I was ten or eleven or twelve when I saw a father holding the hand of his girl child to church. The mother was next to them while they talked and laughed. I was a child but the scene made me feel like something was missing in my life. It felt like I was missing a tooth and because I hadn’t seen myself in a mirror, I felt all was well. That family was my mirror. I was missing a tooth and I looked horrible.

For the first time in my ten or eleven or twelve years of life, I asked my mom, who was also next to me, about my dad. “Where’s my dad? How come he’s never here with us?”

She stopped briefly, and without looking at my face asked me, “Who told you about your dad? Who have you been speaking with?”

Before I could answer that question, she pulled me briskly along and shouted, “You better walk fast and stop asking me silly questions.”

All day, I was moody and she saw it. In the evening before I went to bed, she told me about my dad. The story she told was so vivid I could imagine my dad and his demons. I remember one day, I unconsciously scribbled what looked like a man being chased by demons. I was unconsciously thinking about the story of my dad.

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According to my mom, I was only seven months old when my dad woke up one dawn and walked into the sea to be drowned. “He had demons. They pursued him until he ended it. He entered the sea at night and the waves carried him away.”

I was a child and every child is made of dreams and imaginations. What she told me about my dad should have filled me with dread but no, it rather fed my dreams and imagination so I asked, “At dawn? So who saw him entering the sea and why did the person not save him?”

She looked away. When she brought her gaze back at me she said, “It’s late. Your dad’s story is too much for you at this age. I’ll tell you everything when you grow up.”

I had a brother who was seven years old. He didn’t live with us. I didn’t know where he came from and where he disappeared whenever he went away. Mom told me he was my brother. He came on some weekends and when school went on vacations. Anytime he was around, I felt like I had a team member. He was tall, lanky and talkative. He kept mentioning his dad anytime we talked so it gave me the impression mom was lying about my dad.

One day, I asked her about it. She said Albert’s father wasn’t my father that was why he was living with his father’s family. I was sad. How could he have a father who wasn’t mine?

When I was sixteen and was growing breast and confidence, I talked to my mom about my dad again, “You said he died. Where was he buried?”

“Who died?” She asked me

“I’m talking about my dad,” I responded.

“Oh yeah, the disease that killed him was so dangerous the government claimed his body so we didn’t see where he was buried. He might have been buried in a mass grave somewhere deep in the forest.” She ranted without a trace of doubt on her face.

I was looking at her like someone I didn’t know. She might have sensed my confusion so she asked me, “Why are you looking at me like that? Don’t you believe me?” I responded, “When I was ten or eleven or twelve, you told me dad was chased by his demons until he drowned himself at the sea. So what sickness are you talking about here?”

She didn’t remember what she had told me years ago because it was all a fictitious lie. When defending herself, she said, “If I told you he drowned then it means you were too young to know the whole truth. You’re sixteen, almost a woman so this is the whole truth.”

Something didn’t look right. All of a sudden, I felt like mom was hiding something from me, something I should know about. When I had the chance to travel to the village with her, I asked my grandma in whispers, “Do you know who my dad is and where I can find him?” She whispered back, “It’s only your mom who can say. We never met your dad. She didn’t mention a name when she was pregnant with you.”

My uncles said the same thing. People who grew up with my mom also said the same story. They said my mom’s pregnancy took everyone by surprise because she wasn’t the kind of girl who even played with boys. She was serious with school and life until she got pregnant and dropped out of school but no matter what anybody did, she didn’t mention a name.

I knew I wasn’t going to know about my dad so I tried to forget but anytime I saw the sea, which I saw very often because I grew up in the coastal region of Ghana, I remembered my dad. I had come to associate him with the sea and demons and drowning at night. I remember having a soliloquy with the sea, asking why it took my helpless dad into his abode and never releasing him again.

When I talked of my dad in my twenties, I spoke of him at the sea. When I had the opportunity to travel abroad and meet new people and we talked about our childhood, I told them the two ways my dad died.

One day a friend, a white lady told me, “Your dad is alive, I suspect. Your mom is hiding from the trauma of talking about him or seeing him again so she had tried to bury him alive hoping his memories would go along with it. Do some digging if you want to. Your dad is alive. I’m sure.”

I believed my friend but where was I going to start from? Nobody knew about my dad except my mom and I knew she was going to lie about it so I stopped asking her. After my studies abroad, I met a man who was so kind to me throughout my stay abroad. He’s Noah and a Ghanaian. When it was my time to leave, he asked me to stay and be his wife.

It felt like a joke but he was serious. “I would change your document. You’ll stay here and start a family with me,” he said.

I didn’t love him romantically but his kindness and protective nature overruled my senses so I said yes to him. I called home to tell my mom about it. She was so excited that she was going to have grandchildren. She asked to see the photos of my husband. It was the year 2010 so you could send pictures through a phone.

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I told her, “Mom, you’ll never see the man in my life until you tell me the truth about my dad. I will marry him here, give birth and start raising my own family but you’ll never know any of them just like you’ve denied me access to my own father.”

There’s an Update to this story. If you want to read what happened after this, Kindly follow this link 

— Bertha

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