The rooster crowed before sunrise every morning, and Amaka had grown to hate that sound with a quiet, private intensity. It was not only because it was loud enough to cut through sleep like a blade. It was because it meant another day had begun before she was ready for it, another day exactly like the one before. Another day in a life she had not chosen.
“A maka!”
Her aunt’s voice followed almost immediately, sharp and impatient, slicing through the cold dawn air.
“I know you’re awake. Don’t pretend.”
Amaka opened her eyes and stared at the cracked ceiling above her. For one brief second, she let herself forget where she was. In that tiny space between sleep and reality, she imagined a softer life. A place where mornings were slow and kind, where no one called her name with anger in it, where home felt like home.
Then the smell of damp walls, stale air, and kerosene rushed in, and reality settled heavily on her chest.
“I’m coming, Auntie,” she said, her voice already carrying the apology that had become second nature to her.
She rose from the thin mat on the floor, her back aching, her arms still sore from the day before. There was never time to stretch, never time to breathe, never time to be anything but useful. She wrapped her faded cloth tightly around her waist and hurried outside.
The compound was still gray with early light. The ground was cold beneath her bare feet. Her aunt stood by the doorway with her arms folded, her mouth already fixed into disapproval.
“You’re slow,” she snapped.
“I woke up as soon as—”
“Excuses. Always excuses. Do you think food cooks itself? Do you think water walks into this house on its own?”
Amaka lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry, Auntie.”
“Sorry won’t wash plates. Go and fetch water. Sweep this compound properly. Yesterday it looked like a pigsty.”
“Yes, Auntie.”
She picked up the broom and began sweeping with quick, practiced movements. Dust rose around her ankles in pale clouds. Inside the house, she could hear her cousins laughing, still lying under proper blankets on proper beds. Later, they would dress for school. They would complain about assignments and teachers and walk out of the gate in clean uniforms.
Amaka would stay behind.
That ache had long ago become part of her, like a scar beneath the skin. She still remembered school. She remembered sharpening pencils, copying notes, whispering with friends before class started. She remembered her father calling her his little star, telling her she would become something wonderful one day. She remembered her mother’s laughter, warm and full and bright enough to make any room feel safe.
Then came the accident. One night. One road. One cruel moment that took both of them and left her in her aunt’s house, where grief was not something to be comforted but something to get over quickly because there was work to do.
By the time the sky turned orange, Amaka had swept the compound and begun the long walk to the stream with a yellow jerrycan balanced against her hip. Other girls passed her on the path in uniforms, talking about schoolwork and classmates, their laughter rising easily in the morning air.
“Did you finish the assignment?”
“I did, but I didn’t understand number three.”
“I’ll show you in class.”
Their voices faded as they walked ahead, but their words stayed with her.
At the stream, women filled buckets and traded gossip while Amaka knelt quietly at the edge, letting the cold water rush over her hands. She kept to herself the way she always did. Silence had become safer than conversation.
“Amaka.”
She looked up to see Mama Nkechi, an older woman from the village with gentle eyes.
“You’re here early again,” the woman said softly. “That your aunt still works you like this?”
Amaka only smiled faintly.
Mama Nkechi sighed and adjusted the edge of Amaka’s wrapper with a tenderness that nearly made her cry.
“You’re a good girl,” she said. “Don’t let this life harden your heart.”
Amaka nodded and lifted the full container carefully. “Thank you, Ma.”
She carried those words with her all day.
The hours passed as they always did, a blur of chores and commands. Wash. Scrub. Stir. Fetch. Sweep. Her aunt’s voice followed her from one task to the next, never far, never gentle.
By evening, the compound was finally quiet. Her aunt and cousins were inside eating dinner while Amaka sat outside alone on a low stool with a bowl of plain garri on her lap. No soup. No meat. Just enough to quiet hunger, never enough to satisfy it.
Above her, the sky stretched wide and full of stars.
She stared at them for a long time.
“They look close,” she whispered. “But they’re so far.”
The breeze moved softly across her skin. For a moment, she let herself dream again. A different life. A life where she woke up to kindness, where she owned the clothes she wore, where laughter did not have to be swallowed, where someone looked at her and saw more than labor.
“Is that too much to ask?” she murmured.
No answer came.
Only her aunt’s voice.
“Amaka! Come and wash these plates before you sleep. Do you think this place is a hotel?”
Amaka rose at once. “I’m coming, Auntie.”
That night, after everyone else was asleep, she lay awake on her mat and cried without sound. She had learned long ago that loud grief only brought more trouble. So she cried the way she lived: quietly.
At last she turned onto her side, pulled her knees to her chest, and whispered into the darkness, “I just want a better life.”
She did not know then that her life had already begun to change. Quietly. Deeply. Like a seed under the soil before anyone sees green.
The day the change arrived did not look important at first.
It began like every other day, with her aunt shouting before the sun had fully risen. Amaka had just come from the backyard, her hands wet from washing clothes, when her aunt called her inside with a voice sharper than usual.
As soon as she stepped into the house, she stopped.
A man was sitting on one of the wooden chairs.
He looked like a farmer. His clothes were plain and dusty. His slippers were worn. His hands were rough and darkened by labor. He sat quietly, eyes lowered, as though he did not especially want to be there either.
“Stand properly,” her aunt snapped.
Amaka straightened at once. “Good afternoon, sir.”
The man glanced up and nodded once. “Good afternoon.”
His voice was calm. Too calm.
Her aunt did not waste time.
“This is Emma,” she said. “You will marry him.”
For a moment, Amaka thought she had misheard.
“I’m sorry?” she whispered.
“I said you will marry him. Don’t act deaf.”
The room seemed to shift around her.
Her eyes moved back to the man. Emma. He still said nothing.
“Auntie…” Her voice trembled. “What are you saying?”
“I am saying this man has agreed to take you as his wife. He has a farm. It may not be much, but at least you won’t starve. That is more than I owe you.”
Take you.
Not marry you. Take you.
Like a burden being removed from one place and dropped in another.
Amaka’s chest tightened painfully. “Why now?”
Her aunt laughed bitterly. “Why not now? Do you think you still have options? I’ve fed you for years. Clothed you. Housed you. You are not my responsibility.”
Amaka swallowed hard. “I know, Auntie.”
“Good. Then be grateful.”
She turned back to Emma and asked, because somehow she needed to hear it, “Do you want this?”
He looked at her properly then. For a second, something unreadable passed through his eyes.
“I came here for a wife,” he said.
That was all.
Something inside her cracked.
“I won’t do it,” she said before she could stop herself.
The room went still.
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