My mom was only twenty-four years old when she met Charles in 1986. My mom was working in a cigarette company as a salesgirl when she met Charles, a young manager who had been brought in to take over from their ailing white boss. Their love story took off from day one and became the talk of the office, so my mom had to later resign so they could keep their love going.

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They got married a year later, and a few months after their marriage, Charles was sent abroad. He promised to come for my mom in no time, but a year later, my mom was still in the country, love-starved. The only way she could communicate with her husband was through letters. She wrote to him, and he wrote back. In a month, they could exchange four letters—two from each side.

Because my mom went to the post office very often, she became friends with David, a young man who had a say at the post office. When the post office ran short of airmail, David found a way to get my mom some. David developed a special affection for my mom, something that later grew into burning love. He couldn’t tell my mom because she was a married woman.

It got to a point where my mom wasn’t hearing from her husband as often as she did. She would write a letter but would have to wait for several weeks before the reply came. It got worse until one day the letters stopped coming. Her husband had been away for over two years. Just around that time, David started making advances toward my mom, a young woman who thought her youth was being wasted by a man abroad who wouldn’t even write back to her.

So she started giving ear to David’s advances. It was a taboo then for a married woman to be seen in suspicious places with another man, but they played their cards very well. They met in the dark. They met at David’s office and at places no one would suspect. When David had to travel to Accra for work, he traveled with my mom.

According to my mom, her first time in Accra was electric. She hadn’t seen beautiful places, so many cars, and beautiful people all at once like she did in Accra. So she told David, “Can we live here if someday I run away from my marriage?” David assured her, “Yes, we can, if only you want to.”

For a whole year, my mom didn’t hear from her husband. She wrote many letters that didn’t get responses. She concluded that her husband had gone to drink the water of forgetfulness or had even married a white lady, so he had forgotten about her. Just when she was planning her exit, she found out that she was pregnant.

No matter how bad your marriage was in those days, it was still a taboo for a married woman to get pregnant by another man. My mom and David had to act fast before the pregnancy became public knowledge. My mom told her dad she wanted out of her marriage because it looked like she had been left alone in it. Everyone knew the story, so it was understandable.

My mom’s family went to meet Charles’s family to dissolve the marriage on the grounds of abandonment. Once the divorce was over, my mom disappeared with David. They came to live in Accra, where my mom delivered a bouncing, beautiful baby girl. That was me. A few months after my mom delivered, she went back home to get married to David.

While home, my mom received a letter. She opened it, and it was from Charles. The letter read like the announcement of Charles’s death, written by Charles himself. It reeked of heartbreak and a loss of desire to live. Charles wrote, “This is my hundredth letter to you without a reply. Are we still married?”

A day later, she met a member of Charles’s family who told her they had finally received a letter from Charles saying he had been writing to them but no one responded. They were shocked because, for years, they hadn’t received any letters or cassettes from Charles.

The family wrote back to Charles to announce the divorce. My mom said she didn’t have the courage to write back. All she did was doubt what Charles was saying. He might have reappeared after the divorce just to lie. But a few months later, my mom discovered something that nearly made her lose her mind.

She was going through an Ecolak containing old stuff when she discovered a letter she had posted to Charles dated 11th June 1990. She also saw a torn piece of envelope with the last three letters of her name. She immediately realized she had been played by David. Her letters were removed after she had posted them, and the ones coming from Charles were also stolen by David.

When she confronted David, he confessed but said he did it all for love. He had fallen head over heels in love with a married woman, and the only way he could win was to cheat his way through. Out of anger, my mom packed a few of her things, strapped me behind her back, and traveled back home to her parents. Before she could tell her story, her parents already knew the truth because since David left the post office, Charles’s letters had started coming through. He had written to his family and even written to my mom’s dad, begging him to restore the marriage.

My mom penned a long apology and sent it to Charles, then told him she had gone too far to make their marriage possible. She also admitted that their marriage would have ended anyway because she couldn’t have kept waiting for him, but she regretted that it ended on a lie. They both found closure and moved on.

A year or less later, my mom returned to David after a series of apologies and compensations were exchanged between the families. She went on to have two more kids with David, my dad.

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My mom told me this story with tears in her eyes. I asked her, “Have you forgiven David?” She shook her head, “I never did. Such lies can’t be forgiven, but he’s a good husband and a father. Maybe that’s his way of apologizing to us, and he’s going to do that for the rest of his life. That’s a worthy expiation for his sins.”

—Linda

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