I hate my cheating mother

Dear Pastor,

I am writing to you about my mother. My father has many children; some of whom I do not know. He does not know all of them either. He has been able to tell us, his children, the names for 20 of them. He said he supported some and some he did not support.

My mother has five of us for him, but my mother has also kept men with him, and she was always aware that her children know what she was doing. My father was drunk most of the time, and men used to be at the house. My father would come home and did not know that another man is there.

My mother told us plainly that, if our father can keep women with her, she can keep men with him. People say that one of my mother’s children is not for my father. However, he supported the child. The children in school used to call my sister a jacket. One of my brothers got into a fight when he heard one of the guys calling our sister a jacket. My brother punched the guy in his head and knocked him out.

This same brother confronted our mother and told her that she should stop fooling around men. He was 17 years old at the time. My mother told him to mind his own business. She went on to tell him that our father does not deserve her.

I am now 23 years old and I can see that my father is trying to make amends with my mother. My father is complaining to us that our mother is not treating him well and that is why he has been drinking white rum. My mother is 53 years old but she looks younger.

There is a guy in the community who is younger than my mother and he is checking her. When she is going out, she is always calling him to take her. My father and mother don’t sleep together again. My mother does not allow other men to come to the house anymore. One of our brothers told us that our mother is working in a massage parlour. She takes care of the rooms and the bathrooms. People in the community calls her an old whore.

My father’s relatives do not like my mother. They have been encouraging him to stop working and to join them in America, but he does not want to leave Jamaica. He had a green card. He is not even sure where he put it. The house we are living in is not for our parents, it is owned by one of our uncles and that uncle says that, if my father should leave, he will throw my mother out of his house.

I am contributing to the National Housing Trust so that I will be able to join with my siblings and pay down on a house. To be truthful, I hate my mother for what she has done to my father.

O.

Dear O.,

It is indeed regrettable that you hate your mother. She has done some terrible things with her life. But you should not hate her.

Your father has admitted that he was a wild man. He does not even know the number of children he has fathered. He drank heavily and wasted his precious substance. Perhaps your mother went after men because your father didn’t carry out his duties the way he should have. In Jamaica, people say that a woman cannot do what men do and still be a woman. That may be true, as people do not call men whores, but they classify a bad woman as a whore.

The sad matter is this; your mother doesn’t behave as if she has any pride at all. If she is working in a motel, she is employed. She has embarrassed herself over the years, but try not to hate her. Your father does not want to leave Jamaica. I hope that everybody will encourage him to turn a new page. He should talk to an immigration lawyer about his green card.

Pastor