I didn’t know he had a child until months into our relationship. He was on a call talking to someone, and the exchanges were heated in anger. I heard him screaming, “I have nothing to send to you. I will come for him if you can’t take care of him.”

And then he banged the call. I didn’t ask who he was talking to. I expected him to explain the whole thing himself, and he did. He said it was his baby mama. After sending her monthly allowance, she would still call and use lies to extract more money from him, and he was tired. I said slowly, “You have a child and you didn’t tell me?”

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He said he forgot to tell me, and also, the boy was with the mother, so he thought it wasn’t needed. I was angry at the fact that he could forget such important information. He asked if I was going to leave him because of that. And I asked if he wouldn’t have left me if he found out later that I had hidden a whole child from him.

He apologized for the mistake. He assured me it was a genuine mistake and wasn’t something he was hiding from me. Forgiveness was slow. Letting go was slower, but I’d come to love him so much I decided to overlook it if only he would promise me the child’s mother wouldn’t affect our relationship. He crossed his heart and hoped to die that she was never going to come between us.

He travelled to his hometown and came with a girl around five years old. I said, “I thought your child was a boy. Who’s this girl too?” He answered that the girl was his elder brother’s daughter, who died in an accident. When he went home, her mother was maltreating her and wasn’t sending her to school, so he decided to bring her to the city and take care of her himself.

I laughed. “Do you have the wherewithal to take care of a girl this age alone?” He responded, “That’s why I have you with me. I know you’ll help me do it.”

We were not living together. Our relationship was so young, if it were a child, it wouldn’t even crawl, but I started seeing problems. I asked about his sister and other women in his family and why they wouldn’t do that but him. His answers were all over the place, and he also made me feel like I was asking too many questions.

So he would bring the girl to me on some days, and he would go about his business. When it was time for the girl to go to school, he brought her to the school where I teach. I teach at upper primary, but after school, I would go for her and take her home.

The girl called me Mom. She was so lovely, I thought of keeping her to myself to give her the best care. Even before I could tell him I wanted to keep the girl, he brought her things to me one day and travelled. He came back and never came for the girl. I didn’t complain. I thought of doing everything for the girl for her sake and not because I was dating him.

He would send me monthly allowance. He would pay fees and add feeding fees. Some days, he would dash me money or buy me a gift to show appreciation. And then one Saturday afternoon, he called me to come to his house. I got there, and there was a boy with him. I didn’t need to ask who that boy was. The resemblance was so striking.

He told me the boy’s mother had come to dump the boy on him, that she was tired of taking care of him, so he should continue from there. Instantly, I got angry. “Why would a mother do that? She doesn’t love her son this much?”

The boy was older. I asked his age, and he said eight. I asked my boyfriend what he was going to do about it. He told me he would talk to his mom to take both children with her until later, when we were married and living together. Then we would decide if we wanted to bring them to live with us. I thought it was the best thing to do.

Then he said I should take the boy to the school where I teach to register him. I asked, “Didn’t you say you were going to talk to your mom and send him to her? So why are you talking about school?” He responded, “Only for a while. Maybe by the time the term ends, I will take him there.”

By the time I realized it, I was taking care of two children while he roamed freely and came around as and when. He would send money and everything, but it got to a time when I felt cheated. I hadn’t given birth. I wasn’t even married, but I had two kids. I was lying to my friends that these two kids belonged to my sister and a brother who had travelled out of the country.

He always used marriage to stop me in my tracks whenever I suggested he should send the kids to his mom. We had dated for over a year, and I still didn’t know his parents or siblings, yet he told me he was going to marry me the following year. I pushed to at least know his parents or siblings so I would know where to go if something went wrong.

He kept giving me promises and yet failed when the time came. I became agitated. I gave him an ultimatum too, that if he didn’t take me to meet his people, I was going to return his kids and have my peace. This time, I was going to do it, and he might have felt it. He gave a date and time that we would visit his people. A day before we travelled there, he said, “I should tell you this before we go. It’s hard for me to say it, but I need to.”

He said the girl was actually his own daughter. Her mother had to go back to school. That was why she brought her to him. I later found out that the girl’s mother was a teenager. She was in SHS three when he got her pregnant. The girl needed to go back to school, so her parents pushed him to go for their child.

Immediately he told me that story, I got up, went into my bedroom and started packing the clothes of the kids. I brought their bags to him and told him to take them away. My heart was aching while doing it in front of the kids, but when he tried to talk, I screamed, “Take them away before I lose my temper. Just leave and never come back again.”

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

He held them by the hands while he was in the middle. I took their things and followed them outside. The girl was crying. The boy looked broken, but I was broken too. I couldn’t help it. I stopped looking at them. When they got outside, I put the bags down and left them there. I don’t even know how they left my compound.

He called to say sorry. I said I’d forgiven him, but there was no way I was going to marry a liar like him. He kept begging. I told him even if he used his whole lifetime to beg me, nothing would change. That’s how we ended. I entered a relationship and became a nursery home for his kids. Maybe he didn’t even love me but loved that his children had a place with me. Such a liar, but I blame myself. I was too trusting of him even when the signs were clear.

—Mavis     

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