The first message I read on his phone between him and the lady was about our divorce. I was serving his food when a message popped up on his phone. The message read, “You said you’re getting a divorce but you always can’t wait to go home when you’re with me. What’s happening?”

I wanted to go into the phone straightaway and read all their conversations but he was around, lingering in the corridor waiting for his food to be served. My heart beat faster but I walked slowly and served his food with love—the same love I’d always used to serve his food for ten years.

While he sat eating his food, my mind ate me. “A divorce? He wants a divorce and he hasn’t told me about it? Who has he been talking to? Who is that girl? Is he sleeping with her? Is he trying to marry her?”

A barrage of questions kept coming in. I looked at him while he chewed his food carefully and thoughtfully. He had read the message and was also thinking about it, I guessed. He caught me looking at him. He asked, “Why are you staring?” I answered, “You look pensive. Is there anything I have to know about?”

He went back to being silent. Our first son walked in asking for more food. He was seven years old. The second followed suit, complaining about something I didn’t know about. He was four years old. Together, we had been a beautiful family striving to keep it all together but it took a message to make me think indeed, we didn’t have it all together.

In the night while he was snoring, my eyes were wide open waiting for an opportunity to snatch his phone from under his pillow. I put my leg on him. After a while, he felt the heaviness of my leg so he pushed away from the pillow. I slipped my hand under it and picked it up. There was a message from the same person on the screen. It read, “Good night. Can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”

I scrolled through carefully, trying to get to the beginning of their chat but no matter how fast and wide I scrolled, it didn’t get to the end. I could have scrolled for about 10km and still not get to the beginning of their chat.

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She is a lady he met at a shop and became friends with. She was twenty-four when they started talking. He proposed months later and the lady said no. He asked why and the lady answered, “What’s on your finger scares.”

Weeks later, the conversation came to the fore again. The lady insisted my husband was married so she couldn’t give him anything apart from friendship. Maybe from the way the lady was always available to his chat, he formed an opinion that if he tried harder he’d get her so he moved to second gear, taking her out, buying her gifts he had never bought me and eventually their first kiss happened.

My heart sank when I read that part but it got worse when my husband started selling me out just to get the attention and love of a twenty-four-year-old. He portrayed me as an old flower, wilted and bent downwards to the earth, waiting for my ultimate death. He said, “I don’t want to tell you everything but my marriage isn’t the kind of marriage any man would be proud of.”

I turned and looked at his face in the dark. He was snoring feebly as if he hadn’t been around the world lying through his teeth. “How are they able to sleep this peacefully after cooking all these lies during the day?” I asked myself.

When I got to where he used divorce to get the girl to say yes, I felt a teardrop on my chest. My husband went all out for this one. I don’t know the kind of love or infatuation he had for her to be able to say all that he said. I wasn’t a good wife. I always brought a fight when he wanted peace. He had wanted a divorce four years ago but I didn’t agree but this time he was going all out.

Four years ago, I was carrying our second child after trying for three years. It was the most difficult pregnancy for me but he was there with me through it all. I remember how busy he was in the kitchen, trying to put food on the table for us. How he took care of our first son so I could have some rest. How he provided. How he was a husband. Why was he lying?

I woke him up so he could see my tears and see the part of the message I was reading. “You know I’m lying to her right?” He asked me. I nodded and asked, “But why would you? If there’s some truth in the lies, let’s talk about it. I’m ready. I’m your wife.”

I didn’t attack. I didn’t insult. I didn’t shout. I went to him with the same respect I’d always accorded him. He wasn’t a bad person but he was making bad decisions so I thought calmness and patient conversation would change him.

We talked until the cock crowed to ushered in the new day. He was remorseful. Right in front of me, he texted a breakup message to the girl and added that the whole story about the divorce was a lie and he loved his wife to the moon and back.

We prayed together and stepped into the morning with renewed strength and forgiveness but truth be told, I was deeply hurting and was crying on the inside. All the fight I kept at bay was fighting to come out of me through tears and pain. But I went to God in prayers, giving him my worries and also my husband’s heart as a burning sacrifice. Oh, how I wished it was a burning sacrifice, literally.

We were back on track for a year. Just when I relaxed, thinking my husband’s scarlet stain had been washed as white as snow, disaster struck again.

I was a few weeks pregnant when I had the call. It was from that lady my husband was lying to. She kept screaming at me on the phone calling me names and accusing me of being the reason she couldn’t have grace. “Is marriage by force? Why are you caging someone’s son all because of properties? Can’t you see he doesn’t love you again?”

I listened to her with my mouth wide open. According to her, the divorce was delaying because I wanted to take everything from my husband. My husband made her abort a pregnancy because of me. That was the reason for her anger and the reason she thought it was a good idea to fight OUR husband’s fight for him.

While crying after the call, I felt a sharp pain in my abdomen. I fell to the ground. Something wet travelled in my pant until I felt it on my skin. Miscarriage.

What I had to miscarry was my marriage and not my child. It broke me into pieces. Again I didn’t fight it. Days later when I returned from the hospital, I told him, “Your wife called me. Did she tell you she was going to call me? She did. I’ve lost. She wins. We are getting a divorce so you two can be together for good.”

When you go through the furnace twice, the second one doesn’t hurt like the first. While he was fighting and begging me to stop, I was calmly walking away from a house that served bitterness coated with love and sweet nothings. To be honest with you, he was a good husband to me. It was the reason it was easy to forgive him the first time.

He held the children in a room and locked it. He said I could go alone. I didn’t fight it. I left the house alone knowing very well it was just a matter of time to have my kids with me. Less than a week later, he brought them to me and said, “I don’t want you to feel bitter. I won’t keep what you love from you. You can have them but please let me have you back.”

His lips dripped with honey but he was a poisoned chalice.

The pressure from family and the church and from respected people nearly made me change my mind about the divorce. I received different personalities every day, all of them telling me to reconsider. I asked for time and used the time to travel out of Ghana. Nobody knew about my intentions, not even my parents.

It was hard leaving the kids behind but I knew it was just a matter of time. I kissed them goodbye while they slept. My mom walked me to the roadside to pick a car thinking I was going on a job trip for a week.

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I called them from Canada and told them to continue with the divorce process. My mom smiled. My dad sighed. He said, “No problem.”

My kids are here with me now. I’m in a stable relationship with a man who gives me joy. He wants marriage. I want the relationship and companionship without the burden of marriage. One day I will marry him if he stays the same. When my ex-husband started calling me every day in the guise of talking to the kids, I got them a phone and gave the number to him so he could call them directly. Case closed.

— Asantewaa

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