I saw her in a queue in front of the counter. I was behind the counter. Teller number three that day. She was number twenty or thirty in the queue depending on how many invisible people were in the queue. You know those guys who don’t join the queue but would tap you and say, “I’m behind you.” Right after that they disappear. You don’t see them again until it’s their turn. It happened a lot at the bank. Some days it turned into a fight but that day all I saw was this beautiful lady who looked like she had a better place to be than to be at the bank.....KINDLY READ THE FULL STORY HERE▶
She would look at her wrist and check the time. She would then make a face and chuckle. I was watching her, trying so hard to catch her eyes. She wasn’t looking at me but rather counting the number of people in front of her. When she looked at me, I signalled her to meet me at the side of the counter.
“You’re in a hurry, I can see. What do you want?” I asked.
“I came to withdraw money. I need to be at the hospital in the next hour. It’s an emergency. My mom.”
I took the cheque and asked her to sit down. A while later, I signalled her again to meet me at the side of the counter. Her money was in a nicely sealed bag. I handed it over to her and she smiled. I asked for her number, “So I will call and ask about your mom.”
She wrote it on a piece of paper and handed it to me. I memorized the number, just in case I misplaced the paper. I’ve seen it many times in the movie. Love at first sight often fails in movies because the blow-man fought and misplaced the sheet his crush’s number was on. I didn’t want that.
Three days later she told me her mom had been discharged. A week later, I begged her for a date. Two weeks later, we both woke up from the same bed in a hotel room at the edge of a river bank. She walked naked to the washroom. I watched while she walked and asked myself, “What did I do right to deserve such a woman.” I winked at her ass but it was her breast that returned the wink.
Three months after our first meeting she sent a photo of a pregnancy test kit that had two red lines showing vividly. The text that came with the photo read, “I just did the test. I’m pregnant.”
I was sitting in the hall watching TV with my wife’s head on my lap. I tapped her shoulder and asked her to get up. I needed a quiet place to read the message. I didn’t trust myself not to read it out loud to the hearing of my wife. I texted back, “How can you be pregnant? Are you a child? Don’t you know what protection is? Do you want to put me into trouble?”
I waited forever in the toilet. She was online but didn’t respond to my messages. I wanted to call her but Kobby, my six-year-old son abruptly opened the toilet door. He had come to use the toilet. I quickly wiped up and left the place so he could use it.
I was shaking on the inside. Now and then I would check my phone to see if she had responded. No message came from her. I went to the gate to place a call to her number. I called fifteen times, she didn’t pick up. I met her after work the next day. I was still shaking. She said she wanted to talk about it face to face that was why she didn’t pick up my calls.
“You’ll terminate it. You know my situation. I can’t have another child. It will destroy everything for me,” I told her.
“That’s unfortunate but I don’t see myself terminating it. I’m not a child. At thirty, I’m old enough to be a mother. I won’t force you to be a father. If you don’t want it you can leave. I won’t call you the father. I won’t ask you to take care of it. You won’t play any role in our lives because I don’t want to destroy everything for you.”
I begged her not to do that to me. She also begged that I shouldn’t force her to do what she didn’t want to do. For a week, I pleaded with her to change her mind. I promised her money I didn’t have. I promised to help her travel since all she wanted was to leave the country. She didn’t listen. The last conversation we had about the pregnancy, she asked me to make a decision. I angrily told her that I wasn’t going to play any part in their lives if she decided to keep the baby.
“So be it,” she responded.
I didn’t talk to her for months but my conscience gnawed at me. I couldn’t sleep properly knowing another woman was carrying my child. I had bad dreams. Food didn’t taste as good as it used to. The minutes I spent in the bathroom increased. I did all my thinking in the toilet so I could flash them with the poo before I stepped out but someway somehow, I found them waiting for me in the next room.
Finally, when the pregnancy was seven months old, I called her. She didn’t pick up my call so the next day I went to her house.
She looked like a mother. The scent of her room had changed. It smelled babyish. Her tummy looked like a wall of secrets. We sat quietly but breathing loudly. “Has it started kicking?” I asked. She nodded.
Silence
“Do you know the sex?” I asked again.
She nodded, “A girl.”
“Do you have a name for her already?”
She shook her head.
“Sarpomaa. That’s my aunt’s name. When push comes to shove, she’s the one who’ll stand by me and defend me. Let’s name her after her.”
She nodded.
Every day after work, I went to see her. She allowed me to feel the kicking of the baby. It looks like all women are the same. My wife did that too. She woke me up at dawn to listen to the growling sound in her tummy. Our third child kicked a lot. We played with it often until she was eventually born.
There I was, feeling and getting connected with an unborn baby. I swore that once she was born, I would come clean to my wife so I wouldn’t have to live a double life.
She was born on February 13th 2021, a Saturday. A day before Val’s day. I was there with them. I had lied that I was doing Saturday banking. When they were discharged, I paid the hospital bills and drove them home. She told me, “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. You have a beautiful family, I don’t want to be the reason it got destroyed.” I responded, “You won’t be the reason. I will be.”
I told every lie just to be with them. A lot of people in my office have mysteriously lost their mothers and fathers so I could attend the funerals. Everyone’s parents are alive but I have to use their death as an excuse to visit my other family. I was doing my part to replicate the kind of life I was giving to the children I had with my wife in the life of this new one. I didn’t want to leave her behind. It’s not her fault so she didn’t have to suffer for my indiscretion.
While I was struggling to tell my wife the truth, the worst happened. She got pregnant again.
The day she told me, I laughed. Not because it was funny but because I knew my life had come to an end and all I could do was bury it with my last laughter. The first could have been a mistake but how do I explain this second one? She’s currently four months gone.
It’s what keeps me awake at night. My wife is a good woman. She doesn’t deserve a man like me. My three kids look up to me. I’m their role model, a faultless man who comes home every evening with gifts and helps them to do their homework. When my secret finally comes out, how are they going to see me? A liar? A pretender? Less of a dad?
My wife will leave me, no two ways about that. That’s why I couldn’t muster the courage to tell her about the first one. Now that a second child is on its way, my marriage is as good as dead. It’s a rootless plant waiting for the wind to push it down to its demise. The wind hasn’t come yet so I’ll pretend to stand still, still a faultless husband whose wife adores him from here to the moon and back.
I’ll enjoy what’s left of my marriage until the final moment. Once the bell tolls for thee, I’ll do what all cheating husbands do. If it doesn’t work, which I know it won’t, I’ll go down gracefully as a dying husband but eternally remain a father to my sons and daughters.
