Four years after marriage, we didn’t have a child. I was the one going to different places looking for a remedy while my husband was laid back. He kept telling me he was fine and that I was the one who didn’t have patience. I said, “Ransford, it’s been four years. I’ve never missed my period. At least let’s see a doctor and have him check on us.”

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He told me, “Even if there’s a problem, I don’t trust Ghanaian doctors to solve it. We will travel abroad soon and have everything checked there.”

He had abroad dreams from day one. He had wasted a lot of money on it, but it still didn’t materialize. He never gave up on that dream. Sometimes I wished he gave a little of the attention he gave to abroad to our situation, but he didn’t care about that. All he thought about was abroad.

One day, I cried and threatened to leave the marriage if he didn’t go to the hospital with me. I gave him an ultimatum, but he still didn’t mind, so I packed a few things and went to my parents’ house. I knew he loved me so much that he would chase after me, and he did.

When he came to fetch me, my father sat us down and talked to him like the man that he was. “Your wife is worried, and that’s what every woman in her situation will do. She’s not asking for a head on a plate. Follow her to the hospital and let the doctor say what he has to say.”

So a few days later, Ransford followed me to see a specialist. It was one of the happiest days of my life. We went through a series of checks individually, went home, and returned the next day to take some of the results. The doctor requested to speak to my husband alone. I knew there was a problem. I told him, “We are together. You say everything in each other’s presence.”

My husband had a low sperm count and needed treatment. The doctor assured us that it wasn’t a permanent situation but something that could be resolved with consistent medication.

We came home, and I had to beg before my husband would take the drugs. When the drugs finished, he decided not to pay for the next batch. I paid with my own money and got them for him. He didn’t take them religiously. Sometimes I had to force him to take them.

A year later, while still struggling to have a child, the way opened for him to travel abroad. He was so excited that he jumped up and down like a child. I told him, “The day you leave this country without a child on my lap, our marriage is over. Look at me. I’m thirty-three years old. When again am I going to have a child when you have travelled?”

He assured me he would do all he could to bring me to live with him in just a few years. “Abroad, you can have a child even at fifty. You don’t have to worry.”

Eventually, he travelled abroad, and I also got my divorce. He cried on the phone, asking me not to do it. I told him he had made his abroad dream come through, so it was about time for me to also make my baby dream come through.

Before our divorce was finalized, I was talking to the man I am with currently. He was a divorcee with two children and was ready to love again after his first marriage went sour. I told him my story, and he understood me. I pleaded with him to wait until the divorce was finalized, but we couldn’t wait. I was one month pregnant on the very day our divorce was granted. Nobody knew about it except us.

We quickly organized ourselves and had a small traditional wedding where only close family members were invited. Right after that, I moved in to live with him, carrying my dreams inside of me. He is George, the most supportive human I’ve ever met. Sometimes I wondered why his ex-wife left him.

Six years later, we had two kids of our own and were having the time of our lives. His ex-wife was a pain in our neck, but we worked together to push her out anytime she tried to come in with crazy demands.

One day, I had a call from a very familiar voice. It was Ransford’s voice. He was in Ghana after eight years of being abroad. He said he was in Ghana, but the only person he could think about was me. He asked why I couldn’t wait, and I laughed.

I had moved to Accra from the town where I lived with him when we were married. He said he wanted to see me badly. I told him I could see him when he came to Accra. Because of me, he spent his last week in Ghana in Accra so he could see me.

Our first meeting was around my office one late afternoon. I saw him, and my heart started misbehaving. He was looking fine and clean. He spoke with the same softness I knew, as if time hadn’t taken anything away from him.

On our third meeting, we had sex. Yes, I know. I also didn’t see it coming, but once I kept seeing him, lines blurred quickly. That wasn’t the only time. We did it again on the eve of his departure. He told me, “I’m a fit man with a clean sperm count. If you don’t want to be pregnant for me, take some pills.”

It sounded like a joke until I found myself pregnant a few weeks later. I wanted to get rid of it secretly, but I also knew it might as well be for my husband. I prayed for forgiveness for my sins, cried, and asked God what to do.

I didn’t get rid of it. Today, that child is here with us. Our third child, but still unsure who she belongs to. It’s a girl, and she looks like my first girl, so I tell myself she belongs to my husband. But not a single day passes that I don’t think about the possibility of her belonging to Ransford.

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I don’t talk to Ransford again. He doesn’t know I got pregnant when he left, so this child is all ours. But it’s the guilt, the what-ifs, that are killing me these days. I have no intention of confessing to my husband. It will break him to pieces. He might not divorce me, but we will never be the same again. We will bruise deeply and never recover. So Silent Beads is the only place I can confess, to take some of the burden off my head and the guilt off my chest.

—Safira

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