By: Leon Kwasi Kuntuo-Asare

At the age of maybe eight or nine years old, I learned that loving someone didn’t mean that you would not betray them. I remember the incident like it happened yesterday, even though it happened decades ago.

I woke up sick one morning before school, vomiting the meatloaf my mom cooked for dinner the night before. My vomit covered the bathroom toilet and floor. I walked down the hallway in our small one-story flat, after leaving the bathroom with a now empty stomach. Afterwards, I knocked on the bedroom door of my parents, expecting to tell them both that ” I was too sick to go to school”. Instead my mother came to the door alone, I assumed my father had already left for work; I figured he probably left early to either go to the wholesale or to wait for early morning deliveries from his vendors.

I told my mom I was sick and I did not feel good enough to go to school, she agreed with me after seeing the vomit on my face and smelling its odor on my breathe. I quickly went back to bed and soon fell into a deep sleep. I felt like I had slept for a couple of hours, when I was awakened by the loud noise of two people, I first assumed my mother forgot something, when I heard the voice of my father, I thought he probably came back to retrieve something for his store.

Soon after, I heard the voice of a woman, but the voice I heard didn’t sound like my mother. I rushed to the bedroom of my parents, forgetting to knock which was custom in our household. What I saw next I will never forget and it still makes me sick to this day; much sicker than I was when I vomited. Hell I would of vomited on my father if I had any left in my childhood stomach. My father immediately rushed to the door, and forced me to leave. I waited outside for a few minutes, moments later my father now fully-clothed, grabs me by the shoulder, looks me in the eyes and tells me:

“Never tell your mother!”

Soon after, my father told me to go back to my bedroom.