She was walking a girl to school when I met her. I looked at the girl’s uniform and realized how far the school was from where I met them and decided to help. I stopped next to her and asked if she was taking the girl to school, and she said yes. I told her I was driving past the school, so they could jump in if they didn’t mind.
FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP CHANNEL TO RECEIVE ALL STORIES IN YOUR INBOX
She came to sit in front with the girl on her lap. The girl was so bubbly and couldn’t stop asking me questions. “Will you come for us tomorrow too?” she asked. I told her I didn’t know her house, otherwise I would have come for her. And she said, “Mom will show you so you come for us. Thank you.”
Then we both laughed. I told her she had an interesting daughter, and she said, “Oh, she’s mine but not really mine. She’s my elder sister’s. I took her in when she was only two years old, so she calls me mom.” I didn’t probe much. When they got down, we exchanged numbers. I didn’t even think she was going to call, but she did that very day.
She said her daughter had been asking about me and wanted to talk to me. She gave the phone to her, and this girl would not stop talking and asking questions. I made her a promise to wait for them at the same place I picked them up so I would drive them to school.
All week, I did that. We became closer. She would call and I would call. It was no longer about the girl again but about us. We found ourselves planning when to meet and where to meet. We met at her place first before she came to visit mine. Gradually, we shifted into territories where our emotions took over.
I proposed to her, and she said yes. It was after our relationship got serious that I asked where the father of the girl was. She told me the father of the girl travelled abroad even before her sister, who gave birth to the girl, died. He denied the pregnancy right from the start, so even when she died and they called on him to take care of the child, he still said he couldn’t take care of a girl he didn’t father.
I blessed her for being able to take care of her sister’s child. To be honest with you, she played the motherhood role so well I was enchanted. How she dressed the girl, how she always wanted to buy something new for her, how the girl was at the center of every decision she took. I loved it. I was convinced that if she could take care of her sister’s daughter that way, then hers would be extraordinary.
She told me about her rent and how difficult it was for her to pay because the landlord had increased it by almost a hundred percent. She was scared. She said the girl took a toll on her finances, and it was hard for her to pay the rent. As a loving and caring boyfriend who wouldn’t like to see my girlfriend and her daughter on the street, I decided to help out. The landlord was taking two years’ rent advance. I paid one year for her.
Not long afterwards, she sent me a photo of a pregnancy test kit. She said, “My worst fear has come to pass. I’m dead.” The moment I saw it, my heart skipped a beat. I called. My voice was shaky when I asked her what we were going to do. She answered, “Definitely we are not going to have it. I can’t add this to this one unless we are married. It will be too much for me.”
So I sent her money to buy medicine. Days later, she said she didn’t feel comfortable with the medicine, so she wanted to see a doctor for it to be done. I gave her money for that too. A week after doing it, she called one late night to tell me she was experiencing sharp pains in her abdomen and bleeding excessively. “It cuts like a knife. I think I’m dying. I have called a Bolt to come for me. I’m going to the hospital.”
I sent her money. When I said I was coming to the hospital, she said it was too late so I shouldn’t worry. She would be fine. When she got to the hospital, she called to tell me they wanted to admit her. She said she couldn’t stay because of the girl, so she had asked them to let her go and return the next day. The next day, I went to her house to see her. She was covered in thick cloth and was lying on the sofa. She told me the doctor said there was a complication and that if she didn’t have surgery as soon as possible, it might affect her womb.
Something that started very quietly and slowly all of a sudden was becoming very scary each day. She told me she would go home where her parents were and do the surgery so her parents could take care of the girl while she went through healing. I thought it was a good idea, so I paid the amount for the surgery and gave her extra for upkeep.
She was gone for days. When I wanted to visit her, she told me her parents would ask questions, so I should relax and that she would be fine. Days turned to weeks, and she was still not back in Accra. She told me the healing took longer than she anticipated. “You see what you’ve put me through?” she asked. “If I knew this would be the case, I would have had the baby.”
I apologized to her and sent her extra money for her upkeep. I was regretting everything and also asking myself why I didn’t make her keep the pregnancy. One day, I called her line and it was off. I continued for days. I was worried. I drove to her house to ask if anyone there knew some family of hers I could talk to.
That was when I learned she had travelled abroad to be with the man she had the child with. I thought they were mistaken. I said, “That girl wasn’t hers. It was her elder sister’s daughter, so what are you talking about?”
For over a year, I was dating a trickster who knew exactly what she wanted from me, but I was dancing to tunes without knowing whose drum they were coming from. The girl was actually her daughter. The rent she told me about was a lie. She didn’t travel home as she said but all that while she said she was home recuperating, she was packing her things out of the house. I figured the pregnancy was also another way to get more money from me to help her travel abroad.
I sat on the floor of my room and dialed her number a million times, hoping just one call would go through. I texted, “So it was all a scam? I leave you in the hands of God.”
Men Don’t Like It When Women Do The Paying
It’s been close to a year now, and I still haven’t heard from her. I don’t even know if she’s still where I left her—in God’s hands but I know she won’t go scot-free. She’ll pay for the lies and deception one way or the other.
