When I was a child, my father used to take me out. It was something he normally did. He would take us out to eat, we would have fun, talk, and just spend time together. That was the kind of bond we grew up with.

So when he asked me to dress up and get ready because we were going somewhere, I jumped for joy. I told my mom, “Me and Daddy are going to enjoy ourselves and come back.”

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I packed my bag into the car, we drove off, and I even slept through half of the journey. We didn’t end up at a hotel. Instead, we stopped at a house that looked nothing like a hotel or even a guesthouse.

I was introduced to a woman. She smiled, we shook hands, and we settled in.

That day, my father walked from the kitchen to the bedroom as if that was his house. He and the woman had a kind of familiarity that was impossible to miss.

I stayed with them for a whole week. Throughout that week, my father slept in her bedroom. Every morning, I watched him walk out with a towel tied around his waist. I wasn’t a little child then. I was in junior high school, but I understood enough to know what I was looking at.

My father had brought me to his side chick’s house.

I don’t know if he thought I was too young to understand or if he simply didn’t care. Either way, that trip changed something in me. It was the first time I realized that the people we trust the most are capable of living lives we know nothing about.

As time went by, I discovered that she wasn’t just a side chick. He had actually married her.

My father was still married to my mother. He married this woman during a period when he and my mother had separated for a while. It was a traditional marriage. My parents have four children together, including me.

Over the years, I have asked him questions. I have constantly told him I thought what he was doing was wrong.

“What happens when you leave this earth? Do you know what will happen here? Do you ever think about that?”

He would sit there and listen quietly, but I knew nothing I said changed anything. The look on his face always made me feel as though he had already decided that I was too young to understand.

I am not.

Well, I was then. Today I am thirty years old. I am his first child, and I am a woman.

The older I get, the more I think about the future he is creating for all of us. One day, this secret will no longer be a secret. One day, someone will be hurt in a way that cannot be undone.  I will be the one left trying to hold everyone together while grieving a man who created the storm himself.

My mother believes she is his only wife. She speaks about him with so much pride and admiration. The other woman also believes she is the only one. Somehow, my father has managed to build two separate worlds without either woman knowing the truth.

I don’t know what excuses he gives when he disappears from one home to another. I don’t know what stories he has invented over the years. Maybe I don’t even want to know.

Neither of these women deserves this. They have both built their lives around a man who has never been completely honest with either of them.

My father is a respected man. He has a good job, provides for his families, and people speak highly of him. If you met him, you would probably call him a good man.

There was a time when I hated men because of what I had seen. I didn’t exactly love or even like the men I dated. Trusting them was completely out of the question. I didn’t dare. In every man who came into my life, I saw traces of my father. I saw the possibility of betrayal before I saw love.

Thankfully, life surprised me.

Today I am married to an understanding man. We have our own imperfections, but he is not my father. Being loved by someone different has slowly healed parts of me that I thought would remain broken forever.

The truth has still not come out, but I know it will someday. Until then, I keep asking myself the same question.

Should I continue to stay silent, or should I be the one to finally tell the truth?

I Called My Girlfriend And Another Man Answered The Phone

I am curious. I am scared. And some days, I wonder whether silence is protecting my family or simply delaying the pain that is already waiting for us.

— Deborah
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