I’d returned from the hospital with severe pains in my abdomen when I had a call from my friend Beatrice. I was in so much pain I felt I couldn’t talk to her without her knowing what I was going through, so I looked at her call until it ended. I tried calling Collins to tell him I’d returned from the hospital and wished he were around.

Collins was my boyfriend. He was the reason I was going through that pain. I wanted to keep the child. For two weeks, we debated our future without a child and our future with one. He painted a gloomy picture of us carrying a pregnancy when we were not married yet. I insisted we could do something small. He insisted there was nothing small when it came to a wedding.

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I said we could get married after the baby had been born. He argued the baby coming before our wedding destroyed everything, including the beauty of our marriage. I loved him, so I listened to him. I think I fell in love with the photo he painted without the child, so I agreed to go and do it, and I did.

In our plans, he was supposed to go with me, but his job also called and he had to travel. He held my hands and asked me to assure him that I would do it regardless, and I gave him the assurance. When I woke up the next morning to go to the hospital, I called him. When I was third in line to be attended to by the doctor, I texted him, “I’m shy. Everyone around here knows what I’m coming to do, and it feels someway.”

He texted back and said he wished he was with me. When it was my turn, I texted to tell him I was going inside and I was scared. He didn’t text back. I went in and came back, but he hadn’t responded to my message. When I got home and I was in pain, he was the only one who came to mind. I wanted to hear his voice. I believed he had a way to calm the storm and the pain in my life.

I called twice, but his phone was off. Beatrice kept calling. I kept ignoring her calls until she texted me, “Girl, call me back as soon as possible. There’s a fire on the mountain.”

I replied in my head, “I’m in a fire too. Mine is burning in the bushes, so let whoever’s mountain that’s burning take care of it.” And then she sent me a screenshot from Snapchat and said, “Look at your Collins. Our Collins.”

Immediately I opened the chat, my heart froze for a few seconds. I said in my head, “Maybe he’s the best man. This can’t happen.” And then the little voice in my head asked, “He was a best man for a wedding and he didn’t tell you?”

I called his number again, and it was still off. I started believing the picture Beatrice saw. “Collins is getting married while I was on the table and a doctor was looking through me? He took another woman to the aisle and took me to the doctor’s table?”

Beatrice called. She then texted, “This that you’ve read my messages and are not responding, I hope you haven’t collapsed ooo. If you can read this, pick up my calls. I know where it’s happening. We can storm there together if only you need an acolyte by your side.”

I called back in tears. The pain in my heart was so intense, it put my abdominal pains to shame. “Where is it happening? Can we walk there?”

We were in Kumasi. The wedding was happening in Sunyani. Meanwhile, he told me he was travelling to Accra for a project. Beatrice had spoken to the one who posted the wedding on Snapchat, and he had innocently given her all the details. I told her, “Tomorrow, they will go to church, so ask which church. We travel at dawn.”

We got to Sunyani around 8 a.m. We got to the church premises and waited for them. Every car that entered the premises, we watched with keen eyes. They came late. Immediately they got down from their car, we walked there. When he saw my face, he jolted. His hands were shaking while asking me what I was doing there. His wife was eager to hold his hands to tell us she was the new wife.

I watched his fingers. His wedding ring was gleaming. He tried to take me aside, but I stood my ground while his wife watched, wondering what was happening. Beatrice said, “This is his girlfriend. Just yesterday, he asked her to abort a baby for him, but he was here getting married to you.”

The lady smiled, not believing what we were saying. It felt like a scene in a movie. I was no longer in pain. I could laugh at his grand deception. He said, “Babe, it’s a lie. I know why they are doing this.”

I responded, “I can lift my skirt and show you how I’m bleeding heavily. It’s still fresh. I have my phone here. You can read the messages. I have photos here. What else? Everything!”

She signalled we should sit in their car. She called someone on the phone and asked them to come out of the church quickly. The person came with the lady’s father. All this while, Collins was denying knowing us and telling his wife to ignore us so they could go to church. I was so angry it didn’t feel like anger again. I was laughing.

When those people came, the lady asked me to narrate the whole story again. She was crying at this point. After my narration, the man asked me to go and come back after church. The lady screamed, “After which church? To do what? After everything she has said?”

I was giving her my phone to see the messages when Collins hit my hand and my phone fell. It became a tussle between the two of us. He ended up picking up my phone, putting it in his pocket and calling us liars, people another person had sent to destroy his marriage. I demanded my phone. I jumped on the attack, and he shoved me. I landed on the floor. Then people’s attention started coming to us.

The man drove us outside the premises and asked us to go and come back later. His new wife drove the car out of the church premises, leaving us there. I still demanded my phone, but he threw the phone against a wall, shattering my screen and splitting the phone open. I picked the pieces up, and we left.

Is There A Man Out There Who Doesn’t Cheat?

I cried in the car until we got back home. A year later, and I’m still healing from the trauma. Love feels like a bitter pill in my mouth. A man approaches me, and my temper rises almost immediately. They say I should see a therapist, which I’m looking forward to doing.

Collins?

They’ve been living apart since that day. They didn’t even go for a honeymoon. Their marriage is new but hanging by a thread. Everybody around them knows the story now, and I’m happy he’s paying for his sins, just as I’m paying for mine, living with this trauma.

—Claudia     

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