19 Feb 2007 |
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Admin Note: This work of fiction is based on actual events Is Your Wife's Baby Yours and Does it Matter? Written By Tobias Papauwa I have learned a serious lesson that may help others who may be thinking of doing what I did. I will be forty-one years old on February 20. People say that I write very well for a man of limited education like me, although I don't think so. I came to America before my wife. I found my wife when I went to Nigeria to marry because my father’s brother who was the person that raised me was angry that I was still single. My friend that I used to know in secondary school took me to meet the girl he said was a good person for marriage. As soon as I saw ART, I loved her. She was fine and she is still fine. Ten years younger than me. I brought her to America. We live in a small town in the Midwest. I was a security guard for six years while my wife went to school for nursing. After going to school she began to make more money than me. Because she asked me to stay at home and look after our child I agreed. I was very happy. My wife, ART, goes to work seven days a week. She is a nurse at a local hospital here in the Midwest. We have one child, a boy who is five years old. I walk him to school in the morning and pick him up when school closes. He is my life. When I wake up in the morning I only have to see his face to be happy. I am writing this story because many things have now been happening to me. The first thing is that my best friend TTB who came to America with me calls me a girlie man for staying at home. We will laugh but inside me I know he is jealous. My uncle came to Florida last year and started calling me a stupid man. Some of my wife’s friends come to the house and abuse me with insults at my face because my wife is feeding me. My neighbors cannot understand why I am always at home but they see my wife drive off everyday to go to work and see her come back. All this time I have been ignoring them because I am happy and my wife seems to be happy. The second thing which is the one that is killing me is that from the beginning everyone was telling me that my boy does not look like me. They were giving me hints that I should check into it. Both my wife and myself are very dark in color but this child looks like oyinbo in color even though his hair is dark like mine. Because I love this boy very much I did not listen. I was afraid that if the boy is not mine I will die from heart attack. Every time somebody says look at that boy I was afraid the next sentence was going to be he does not look like his father. When we went to Nigeria last year my uncle and my sister started to abuse me that I was bringing up another man’s child. I told them that because the boy does not look like me does not mean that I am not the father. But deep inside me I was worried. In January I finally went to the clinic with my boy after my wife had gone to work. They used swabs of cotton to take samples from my mouth and my boy’s mouth. I told them that I was a single father because they wanted something in writing from his mother. But when I told them that I was a single father they decided to go forward. They told me to expect the result by mail in two weeks. Two weeks was February 7. I was very nervous when I went to check my mail. Nothing. They next day I went again very nervous. Nothing again. Everyday my heart was beating like a drum. It was February 14, valentine’s day when I got the mail. The result says that I am excluded as the father. The result says that it is accurate by 99.999 percent. I have been sick since then until yesterday. I even tried to count nine months back from the child’s date of birth and see if I can remember where I was that week and where my wife went. No luck because it is too far. I started to think that I should go back home and find another wife but I am afraid that a new person may be worse. I was waiting for the right time to confront my wife. But yesterday the pain started to ease. Yesterday when I woke up I said to myself that I will not tell my wife. I am happy as a stay at home father even though I am not really a father. I have been at home now for a long time that I cannot even think of going to work. I am even afraid that if I tell my wife she can take the boy and throw me out of the house because she is the person paying the mortgage for the house. What is killing me now is no longer the fact that I am not the father of the boy. What is killing me now is worrying about where my wife goes when she tells me she went to work. Where is she when she tells me and the boy that she will work all night and come back tomorrow? Where is she when she comes back in the middle of the night and say that she had emergency patients. Where is she when I call her on the cell phone and she says she can’t talk because she is busy. This new thought is killing me. It is the worse. My wife is beautiful. I still like her. This new thought that is killing me is what I don’t like. It will kill me because I don’t want to confront my wife but I don’t want to leave her. When my friend TTB called me yesterday and called me a girlie man I began to cry. It was then that I decided that I will be sick for a long time to come unless I do something now. Now I am wondering if I did the right thing when I went to the doctor to check on the paternity. My advice to those men who may be wondering whether they are the father of their child is to leave it alone if you love your child and wife. It is not worth it unless you are trying to avoid paying child support. The pain and suspicion may kill you like it is about to kill me. I know that I will never trust my wife again.
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