Every Saturday he went fishing and never caught a thing – Story of the Night

Every Saturday he went fishing

Good night Bahama Drama. I been carrying this one for three months now and I need to put it down somewhere before it bust my chest open.

I’m 41, married 17 years to a man I will call Rudy, we live off Carmichael Road and we have two boys, one in grade 10 and one who think he too big to hug his mother.

Rudy is a good man, a plain man. He work at a body shop out on Wulff Road, he come home with paint under his fingernails, he eat whatever I cook and he don’t cuss nobody. In 17 years I never once had to go through his phone because the man barely know how to use the phone.

So back in August when he come home one Friday and say “Baby I start fishing on Saturdays with some fellas from work”, I was happy. I say good, go relax yourself, bring me some snapper.

Every Saturday he leave the house before the sun come up, rod in the back of the truck, the old white cooler with the broken handle, and he come back after lunch smelling like sun.

And every Saturday he come back with the cooler empty.

First week I laugh. Second week I laugh. By the fourth week I wasn’t laughing no more, because no man go fishing every Saturday for a month and don’t catch not even a grunt.

Then one Saturday he walk in with a nice bag of snapper and I was so proud of him. Till I open the bag and see the fish was already scale and clean and sitting on ice from Potter’s Cay. Rudy don’t scale nothing. Rudy don’t even like to touch raw chicken.

My heart start to beat funny that day.

Now let me tell y’all what my mind do. My mind went straight to the worst place. I start remembering how he been going in the bathroom with his phone. How he start buying a new pen every week, and I ain’t never see a man use so much pen to fix cars. How he bring home a little brown paper bag and hide it under the seat of the truck.

I check the rod. The line on that rod was tangle up from last Easter. That rod ain’t touch salt water in a year.

So I did what every Bahamian woman would do. I call my cousin who have a car Rudy don’t know, and that next Saturday morning we sit down the road in the dark with the engine off waiting on him like police.

He come out right on time. Rod in the back. Cooler in the back. And he drive straight past every road that go to the water.

He drive past Montagu. He drive past the ramp. He drive right downtown, park by a church hall I won’t name, and walk inside with that little brown paper bag under his arm like it was gold.

My cousin say “Girl that’s where they does keep the women”. I say “In a church hall? This early in the morning?” I was shaking so bad I couldn’t even get my hand to open the car door.

We wait. Other people start going in. A old lady with a walking stick. A young fella in a security uniform. A big strong man who look like he does work construction. Nobody who look like a sweetheart.

So I get out and walk up to the window real quiet and I look in.

And there was my husband. 46 years old. Sitting at a little school desk too small for him, with his tongue in the corner of his mouth like a child, holding a pencil and tracing letters in a exercise book.

The sign on the board say Adult Reading Class.

I had to hold the wall.

All of a sudden everything make sense. The pens. The brown bag full of exercise books. The phone in the bathroom where he was practising the words on them little learning apps. Why he always ask me to “check the bill” because his eyes was tired. Why he never once read the boys a bedtime story in 17 years, and always say “your mother tell it better”.

My husband could not read. And he been hiding it from me since the day I meet him.

I didn’t go in. I couldn’t shame him like that. I walk back to the car and cry so hard my cousin had to drive.

That afternoon he come home with the empty cooler and say “Fish wasn’t biting today baby”. And I say “That’s alright, they will bite next week”. And I kiss him and go in the kitchen and cry in the sink.

I never tell him I know. I start leaving the newspaper open on the table. I start writing the grocery list in big clear print. I start asking him to read me the Bible verse at night “because my eyes tired”.

The first time he read me Psalm 23 all the way through without stopping, slow, finger under every word, our big son was standing in the doorway and I see him wipe his face.

Last Saturday Rudy come home and he didn’t bring no fish. He bring a certificate in a cheap plastic frame. He sit down on the bed and tell me everything, how he drop out in grade 5 to help his grandmother, how he been ashamed his whole life, how he was scared if I find out I would think he was stupid.

I tell him I knew from August.

He look at me a long time and say “And you let me bring home Potter’s Cay fish for three months?”

I say “Baby I love you. I ain’t say I love the way you does lie”.

I’m telling y’all this because I almost destroy my marriage over a lie that wasn’t the lie I thought it was. Sometimes the thing a person hiding ain’t another woman or another man. Sometimes it’s a hurt from when they was a child that they too shame to say out loud.

Before you go accusing, go look through the window first. And if somebody in your life is fighting a battle quiet, don’t laugh, don’t shame them. Hold their hand and let God do the rest.

To God be the glory. My husband can read.

PAGE REPLY: Rudy you a real man. This one made us cry 😭

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