I saw the signs but I kept telling myself it was just postpartum depression playing tricks on my mind. My baby was only two months old and everything about her birth felt heavier than what I experienced with my first child. My body was tired, my emotions unpredictable and my mind constantly spinning with fear. At the same time, my husband suddenly became very busy. He would pick up his bag and disappear for days without any prior notice. Only when he got wherever he was going would he call and say, “I went to the office and they said we should travel here for a job. I will be back on Sunday.”

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I felt hurt but I swallowed it. I was trying to manage my own struggles and forcing myself to believe he was just overwhelmed with work. When he came home, he carried worry on his face like a bag. He slept little, ate little and forced a smile whenever I asked what was wrong. When he received calls, he would walk outside pretending it was just to get fresh air. I watched him move around like a stranger while also trying to watch myself. I thought my depression was making me imagine problems.

Then one early morning, my phone rang. It was a friend I had not spoken to in years. She sounded confused. She said, “I am at a funeral and I cannot believe what I am seeing. Your husband is here and they are saying he is the husband of the woman who died. Are you a second wife?”

I laughed because the statement made no sense to me. My husband had left the house three days earlier, claiming he was on a work trip. What was he doing at a funeral as a widower? When I asked her to repeat her words, she said the same thing again. My heart jumped into my throat. I begged her to send a photograph and within minutes, three pictures came. It was him. My husband. Standing among the mourners like he belonged there.

I asked for the obituary poster. She sent it. There was no name of a husband anywhere on it. That made the story even more confusing. Who told her he was the widower? Was it a family member or street gossip? She told me to give her time until evening for the full story.

I could not wait. I called my husband. Loud music and voices filled the background. He said, “There is noise here. I will call you back when I leave.” I said okay but my heart trembled. I kept my phone beside me like it was my lifeline. At 6pm my friend had not called. I called her myself but she did not pick. I paced the room carrying my crying baby on my chest, wishing the truth would reveal itself quickly.

At 9pm she called. I picked up in a whisper and asked, “Please tell me you made a mistake.” She said, “The story is even worse than I feared.”

She told me my husband had been dating the deceased woman for over four years. I had been married to him for eight. Anytime he told me he was traveling for work, he was going to see her. Her parents knew him as the man their daughter was dating. Everything was normal until she got pregnant. That was when her parents called my husband to perform the customary marriage. It was during those discussions that they discovered he had a wife.

My husband told them he was going through a divorce and could only marry their daughter after it was finalized. He lied to them the same way he had been lying to me. The woman carried the pregnancy full term but had complications during labor. She died with the baby. Because he did not marry her before her death, her family insisted that according to their custom, he still had to perform the rites and bury her as her widower. They said her spirit would not rest unless the man who impregnated her completed the marriage rite.

My husband went there with two friends and performed the customary marriage for the dead woman. After the rites, he spent a night beside her dead body because the custom demanded it.

I felt my soul leave my body for a moment. I cried helplessly while trying to rock my crying baby. My tears poured from a place I did not know existed inside me. How did I live with him for eight years and never see the monster behind his gentleness? How did I defend him, support him, shelter him when we lost our home and had to live at my parents’ house, only for him to use that same money he claimed he did not have to marry a dead woman?

When he returned home, I showed him the photos. I looked at him and asked, “You went to bury your wife. How did the funeral go?” He stared at me like I was the ghost. I asked, “I have a two month old child. So she was pregnant while I was pregnant? What did I do to deserve this?”

He responded with a straight face that everything I heard was a lie but he went to stand in for a friend who was abroad and couldn’t attend the funeral.

“Who is that friend? Call him now. Put him on a loudspeaker let me talk to him. And you slept with the dead body in the name of the friend too?” His lies fell apart. I pushed him out and locked my door. I told him to go to the cemetery where he buried his real wife and stay with her.

Days later, he changed his story. That he wasn’t responsible for the pregnancy but the lady named him to teach him a lesson. I said, “Tell that story to the birds in the sky not a human like me with my head on my neck.”

When his family learned the real story, even they were shocked and ashamed. His own father told me, “I do not blame you. Whatever decision you take is right.” My mother cried more than I did because she had loved him like a son. When I told them I won’t marry him again, they said I should take my time and decide when the dust settles.

When the dust settled, I told them, “I can see clearly now than months ago. I still don’t want the marriage. He buried his wife but I’m still alive. I didn’t set off to marry a widower. It’s over.”

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Traditionally, we are dissolved. The court case is almost done and the judge himself looked shocked when he heard the story.

I survived the betrayal. I survived the lies. I survived the spiritual weight of knowing my husband married a dead woman behind my back. And now I am rebuilding, holding my children close and thanking God that at least I found the truth before it buried me too.

—Takyiwaa

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