She closed the chain-link gate.
She clicked a padlock shut and said 5 words Adai would carry with her for the rest of her life.
“This is where you belong.”
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.
