My second child is not my biological daughter

Agatha Edo, gataedo@yahoo.com or agatha.edo@gmail.com, 08054500626


Dear Agatha,

I got married 17 years ago to a woman who has turned out to be my ruin. She is not only a compulsive nag, but I discovered she is also a liar and a very fetish person.

All these wouldn’t have mattered if I hadn’t stumbled on the fact that my second daughter isn’t mine. I discovered the truth when my first daughter came back from school with a letter written by the school authority that all new students of the school must as part of their admission letter to the university go for blood tests on HIV, blood group and genotype.

My wife was out of the country so I went with her to the laboratory. Since her younger sister too was also interested in going to that school after her SSC examinations next year, I decided to take her along with me too.

You can therefore imagine my surprise when the results came out. The two results were very dissimilar. Both her genotype and her blood group didn’t match her sister’s whose results bore semblance to mine.

I didn’t know what to make of it. My wife and I were both AA and O positive. She was AS and A. I took the result to our family doctor who knew all along that something was wrong with my second daughter’s medical history.

Being close to the family, he refused to be drawn into anything. He told me to wait for my wife to come back before jumping into the wrong reasons.

For the first time since marrying her, she didn’t say much when I confronted her with the results. The tears in her eyes as well as her attitude confirmed my suspicions; my second child isn’t my biological daughter.

According to her, she belonged to her former boss who raped her on an official assignment to Jos. She said she didn’t know how to tell me because I might not have believed her.

I recall the haste and anger with which she left the job at that time despite not having another job.

This girl happens to be my favourite, the real star of the family and despite knowing the details of her birth, I still love her with all my heart.

The truth is, in another circumstance, I would have forgiven my wife but given her attitude over the past years, I want to use this opportunity to drive her away from my home and life. I realise I made a terrible mistake marrying her but how do I drive away my wife without it affecting the children. My mother, who has been having a running battle with my wife wants her to go but insists the child is mine traditionally. Eight years ago she tried to poison my mother. It was this girl who saw her mother and raised an alarm against her. But for her boldness to challenge her mother, my own mother would be dead by now. For this, my mother loves her more than all her grandchildren put together.

My wife told me that she took the decision to end my mother’s life because she was told that my mother was the cause of her inability to conceive after her second child.

I am confused. Please help me. I don’t want that daughter to go but I don’t want her mother in my life again.

C.



Dear C,

I want you to appreciate that marriage is a bumpy journey of many ups and downs. It is a journey threaded in a web of conspiracy, intrigues, politics, friendship, secrets and all other emotions. At no point in it are the answers very clear. Only determination makes it possible for two people, from completely alien backgrounds, ideologies, temperaments and perspectives to life to continue to live together.

She nags because this is her person; it is part of the person you fell in love with; you have stayed with for 17 years.

If she were that bad, would you have still stayed with her for these numbers of years? Is her classification of being a bad wife a label to do away with her in the light of the secret she has kept all these years; to finally grant your mother’s long wish of getting rid of her enemy? Until now, why didn’t the issue of her trying to poison your mother elicit the concomitant reaction from you, insisting she leaves your house on the grounds of cruelty and criminal tendency? The crime of trying to kill your mother is serious if true. If you didn’t take very serious actions against her, it means somewhere in your maze of confusion, you still love her. You may not understand it for what it is - unconditional love - but it is only such kind of love that would make a man still keep the woman who tried to poison his mother under his roof without fear that she might be tempted to use the remaining substance on him.

To get past the immediacy of your current pains, look at the mystery of what has kept you together for these years? Precisely what has made you endure her shortcomings even when you are going through so much pain and disappointment with the choice you made to marry her?

This is the time for you to be truthful to yourself, to go beyond what you see to those things you don’t see but only get to know when you take the time to look deeper.

Beyond the pains of now and the changes we all go through during marriage, is a feeling we must learn to deal with.

This is your primus test, one that would either make or mar your marriage. What is this feeling saying? It is very important you deal with this feeling before moving on to other things because it holds the key between happiness and regrets.

If you are able to decipher this feeling correctly; forgiving her would be easy. It may not come suddenly but at least it would make conversation, reasoning and decisions on the way forward very easy.

The tragedy of being unable to have a matured discussion on this matter is the danger it presents to the family you have built over the years. From your own admission, the girl in question is your favorite as well as your mother’s. What would be your excuse for terminating her closeness to you; her love for you and yours for her? Is your love for her simply on the premise of her being your daughter only or the person that encases her body? Does your love have to do with the hopes she represents by her special gifts; her promises for the future and the dreams embedded in her own achievements as a person?

If your love for her is simply based on the fact that she is your daughter and nothing more; then it might be difficult for you to continue to endure her presence in your life in which case, it would be easy for you to transfer the affection to your real daughter. In this case you would not lose much by asking your wife to go with her daughter because at that point she ceases to be your daughter altogether and becomes the sole responsibility of the woman who gave birth to her.

But if the love is more profound, complex and a combination of all the other things, it would be impossible for you to let go. In your hurt and pains, you would always remember with clarity the first time she was placed into your arms; her first smile, word and steps. You would not fail to remember all those things that make her history and yours interwoven. It means over the years, she has touched you in no other way anybody has been able to do.

The implication of not having her in your life would be the death of a part of you.

For the sake of this girl you have come to love as yourself, whose presence gives you the fulfillment of a father, who has been able to bridge the gap between your mother and wife, forgive her.

I know it is hard to forgive a deceitful person who kept such earth shaking secret from you but it is too late in the day to punish her for it because the life of an innocent party would be affected if the wrong decision is taken.

If true she was raped by her boss, would you have believed her if she had told you? Would you have given her a chance to defend herself considering it happened in a hotel room during an official assignment? It would have been easy for you to take on the wrong end of the stick. While not trying to defend her decision to have kept the information away from you but we are all humans. Some situations leave us with no other choice but to keep quiet. At the point she did it, it wasn’t meant to hurt you or anybody but to secure her home and preserve the love and dignity of the man she married. How would you have felt knowing that another man defiled your wife? Would your ego have been able to take it back then?

Nothing happens without the knowledge of God. He may have planned the secret to be revealed at the point He knows you would be more matured to handle it.

You must also consider the fact that she too was a victim. The fact that she was raped, she got pregnant from the unpleasant experience and has had to endure the secrets with all the attendant fears and dread of being found out is more than enough punishment for her. It isn’t easy to keep such a secret and must have been relieved by all the development. At least now, she has the freedom in her heart to face life without fear.

Love is all about forgiveness and the best way is for us to look at our own inadequacies too as a person. In our own shortcomings, lie the strength of another and in their own failures, our strength.

Both of you should use this opportunity provided by this incident to fine-tune your marriage. It is an opportunity for you to allow all your suppressed anger to overflow without care. After the storm comes the calm.

Marriage endures through the process of forgiveness and endurances. Once you make up your mind to forgive, God would make it very easy for you.

Good luck.