She was drunk. I was drunk too. It happened quickly in my car. We didn’t have much time to be lovey-dovey. Plus we were scared someone would walk to the car and catch us doing it. It was our first time.

It didn’t happen again because she travelled. By the time she returned, I’d also travelled. Three weeks later she sent a message; “My period has delayed for three days. Let’s just hope it’s not what I think.”

We did a test days later. What we feared was confirmed. While she smiled, I frowned. “You don’t want a baby?” She asked me. “It’s too soon for us to have one. Let’s get rid of it.”

She shook her head. She told me it wasn’t going to happen. She was thirty-three and it was too late for her to be playing such games. I thought it would be easier to convince her but she didn’t move ground. She was bent on keeping it so I told her, “I’ll do a DNA. This doesn’t feel like mine.” She responded, “So be it.”

She’s Alice. Her pregnancy happened in May. She’s currently four months pregnant in the village I went to do a project.

I was devastated. I needed a place to calm down. I needed a hand on me, a voice that said, “Stay calm” so I went to Linda.

I’d dated Linda for four years but our relationship had been on and off. She wants marriage. I can’t marry her so I told her she should let me know when someone came around. One would come today, she would let me know, I would give her space until the one leaves the scene. Then we would come back again as if we never left. She said I’d placed a curse on her. A curse that drives men away from her.

This time around, we were intense. We didn’t take our hands off each other. We were inside more often than outside. I spent most of my weekends with her while fighting Alice.

Linda’s own was very obvious. She started vomiting and lost appetite for days. She didn’t have to say it, I asked her; “Are you pregnant?” She answered, “Maybe.”

That was in June. Linda was also pregnant. I looked at her and was scared to start the conversation. It was the third time I was going to start such a conversation. The last time I convinced her to get rid of a pregnancy, it was tough. I had to put up a grand show to convince her. We looked at each other. She told me, “Don’t tell me to do anything stupid because it’s not going to happen this time.”

She’s currently three months pregnant.

Just yesterday, Gloria’s scream woke me up from my sleep. She was shouting and jumping with a pregnancy test kit in her hand. “Ato, come and see it. It’s positive.”

I buried my head under the pillow. Tears started flowing. When she asked me I said they were tears of joy. She hugged me and said, “God has done it, we are going to be parents. We are no longer the laughing stock.”

Our marriage is six years old but no child to show for it. I was worried because she was constantly worried about the future. “Maybe we were not meant to have kids,” she told me one day. “Let’s embrace who we are and live with it.”

Is There A Perfect One Out There For Everyone?

Alice, Linda, my wife. In that order. All of them are pregnant in a sequence of months. Alice doesn’t know I’m married. Linda knows I’m married. She knows about my wife but my wife doesn’t know about her. It would have been easier to confess if it was only one woman I got pregnant. My wife is an understanding woman but how do I explain two pregnancies?

That’s what keeps me awake at night. If you see me with my right cheek buried in my right palm, sober and reflective, this is the reason. I’m a man in a pool of confusion.

— Ato

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