Ella and I had a one-night stand. It was during a vacation period when I was in SHS Year 2. She went her way, and I went my way after that. I learnt through the gossip mill weeks later that she was pregnant and that they were looking for the father of the baby. I didn’t believe it until I saw the bulge on her stomach one day when she was walking briskly to her house to avoid onlookers. We lived in the same neighbourhood.

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I heard she confessed that it was one of the contract workers who she had something going on with when he came to town. It relieved me of the tension that was building up in my shoulders. I thought it was mine. I mean, I don’t remember anything about the moment of ecstasy, so I feared it.

Throughout the years, we’ve been in touch. Everything has been platonic between us since we ended things. When we talk, these things come up, and we share all the stuff we’ve been up to. How school and life after school were going for me. How motherhood was treating her. She never once hinted that I was the father of the child.

In 2012, I remember that day very well. I was preparing my bags to go to the university when her family came knocking on our door early in the morning to have a meeting with my parents. She said she had come to reveal the truth: I am the father of her daughter.

“So why didn’t you tell me I am responsible for your pregnancy? Why should you bring a child of four years and tell me I am responsible? I can’t take responsibility for this child,” I questioned her.

Ella went about the community throwing another angle of the story around. According to her, when she fell pregnant, I begged her to mention someone else and let the person take responsibility because I was still in SHS. And when I was done, I would come, we’d tell the truth, and live happily ever after.

My parents also tried to share the true part of the story, but they say one bad nut spoils the whole soup. There was nothing we could do. The people in the community had chosen sides and sided with her, and they were bashing me. You would even go to her to stop spreading the rumours, and she’d lie and pretend as if she wasn’t doing that.

The girl is a teenager now. I have completed school, and I have a job that puts food on the table and helps me sleep well at night. But at night, I don’t think I sleep well at all. Once in a while, I get caught up in the uncertainty of whether I have a daughter out there or not. Whether she is doing well or not. Whether she wants the warmth of a father.

I am getting married soon. My fiancée knows about it. I didn’t want to go into marriage carrying this kind of baggage that would come haunting us. She understands the frustration that I am feeling, even encouraging me to get a DNA test done to end all this suspense.

“If she is yours, I will love her as mine. If she isn’t, then it’s fine. You dodged a bullet.”

I started working on it. I travelled to Ella’s family and informed them of my decision to carry on with the test to know once and for all. But they don’t want to give me permission to do so. They said, “You don’t have to waste the money. The girl is yours and you want to waste money on a test? Bring the money so that we use it to take care of her. She is growing up and needs more than she needed when she was young.”

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

I don’t know what to do. Should I just leave the matter as it is? After all, she grew up without a father for all these years and she didn’t die. Or should I, by all means, get the test and find out if I am really her father?

— Manuel

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