Incest Mom’s Alibi (COMPLETED) - By Novelist Casanova

[novelistcasanova]

I finished and I did not go far.

In the afternoon, if she walked from one room to the other, I would stop her in the front room, put both arms around her tall body, grab her ass over the saree the way she now expected, and kiss her face in a line — forehead, cheek, the other cheek, the side of her neck — before I asked for her mouth again.
“See, Mom, this is normal now, you are not jumping like the first day, you yourself are standing and letting me, I love you, that is the only sentence I have, if I don’t kiss you I feel restless in this house, please give me your lips once and then you can go, I am not trying to be clever, I don’t even know how to be clever with you,” I said.
She would look at me with those large eyes, flushed, still trying to keep me inside the word son.
“You talk as if you are innocent and your hands are not innocent, you are holding my ass and you are asking for my mouth in the same breath, all right, all right, people in this house are only two, if you keep it inside these walls I will not make a big fight, kiss and leave my saree, I have to go to the well,” my mom said.
I kissed her.
Not like the first frightened time. Like something the house had already accepted. Her full mouth under mine, her heavy breasts against my chest through the blouse, my palms on her ass over the saree, the shape of her panties under my hands. She received it better now. Sometimes her lips moved a little, not as a lover, only as a woman who had stopped treating the kiss like an accident. Then she would pull back, touch her blouse as if to set herself in order, and walk away with that tall walk, wide hips moving, leaving me hard and telling myself I had only shown love again.
By the fourth or fifth day of that new week it was no longer an event.
If she sat on the cot I sat close and kissed her cheek while talking about nothing. If she stood at the door I kissed her neck and she clicked her tongue and still lifted her face a little. If I said please she gave me her lips for a short while and then told me to drink water, as if water could put the heat back where it belonged. Hugging her had become normal. Kissing her cheeks had become normal. Kissing her neck had become normal. Even kissing her mouth had become a thing we did inside the house without calling anyone, without locking the door too obviously, without saying the word that was sitting under all of it.

I remained naive in my own mouth.
Every time I touched her I heard myself explaining. Every time I took her lips I heard myself promising it was only love. My body knew. My words refused to know. And my mom, still not suspecting the full thing, moved through her saree and her blouse and her petticoat as if her son had simply come home too full of feeling and did not yet have another place to put it.


By then the wanting had a clear name in my head, even if my mouth still did not know how to use it.
I wanted to make love to my mom.
Not only hold her ass over the saree. Not only take her breasts over the blouse. Not only taste her whole mouth on the cot. I wanted to take her saree off. I wanted to take her blouse off. I wanted her bra and her panties off. I wanted to lie on her tall body and go inside her and finish inside her. I would lie on the cot at night after she had gone to sleep and the thought would run so strong that I almost got up and went to her. Then the other thought would come, the clueless one: I did not know how. I did not know what sentence would make a mother open her legs for her son. I did not know how to move from please-Mom-it-is-only-love to I want to fuck you. So I stayed hungry and I stayed innocent on the surface, waiting for a door I could not see.
That door began on an ordinary morning.
“Get ready, Rajesh, we are going to town, I have a few things to buy and you are coming with me, don’t sit in the house the whole day looking at me, wear a proper shirt, the morning bus will not wait,” my mom said.
She was already dressed.

Yellow chiffon saree. Yellow blouse. The yellow chiffon saree sat on her tall body in a way that made the whole doorway look different — light, clinging when she moved, pulled tight across those heavy breasts, gathered at her waist, falling over wide hips and thick thighs. The yellow blouse was stretched. The petticoat string was low. Long dark hair. That full face. Large eyes. Full mouth. She looked stunning. She looked hot. She looked so sexy that the plan about town shopping went thin in my head and the other plan came back, shameless: today, somehow, I should make love to her.
I did not know how.
We took the town bus. She sat beside me and the yellow chiffon saree kept touching my trousers when the bus turned. I looked at her and my mind kept saying it, like a drum: I am going to enjoy making love to my mom, I am going to take this yellow chiffon saree off her, I am going to see her bra and her panties, I am going to go inside her. Then the cluelessness would follow at once. How. With what words. At what minute. I had no method. Only hunger.
Town was loud. We got down and walked through the market.
Men looked at her.
Not one man. Many. A shopkeeper near the textile board stopped mid-sentence. Two boys near the tea stall turned fully. An older man selling flowers let his eyes go down the yellow chiffon saree over her ass and then up again to the yellow blouse. She walked as if she did not notice. I noticed everything. Possessiveness and lust sat together in me. I wanted to cover her. I also wanted every one of those men to be wrong, because she was coming home with me, and I was the one who would take that saree off, if I ever found out how.

“Why are you walking so close and looking at everyone’s face, Rajesh, I brought you to help me carry things, not to stare at the market, what happened to you after we got down,” my mom said, adjusting the yellow chiffon saree at her shoulder.
“Nothing happened, Mom, people are looking at you, that is what happened, you came in this yellow chiffon saree and this yellow blouse and the whole road is turning, I don’t like it and I also can’t stop looking at you myself, I keep thinking things I should not think in the market, I don’t know how to put them in words, that is why I am walking like this,” I said.
She clicked her tongue and went into a shop. I followed with the bag. We bought what she had come to buy. I heard the shop talk only in pieces. Inside me I was already making love to her — on the cot, in the kitchen, against the door — and I was still the same clueless boy who would not know what to do if she suddenly asked what I wanted.
By late afternoon we took the bus back.
The bus dropped us at the edge where the tar road met the forest path, the same place my friends and I always turned inward toward the village. We got down. The highway was in front of us. The forest was on the other side. To reach the path we had to cross.
“Hold my hand and walk fast, Rajesh, these vehicles don’t wait for village people, once we cross we will take the forest path and we will be home before dark,” my mom said.
I took her hand. The yellow chiffon saree moved against my leg. We stepped onto the road.
A lorry was coming from one side. From the other side a Baleno came fast, too fast for the gap that was left. The Baleno swerved to avoid hitting us.
The sound that followed was not a horn.
It was metal folding into metal.
The Baleno hit the lorry.
The crash went through the highway and through my bones and through my mom’s hand in mine. People started shouting from both directions. The yellow chiffon saree stood out in the middle of the dust like a bright mistake. I pulled her back toward the forest edge, still not understanding that this was the door I had been waiting for, only knowing the road behind us had become a wreck and my mom was shaking in that yellow blouse, and I still did not know how I was going to make love to her.


For a few seconds after the sound, nothing in me worked except my hand on my mom.
The Baleno was no longer a car. It had gone under the lorry’s front and folded there, glass everywhere, one door hanging, the smell of petrol and hot metal already in the air. The lorry had jackknifed a little and stopped across the highway. Horns started behind both vehicles. People began running from the tea stall side, from the forest edge, from a van that had braked hard.
“Rajesh, what happened, I can’t look, don’t leave my hand, don’t leave my hand,” my mom said, the yellow chiffon saree shaking on her tall body, the yellow blouse rising and falling too fast.
I did not leave her hand. I also could not stay turned away. Something in me, the same part that had wanted a door, made me pull her two steps closer to the wreck so I would know what we were standing next to.
All three inside the Baleno were dead.

There was no question of saving them. The front of the car had come into the cabin. The man in the driving seat had taken the steering into his chest. His head was thrown back at a wrong angle, blood down his shirt, one arm jammed against the broken window. Beside him the woman had gone forward into the dash. Her face was cut open by glass, her body folded, a gold chain still on her neck as if the jewellery had not understood the crash. On the rear seat an old woman had been thrown sideways. Her head had hit the door pillar. Blood had run into her white hair. One eye was open and empty. The yellow chiffon saree at the edge of my vision felt obscene next to that stillness.
My mom made a sound and turned her face into my shoulder.
“Don’t make me see, Rajesh, I don’t want to see dead people on the road, we were only crossing, we were only going home, why did this happen in front of us,” my mom said.
People surrounded the vehicles. Someone shouted to call the security officer. Someone else shouted that the lorry driver was climbing down. I kept my mom at the side and I went close enough, the way a man goes close when he wants the facts before the facts belong to the security officer.
The man’s driving licence was in a black wallet that had fallen near the brake, half out of his pocket. I picked it up because no one else had picked it up yet. The plastic was smeared. The name was still readable. Santosh. Address in Bangalore. I looked at the woman next. Her bag had opened on the floor mat. Another card. Lydia. Same Bangalore address. Husband and wife.

The old woman had no card in her hand. What she had was a tattoo on the back of her left hand, dark, old, a name in English letters that had sat on her skin longer than this journey. Kasi. I read it twice to be sure. Santosh. Lydia. Kasi. Three people from Bangalore. Three bodies in a Baleno that had swerved to miss my mom and me and had gone into the lorry instead.
I put the licence back near the man’s hand so it would look as if it had never left the wreck. My fingers were shaking. My mind, traitor that it was, still held the other picture underneath this one: my mom in the yellow chiffon saree, my hunger, my cluelessness about how to make love to her. The accident had not killed that picture. It had only put blood next to it.
“Mom, listen to me, there are three people, they are all gone, the man is Santosh, the woman sitting beside him is Lydia, the old woman behind is Kasi, they are from Bangalore, I saw the licence and I saw the name on the old woman’s hand, don’t go near the car, there is nothing to do for them,” I said.
She clutched the yellow blouse at her chest and kept her face against me.
“Why are you saying names as if we should remember them, I don’t want their names, I want to leave this road, people are looking, the security officer will come, Rajesh, I am frightened, I have never stood next to a death like this,” my mom said.
Around us the talk had already started to change shape. Not only poor things and call an ambulance. Other sentences. Who was crossing. Who made the Baleno turn. A man pointed at the forest path. Another man pointed at us. The lorry driver was wiping his face with his towel, eyes moving from the wreck to my mom’s yellow chiffon saree as if he was already searching for a place to put the blame.
I felt her body shaking against mine. I also felt, with a clarity that frightened me more than the blood, that the road had given me something I had not known how to take in the house. Not yet. Only the beginning of it. Three people from Bangalore were dead in the Baleno. Their names were Santosh, Lydia and Kasi. And my mom, stunning and terrified in that yellow chiffon saree, was still holding my hand as if I was the only safe thing left on the highway.
The lorry driver’s towel came down from his face and his finger went up.
He pointed at my mom.
Not at the Baleno. Not at the lorry. At her. At the yellow chiffon saree standing in the dust, at the yellow blouse, at the tall body that the whole market had already looked at. The words that came with the finger were the kind of words a frightened man throws when he needs someone else to carry the crash.
People turned.
That was enough.
I did not wait for the sentence to become a crowd sentence. I pulled my mom by the waist, hard, off the tar, into the first trees, onto the forest path we always used to reach the village. Branches slapped the yellow chiffon saree. She stumbled and I did not let her fall. Behind us someone shouted. I did not look back. I took her into the forest and I took her home.

She was panicked the whole way.
Her hand in mine was wet. Her breath could not find a rhythm. The yellow blouse kept rising as if she had been running even when we were only walking fast. Twice she stopped and looked behind, large eyes wide, full mouth open, and I had to pull her again.
“Rajesh, he pointed at me, you saw it, he pointed at me as if I killed those three people, the security officer will come to the village, they will come to our house, they will take me, I have not seen a station in my life, I don’t know court, I don’t know jail, why did we stand there, why did you read their names, I want to go home, I want to lock the door, I am frightened, I am so frightened,” my mom said, the words falling over each other, her tall body shaking inside the yellow chiffon saree.
The fear in her voice should have made me only a son.
It did not.
It made me horny.
I hated that it did and I could not stop it. Every time she said security officer, jail, court, her breasts moved in the yellow blouse and my cock answered. Every time she clutched my shirt and said they would take her, I saw her on our cot instead, yellow chiffon saree pulled up, that same panic in her face while I finally did the thing I had not known how to do. The crash had given her terror. The terror had given her to me in a new way. I walked her through the forest with one hand on her waist over the yellow chiffon saree, feeling her body jump at every sound, and I was hard the entire path.
“Mom, don’t stop, don’t look back, I am taking you home, nobody is going to snatch you from this path, hold me and walk, if you fall I will carry you, listen to my voice only, not to the road,” I said, and I heard my own tone, soft, almost innocent, while my palm on her waist was not innocent at all.
We came out at the temple tank and then at our street. I took her straight inside and shut the door. She stood in the front room as if the house itself might open and give her to the security officer. The yellow chiffon saree was dusty at the hem. The yellow blouse was damp at the chest. She wrapped her own arms around her body and then, when that was not enough, she came to me and held my neck the way she had held me the day I told her I had passed.
This hug was not celebration.
This hug was panic.
“They will come, Rajesh, I keep seeing that man’s finger, I keep seeing the three people in that car, Santosh, Lydia, Kasi, you said those names and now they are sitting in my head, if the security officer ask why we ran I will not know what to say, I am an uneducated woman, they will twist my words, don’t leave me in this house tonight, don’t go anywhere, I am scared, I am so scared I can feel it in my stomach,” my mom said, pressing her heavy breasts against me through the yellow blouse, her face against my neck.
I put both arms around her and held her taller body closer than a son should hold a frightened mother. One hand went down over the yellow chiffon saree and settled on her ass, not as a question this time, as if I was only keeping her from falling apart. I felt her panties under the yellow chiffon saree. She was trembling. That trembling went straight into my cock.
“I am not leaving you, Mom, I am here, you are in our house, you are with me, I finished LLB, I know how these things are spoken about, don’t think jail already, don’t think court already, hold me, shake if you want, I can take it, I want you to stay against me until your breath comes back,” I said.
She stayed against me.
Her fear kept pouring out of her mouth in broken circles — security officer, finger, Baleno, lorry, names, village talk — and with every circle she pressed closer. I kissed her hair, then her temple, then the side of her neck, telling myself I was calming her. I was also taking the heat her panic had made. I wanted to make love to her now more than I had wanted it in the town bus. The cluelessness was still there. Only now it had a shape: if I could turn this fear into a reason, she might let me. I did not say that. I only held her ass over the yellow chiffon saree, felt her shaking, and stayed hard in the front room while my mom, stunning and terrified, clung to my neck as if I was the last safe place left after the highway.

I did not take my arms off her.
If I let her go she would walk to the kitchen and lock herself inside her fear, and the chance the highway had thrown at me would close. So I kept her tall body against mine in the front room, one hand on her ass over the yellow chiffon saree, the other on her back, and I spoke into her hair the way I had been speaking for weeks, only the words were no longer only love.
“Mom, listen to me properly once, don’t shake your head before I finish, that man pointed at you in front of a whole road, people heard it, the security officer will not come asking who swerved and who braked, they will come asking who was standing on the highway in a yellow chiffon saree when a Baleno went under a lorry, three people from Bangalore are dead, Santosh, Lydia, Kasi, that is not a small case, that is a case that can sit on a woman for years,” I said.
She tried to pull her face up and I let her only enough to see her large eyes.
“Why are you talking like this, Rajesh, you said you would calm me and now you are putting jail in my mouth, I did not drive that car, I did not hit anyone, we were only crossing, I am frightened and you are making it worse,” my mom said, her breasts pressing into me through the yellow blouse with every broken breath.
“I am not making it worse, I am telling you what a station will do with an uneducated village woman when a lorry driver has already chosen her finger-first, they will take you, they will ask the same question twenty times, they will write a statement you cannot read properly, they will talk about court, they will talk about remand, I finished LLB, I know these words, BSA and CPC are not only paper names, they are the rooms they will put you in, and I am not going to stand outside those rooms while they take my mom,” I said.
Her body went still in a different way. Panic was still there. Under it something else had started — the listening that comes when a frightened woman realises the boy holding her may be the only person who understands the language of the danger.
I kissed her temple, then her cheek, then the side of her neck, and I kept my palm on her ass over the yellow chiffon saree so the talking and the touching would stay one thing.
“There is one way to save you, Mom. Only one way I can see tonight. If they ask where you were when the Baleno hit the lorry, we should not say we were on the road. We should say you were here, in this house, with me. Not sitting. Not cooking. Making love. If a security officerman or a court later asks why your name came on the highway, we will say it is village talk, it is a driver’s lie, because at that time my mom was with her son, she was making love, she could not have been on the tar. That is an alibi. That is a story with a body in it. Without a body it is only words. I can say I know the law. The law still wants something it can hold,” I said.
She jerked as if I had put my hand inside the yellow blouse.
“Making love, what are you saying, Rajesh, I am your mother, you stood in this house for weeks kissing me and holding me and saying it was love and now you are using three dead people to ask for that, no, no, I will not do that, find another way, you studied, you find another sentence, don’t put me on the cot and call it saving me,” my mom said, pushing at my chest, not strong enough to leave the circle of my arms.
I did not become cruel. I became closer. I took her face in my hands and I looked at her the way a naive son looks when he has only one idea and believes it because he needs it.
“Mom, I don’t have another sentence tonight. I have you shaking in this yellow chiffon saree and I have a highway full of people who saw that finger and I have three names that will be in tomorrow’s talk. If you go as you are, you go as a woman who ran from the spot. If you stay here and make love to me, you become a woman who was never there. I will be with you. I will not hurt you. I have wanted you, I will not lie about that now, I have wanted to make love to you and I did not know how, and this is the how that the day has given us. Please don’t call it only dirty. Call it the door. Please, Mom. I am asking you to let me save you the only way I know,” I said.
Tears sat in her eyes and did not fall at once. Her full mouth was trembling. The yellow blouse rose and fell against my chest. She kept shaking her head and she kept not walking away.
“You have mixed fear and want so much I cannot separate them, you are my son, if I say yes what do I become, if I say no what happens to me tomorrow when they knock, I don’t know court, I don’t know jail, I only know I am terrified and you are holding my ass and talking about making love as if that is medicine,” my mom said.
“It is medicine tonight, Mom. That is how I am asking you to see it. You let me kiss your mouth. You let me taste your mouth. You let me hold your breasts over the blouse. This is the same line, only the last step, and the last step is what will stand if they ask. I will go slow. I will stop if you tell me to stop in the middle. I will not take you like a stranger on the road. I will make love to you. Please say yes. Please don’t send me to find a law that will not reach this village before morning,” I said.
She closed her eyes. The house was quiet except her breathing and the far sound of a dog. When she opened her eyes again the refusal was no longer complete. It was a woman cornered by security officer in her head and by her son in her arms.
“If I do this, it is because I am frightened, Rajesh, not because I have become someone else, you hear that first, I am saying it because jail is sitting on my chest and you are the only person who says you know the way out, I don’t know if I can go through with it, don’t tear my yellow chiffon saree, don’t shout, if I cry you will not get angry,” my mom said.
I kissed her lips, once, and I felt the yes inside the fear.
“You can cry, Mom. You can shake. I will not get angry. I will make love to you. That is all I am going to do. After that, if anyone asks, we will have the truth we need for this house,” I said.
She did not say the word yes again. She only stayed in my arms in the yellow chiffon saree, panicked, cornered, still my mom, and I held her ass and her back and knew that the cluelessness had found its method. The next thing in the room would not be talk.