My Father's Second Family Showed Up At His Burial With Three Grown Sons

My father died in June. We buried him in Aba on a Friday. Saturday morning, a woman and three grown men came to our compound. She said she was his wife for 28 years. The sons were older than me.

My mother did not cry. She just sat down on the verandah and asked one question. "Wetin he give una?" The woman said he built them a house for Ogbor Hill and paid school fees for all three. My mother kept quiet for a long time. Then she stood up and walked inside.

We are five children. We grew up in a two bedroom flat while my father was building another house on the other side of town. Twenty eight years. Nobody in our family knew. I am still processing it. The man who taught me to count money had a whole other life running parallel to ours.