And the woman who put her there was sleeping in the bed that had once belonged to Adai’s mother, eating from her mother’s plates, using her mother’s kitchen, and running her mother’s house.
But there was something about that house, something Adai did not understand yet, something that would change everything years later.
Because while Adai lay on the floor of a dog cage, she was not just learning how to survive.
She was becoming something no one in that house was prepared for.
Adai’s mother, Nkechi, died when the girl was 5 years old after a short illness no one expected. Three weeks in the hospital, 2 surgeries that did not work, and then silence.
Nkechi had been a quiet woman, a seamstress who worked from a small shop near Onitsha Main Market. She made wrappers and blouses for women in the community, and she was known for 2 things: her careful stitching and her even more careful planning.
Because Nkechi was not a rich woman, but she was a wise one.
She had saved money for years. She had bought land—3 plots behind the family compound. And she had written a will that put everything in her daughter’s name.
The house, the land, the savings—everything.
But Adai was 5 years old when her mother died.
She could not read a will. She could not hire a lawyer. And her father, Chief Okafor, was not the kind of man who honored a dead wife’s wishes when a living woman was whispering better plans into his ear.
Blessing arrived 6 months after the funeral.
She was tall, light-skinned, sharp-tongued, and she smiled only when other people were watching. She came with her own son, Toba, who was the same age as Adai.
Within 2 months, Chief Okafor married her.
Within 3 months, everything in the house changed.
Toba got the big bedroom. Adai was moved to a small storeroom at the back of the house.
Then the storeroom became too good for her.
Then the kitchen floor.
And then one evening, without warning, Blessing grabbed the girl by the arm, dragged her past every room in the house, pushed her through the back door, and shoved her into the dog kennel in the yard.
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.
