My mom is having an affair with my friend, and I don’t know how to react, especially because it makes her happy. My friend is twenty-four years old, and my mom is forty-five. I’m twenty-three.

I don’t know when it started, but I used to tell Mathew that he was the only friend of mine that my mom likes. My mom would usually warn me against friends. She would tell me it’s because of unnecessary friendship that the crab lost its head, or that “Friendship corrupts good morals.”

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She would drive my friends away when they came around to look for me or when she came home to see them with me. But when it came to Matthew, it was different. She asked his name the first time we came home. She asked about his parents and what they did for a living. When she served me, she served him in a different bowl. When I asked what she saw in Matthew, she told me, “This is the best human being you’ve brought home. It shows you’re growing and making better choices.”

I was happy that for once, I had a friend my mom approved of. Matthew would come home, and I wouldn’t be bothered because my mom related to him nicely. I would leave them and go out while Mathew played a video game. They were so cool I saw Mathew teaching my mom how to use the gamepad.

A friend told me he saw my mom and Matthew at night somewhere, and I didn’t believe him. He didn’t say it as though he suspected foul play. He felt that if Mathew was with my mom, I would be there, but since he didn’t see me, he wondered where I was. So he called, “You guys were around Starlet last night and you didn’t tell me?”

We argued. We concluded he saw the wrong people and mistook them for my mom and Matthew. Not long afterwards, another friend also called to say he had seen them coming from a shop. It was Matilda’s call that nailed my suspicion. She said, “Has your mom adopted Matthew as a second son? I see them often these days.”

I asked Mathew if he went anywhere with my mom. He laughed my question off. I believed him because he hadn’t come around for so long. Until one evening, out of curiosity, I used my mom’s phone to call Mathew. She had saved the number as ‘Mat,’ but I don’t remember giving Matthew’s number to her. I went through her messages. Half of them were voice notes. I forwarded a few to my number so I could listen to them without pressure.

I never knew my mom was that romantic. This is a woman who didn’t mind slapping me and throwing me out for a little offense. I didn’t even know she had a second voice she speaks with in that situation. Eiiiii!

“Mathew, you’re a very bad boy. Who taught you all that? You need to take your time with me because I’m a bit rusty.”

That was the first voice note I listened to, in a voice that sounded almost angelic. I’m even embarrassed to repeat all the things I heard, but trust me, a lot of them were nasty. My mom was behaving like a little girl who’s owed a promise.

At first, I wanted to talk about it with her, but knowing my mom, she won’t talk to me in her second voice, and that would be my loss, so I figured I should talk to Mathew instead.

I tried but couldn’t bring it up because my mom would definitely hear about it, and I don’t know how the relationship will be once she gets to know that I know her secret.

So for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been walking around here pretending I don’t know my mom has a secret life. She disappears in dresses I haven’t seen her wear before. She comes back wearing a wide smile I hadn’t seen on her face before. The wrinkles at the end of her smile are even fading. Her complexion is making a comeback these days.

My dad left us long ago. He didn’t divorce my mom before leaving, but years later, when he wasn’t coming and my mom wasn’t hearing from him, she met with the family and got a divorce. I’ve seen her with people I suspected something would come out of, but those people disappeared, and for a long time, no one came along until Mathew.

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It hurts me sometimes when I think of it. Matthew is my guy. I even know the size he wields between his thighs. To think that my mom is the beneficiary of that size sometimes makes me want to scream the dust out of my head. I don’t know if I should tell either of them that I know what they are doing. Or should I continue my silence while other people talk about it with me?

—Don Yellow

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