If you haven’t read the first part of this story, here’s the link. Kindly read it before starting this one.

My husband kept repeating his question. I didn’t answer. He screamed, “Are you going to answer me? How many times did you do it with him that got you pregnant?”

I was quiet on the phone, breathing and contemplating my answer. “Talk, I know you’re there! Who is responsible for the pregnancy?”

I’d known my husband long enough to pick nuances from his actions. He sounded desperate, as if my answer could make or break him. Maybe he was looking for validation. He wanted to hear something like; “It’s yours.”

Because I didn’t have too much information and didn’t want to raise his expectations only to kill it in the end, I kept quiet, using sobs as a vehicle to avoid his question. When the answer wasn’t coming, he cut the line, angry and fuming. I could imagine him fidgeting with his fist. He was shaking. Things he used to do when he was angry.

I turned my anger on my sister, “Who sent you? Did I tell you to tell him anything? If you’re going to add to my problems, then what am I doing here?”

She replied, “I will do everything for you to keep the baby, that’s why I brought him in. Now that he knows, would you still not have it?”

I answered, “What difference does it make? We are getting a divorce anyway.”

My sister said something that got me thinking for days. She said, “It looks like you don’t know men. Does your husband look like a man who wants a divorce? By this time the whole world would have heard about it if he indeed wanted to divorce you.”

All night I was thinking about what my sister said, praying for it to be true.

I needed a break before I broke down but everything around me started running into to fast into destruction. The pastor’s assistant called me one afternoon. He said, “Pastor is very angry and he’s ready to sue you and your sister for defaming him.”

Unbeknownst to me, my sister had gone to the church to meet the pastor and had threatened to expose his evil deeds. She told him she had all the evidence including a voice recording to destroy him for what he did to me. It turned into a huge argument. It took the guys around the pastor to send my sister away.

I confronted my sister and even threatened to leave her place. Just when we were on that issue, my dad called me; “Is it true? Your husband was here. Just tell me everything he said was a lie.”

My heart skipped several beats. All I said to myself was, “Ok, it means it ends here.”

For the first time after the incident, I met my husband at my parents’ place. I had no option but to tell them the whole story and the bit about the pregnancy. I told them I didn’t know for sure who was responsible but we could only wait and see through a test.

It was at that meeting my husband told me he was through with the marriage for good. A week or so later, I met him and his parents. His father was on my side a little, the fact that I confessed and was not caught. His mother was broken, she wished everything was a lie but I kept repeating, “He didn’t lie. It was me who confessed to him.”

They asked him to wait until delivery but my husband told them time wouldn’t change anything; “The marriage is over, regardless. I don’t believe they slept only once. This is also not the only pastor she had visited. She never listened to me.”

The two families met. I wasn’t there. They wanted to handle the whole thing quietly. At this point, I didn’t care. The world could have caved and collapsed and I wouldn’t have noticed.

The pastor kept calling my phone. I didn’t answer. I even blocked him until he reached out to me on another phone. He asked why I told my sister about what happened. He asked if I was pregnant because he had had a dream. I warned him to stay away from me before I cause his downfall. He was also worried, scared about my sister’s threat.

I gave birth to a boy. I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to see him. My sister whispered, “Open your eyes and see your husband’s look-alike. I told you. It’s for him. Just open your eyes.” I turned to face the wall, away from the baby. I heard him cry. It got louder and louder until the sound of his cry broke through the walls of my resolve. Even when I picked him up, I didn’t look at his face. I was scared of what I might find.

My sister was on her phone typing briskly while I was breastfeeding the baby. She would occasionally look at me and smile. That mischievous smile. I knew she was committing a sin. I asked her, “So what did he say?”

She didn’t think twice about my question. She just answered, “He said he will visit soon. I sent him a photo of the baby too.”

My sister is a storm. You can’t stop her from raging havoc in your life when she wants to.

When I left the hospital, I didn’t go back to her place. I went back to my home, where I used to live with my husband. I saw a lot of changes there. It looked like my husband was living there. I told my mom, “He lives here. Let’s pick some of my stuff and leave before he comes around.”

We were there when he came. He looked at the baby. He shook his head and went back to the bedroom. He picked some stuff and left. I screamed, “I was on my way out. You don’t have to go.” He kept going, without looking back.

He wouldn’t call me but come around randomly to see us. He would look at the baby through the cot but not touch him. He would sit for a while and later leave. One day I served him water and he took it. He asked how I was and I said I was fine. Each time he came around, I was expecting to hear something like, “I want us to go and do a DNA test” or something. He never said that.

The baby was six months old when he finally touched him. I was looking at him from another room. By that time, communication between us had improved. Technically, we were still married because we married under ordinance and he didn’t do anything to initiate a divorce.

One day he asked me about the pastor. “Does he know you have a baby?” I answered, “No I didn’t tell him anything.” “So why didn’t you do anything to him afterwards?” I answered, “My sister went there to threaten him. The whole thing is embarrassing. I don’t want it out there with my name attached to it.”

“Anyway, the building is almost done. I hired a painter but yet to give him money for the paint,” He said.

He kept giving me updates about things ex-husbands wouldn’t bother to update their ex-wives on. He would come and visit and leave very late. He’d eat what I’d cooked, he’d drink what I’d served. He would talk about his day the way he did while we were together. I don’t know if it was intentional but one evening, he dozed off on the couch next to the baby’s cot. I didn’t wake him up. I locked my door and went to sleep.

On our son’s first birthday, he brought the party home with his friends. A day later, I sent him a text, thanking him for everything. In the end, I asked, “When are you coming home? I mean the one you come and not go back?” He answered, “I’m still thinking about it. Maybe when the building is finally done, we can move in. That house is getting smaller now.”

That was six years ago. The change was slow, painfully slow. I mean heart wrenchingly slow but I was patient, allowing him to take his time, feel in charge of the process. I was allowing him to be his own man, a man who decides when to forgive and when to move in when the sore is healed.

When we finally moved into our new house, the first thing we did was take a family portrait. He made the frames very big and hung them on the wall as if he were covering the nakedness of the wall.

He didn’t mention a DNA test or anything concerning paternity. I didn’t ask him too. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t but my husband isn’t stupid. Something might have pushed him back into our nest again.

I Discovered He Had Another Woman But I Couldn’t Leave Him

I did the test myself when our boy was five years old and the second was a year and a half old. I wanted to rest my mind from occasionally asking the what-if questions.

Not as if I doubted the paternity of my son, but when I saw the result, I smiled to myself, tore the sheet into pieces and threw them into the air and let them fall gracefully apart.       

—Ako

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