MIGHT I HAVE A SECRET STEP SISTER?

 

I will probably never know if Polly is my sister. I heard about her long before we ever met.  Strangers would confront me while walking up and down my native ridges of Mūrang’a District in Central Kenya. ‘Is Polly your sister’, they would ask. I had no idea who Polly was. One morning I heard my brother’s friend saying to him, ‘Your brother so reminds me of Polly’. I could tell by their tones that Polly was someone they found sensuous. Sexy. Their conspiratorial grunts told me they both admired Polly immensely if they were not intensely in love. I was curious to meet Polly but I had no guts to ask my brother for an introduction. I rehearsed some lines. ‘People keep saying I look like Polly’. ‘Who is Polly?  ‘Can I get an introduction to Polly’. I never got to using them.

 

I was rummaging through my brother’s album when I stumbled on her picture. I could not believe it when I saw it. Her name was scribbled at the back of the photo. She was squatting in school uniform. Stunningly beautiful. There was not a single chance in hell that I looked like her. I spent hours looking at her face trying to decipher just what it was that made people think she was my sister. She had a moon face. Her erotic cheeky half smile revealed meticulously arranged teeth and her cheeks seemed to suggest she should have had dimples. She had no gap in her teeth. One of the marks of beauty in the village. It did not matter. Her face seemed extraordinarily polished. Not a wart, not a speck.  For some reason her light skin reminded me of a fully ripe tomato. Her eyes glistened invitingly. I felt immediately strongly conflicted. I wanted to meet her and yet I felt she was way beyond my league.  

 

In the coming days, I spent considerable hours before the mirror looking at my face. I wanted to find just one thing we had in common. I compared my face with that of my brothers. They were all darker than I. I was closer to Polly’s hue.  Visiting village women had occasionally cast doubts about my lineage. I did not belong to my family they averred.  ‘And to which family does this one belong?’, they would ask. My mother would smile mischievously and say ‘he is from the neighborhood, Herman’s family’. 'Alright', some of the women would reply, ‘I could see by the hue of his skin colour and size of head that he does not belong here’. My mother would later tell me not to worry and that she was just teasing and fooling the village gossips. My teachers always remarked about the texture of my hair. It was different from that of my brothers. I wanted to meet Polly and find out if her hair’s texture was like mine.

 

I did eventually meet Polly. As impeccable as I had imagined. There was no similarity between us. Some things continued to plague me though. Her father, for example. Whenever I met him on the road, we would pass each other. Curious, I would turn around to look at him only to find that he had stopped and was scrutinizing me as if he was looking for something. He did not turn away in shame. He held my gaze firmly as if he wanted to affirm something.  Later in life, I learnt from Jomo Kenyatta’s Facing Mount Kenya, that traditionally a Kikuyu man always allowed one of his best friends to sire a child for him. It was not considered adultery. A child so born never got to know the circumstances of his birth. It remained a closely guarded secret. I just wonder if villagers found my sister in Polly’s face.