My husband and I had been married for four years without a child. Every month, I would hope my period wouldn’t come, and every month, it showed its face just to break my heart. Friends started asking questions and suggesting places we could go to have a child. Neighbours who married after us were already having their second children. I tried not to let it bother me, but it did.

Then one day, it happened when I least expected it. I didn’t realise my period had delayed. When it finally dawned on me and I checked, it had been delayed for five days. When I tested, the two lines were so glaring that it felt like they were running across the test kit.

When I showed my husband the two lines, he lifted me off the floor and started laughing heartily.

“Who said God has abandoned us?” he asked.

I answered, “They’ll see us and wonder if indeed it’s us.”

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I was seven months and a few weeks pregnant when everything went wrong. It started with a little bloodstain. I wasn’t feeling much pain, so I tried convincing myself that everything was fine. But within an hour, the bleeding became heavier, and I started experiencing cramps.

My husband had travelled that day to visit his sick parents. I called him several times, but he didn’t answer.

Then I remembered Esi. She lived a few blocks from our house. I became friends with her because of my husband. They were both attending the same church when we got married. She was even at our wedding.

She left the church a few months after I joined. That afternoon, when I was struggling in pain and there was no one to turn to, I called Esi’s number.

“Esi, please, I’m bleeding. I don’t know what’s happening.”

She asked, “Where are you?”

“Home.”

She arrived with a taxi in less than fifteen minutes. By then, I was in so much pain that I could barely stand properly. She helped me into the taxi, and we drove straight to the hospital.

After examining me, the doctor said it was the baby trying to come out. I asked if the baby was going to survive, and he said, “Definitely.”

I was buoyed by the look in his eyes and the honesty with which he answered my question. I was carried inside, and I delivered a baby whose cry I thought I heard from far away.

I woke up only to be told my baby didn’t make it.

I stared blankly at the nurses as if the news they gave me wasn’t meant for me. Esi was there, holding my hand and squeezing it gently.

The tears were uncontrollable. I asked Esi if my husband had called. I gave my phone to her to call him. She called several times, and my husband didn’t answer.

At one point, she used her phone to make the call, and my husband picked up almost immediately. I remember wondering why he had answered her call when he hadn’t answered mine, but I was too distressed to think much about it.

He returned later that night. He came to my bedside and held me. I cried again like a baby. He apologised for not being available when I needed him the most. I didn’t have the strength to question him.

After I was discharged, Esi kept coming around to see me.

She visited almost every day. Sometimes, she brought food. Other times, she simply sat with me while my husband was at work.

My husband wasn’t comfortable with how frequently Esi visited. One evening, he asked why she was always coming around.

I told him, “This woman practically saved me when you weren’t here. Why should you have a problem with her visiting?”

About three weeks after the incident, Esi came to visit while I was in the bathroom. I heard my husband speaking to her. Initially, I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Then I heard him raise his voice.

“I told you to stop coming here.”

Esi said something I couldn’t hear.

Then my husband said, “Are you trying to destroy my marriage?”

Once they heard the sound of the bathroom door opening, they stopped talking immediately.

I knew something was wrong, and I was going to find out what it was.

I didn’t question my husband or try to make an issue out of it. When he slept, I picked up his phone, something I’d never done since we got married.

Esi’s name had been saved as “Aunt Martha.”

They had been dating for close to a year. My husband accused Esi of seeing another married man. He said, “I can’t do this with you while you do it with another man. Do you even protect yourself?”

Esi fired back, “Do you protect yourself when you do it with your wife? Or you can’t bring diseases from your wife to me?”

That argument eventually led my husband to tell her it was over. Esi said no. My husband couldn’t use her and dump her like that.

She said, “Even your wife couldn’t do what I did for you. I carried your child until you asked me to abort, and now you want to abandon me. It won’t happen.”

So all the times Esi came to me, she was doing it to get at my husband. Yes, she helped me a lot, but that wasn’t her goal. Her goal was to scare my husband back into the relationship he was running from.

I hadn’t finished mourning my baby, but I had to start mourning the foundation of a marriage I thought was so strong and impenetrable.

He woke up to see me crying, but he thought I was still mourning the baby.

He whispered faintly in my ear, “Please, babe, when you do this, you break my heart and make me feel less important in your life.”

I woke up early in the morning and walked to Esi’s house. She was shocked to see me.

I asked her, “Do you love my husband that much? If I leave him today, would you want to continue where I left off?”

She stood still.

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I told her I’d read their messages. She hit her forehead and threw herself onto the sofa. Before she could say sorry, I told her I was leaving, so she should come for my husband.

I got home to see my husband getting ready for work. I said, “I’ve told Esi to come for you because I’m leaving. You two will have a child easily, like the first one you threw away.”

He swore I didn’t understand the messages I had read until I told him Esi had confessed everything a few minutes earlier.

He took his bag and left for work. He said, “Let’s talk this evening.”

When he left, I also left the house.

Months later, after I returned his drinks, which he refused to accept, he told me he would do everything to save our marriage. I’m here. I’m watching him. Maybe he can raise the dead. If not, he’s just fetching water with a woven basket.

—Lucy 

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