MY SON, HE REFUSES TO MARRY

Where are you, all you men whose heads burn with wisdom? Where are you, all you women whose tongues are gifted with gab? My son, he has refused to marry. He has said he doesn’t want anyone, not a woman, not a young girl. Come and talk to him, come and give him knowledge and wisdom from the old. Where did i go wrong? Wasn’t he seen walking with Amina two years ago? Wasn’t he seen hugging fat Alice behind the market stalls? My son, he refuses to marry.

When i ask him about Amina, he says her armpits smell. When i ask about fat Alice, he says she’ll crush him in bed. He doesn’t want a woman with a young baby either. He says they smell of burp and baby milk. My son fills me with worry. Our lineage is going to come to an end for he is my only son. I am afraid the seeds will freeze in his testicles if he doesn’t plant them soon. I am afraid, women of the village. What got into him? Where is the problem? Or he has something to hide?

Mama Arika said maybe his ‘metal’ does not gasp for air in the morning and I chased her away. But now i can see what she was trying to talk about, maybe she was right. My son would not come in front of the council of elders. He’d rather go to his ‘shamba’ and dig the day away. He’d rather go hunt for rabbits on his own than come and sit with the old men of wisdom. Men his age have families, children who draw water from the streams and women who cook for them. My son, well, he carries water on his head like a traditional woman and walks around stinking of smoke from his disoriented kitchen. My son draws his own bath water and takes it to the bathroom, a task for women who love their husbands. I have listened in many nights from the chinks in the walls to hear the moaning sounds of a satisfied woman, but i only hear his amplified snores. I listen to hear the bed creaking, but again I remember he does not have a bed. He said he didn’t need one since he was alone.

I have brought herbs and slipped them into his drink but he walks away unaffected like the son of a god. I have called in numerous women brought up in accordance to our customs but he never looks at them twice. I have made them wiggle their humongous behinds when pounding the grain and shake their huge ‘milk jugs’ when laughing at his dry jokes but he stubbornly refuses to take bait. Elders of this community, my son refuses to marry. What should I do?