The first public humiliation came at a family gathering 3 months later.

Chief Okafor’s relatives came from the village for Christmas. Blessing cooked a feast: jollof rice, fried plantain, goat meat, pepper soup, chin-chin, pounded yam, and egusi. She set the table beautifully. Every chair had a plate. Every plate had a napkin folded beside it.

And then she placed one plate on the floor next to the dogs’ bowl and called Adai in from the backyard.

“Come and eat,” Blessing said, smiling wide so the relatives could see how generous she was being.

Adai stood in the doorway, looking at the plate on the floor.

Every relative looked at her.

Nobody spoke. Nobody objected.

Toba laughed so hard he choked on his rice, and Blessing patted his back and laughed with him.

And Chief Okafor looked at his daughter kneeling on the floor beside the dog bowl, picking rice from a plate with her bare hands, and reached for another piece of goat meat.

He chewed slowly.

He said nothing.

He did absolutely nothing.

And from that day, everyone in that family understood the rules.

Adai was not a child in that house.

She was something less.

After that Christmas, things accelerated.

Blessing pulled Adai out of school halfway through Primary 3. She told the teachers the girl was not intelligent enough to continue. She told the neighbors Adai was stubborn, slow, and wasting school fees.

But the truth was much simpler than that.

Blessing needed a full-time servant.

Someone to wake up before dawn to sweep the compound.

Someone to wash Toba’s school uniform by hand and iron it before he woke up.

Someone to fetch water from the borehole 3 streets away, carrying the yellow jerry can on her head while other children walked past in their uniforms.

Someone to cook, clean, scrub the bathroom, wash the dishes, and carry bags from the market.

And at night, someone to disappear quietly into the dog kennel so Blessing could close the back door and pretend the girl did not exist.

Adai was 7 years old, and her childhood was already finished.

But something inside that girl refused to die.

part2