of me. He became the only father figure I ever had. Mzee was gone, and Ben was now the mzee who actually cared for me and loved me like his own blood. Slowly, the weight of my father’s sins dissolved into the past, leaving behind a new kind of legacy—one built both on blood and love.

✍🏽Reagan.