My name is Haneefah, and if I have learned anything from my sister Aisha, it is this:
Some women wear their sacrifice so well, people call it grace.
Aisha was the kind of firstborn who didn't just set the bar—she became the bar. She carried our family like a tray of fragile glasses, steady even when her own hands trembled. People mistook her quiet for peace. But I knew it was silence carefully folded into obedience.
She never told us what she wanted.
She told us what was necessary.
I remember the day she met Gideon. It was raining the way it does in Lagos—heavy, impatient. He was barefoot in a bookstall, holding a stack of Achebe and Adichie. She walked in looking like thunder wrapped in silk, and he said:
"You read like someone who remembers who she was before they named her."
Aisha told me that line. She told me with a smile, but I could hear the ache buried underneath.
"He made me feel like I was more than my usefulness," she said once, after prayer. "Do you know how rare that is?"
I didn't, not then.
When she brought him up to Mama, she didn't say he was perfect. She said he was kind. She said he listened. She said he didn't shrink when she spoke.
Mama said, "He is not Yoruba."
Uncle said, "What does he earn?"
Auntie Titi said, "You'll embarrass us."
Aisha said nothing. For the first time, she wanted to oppose but she had no argument.
But that night, I found her curled in the kitchen, whispering over her tea:
"Is there a word for when your heart is louder than your mouth, but you choose silence anyway?"
She ended it the next day. Sat with Gideon on a park bench and gave him five words:
"They've found someone for me."
She told me later, "I couldn't fight for him and carry my family too. My arms aren't that long."
When I asked why she didn't run, she laughed—dry, bitter.
"You can't run when you're the roof. Who will keep the rain off them?"
She married Kunle. Oil and gas. Lekki Phase One. One of those weddings people take photos of and say, "God when?"
But that night, in the hallway, she held my hand and whispered:
"Never let applause become your lullaby. That's how women fall asleep in lives they never asked for."
Years passed. Two children. Aisha became more polished, more distant. Her laughter came with limits.
One day, I visited her while she braided her eldest's hair. Her husband had just come back from Dubai. He brought her jewelry. She hadn't opened the box.
"Do you love him?" I asked.
She replied, "He loves me like I'm a painting. I hang well, but he never asks what the artist meant."
She poured herself tea, stared into it like it held prophecy.
"Haneefah, the world rewards women who make themselves small for the sake of harmony. They call it wisdom. They call it dignity. But sometimes, it's just fear dressed in tradition."
I stayed silent.
Then she added, softer:
"Gideon used to ask me who I wanted to be. Kunle only asks what I want for dinner."
I asked her if she would do it all again.
She paused.
"I would. But I'd stop trying to be everyone's savior. I'd let someone save me too."
I pressed, "Do you regret it?"
She exhaled.
"There are many ways to drown. Some of us do it in gold bathtubs."
And then she looked me dead in the eye and said something I've never forgotten:
"Love is not always about staying. Sometimes, it's about leaving before love turns into resentment. Gideon deserved all of me. But duty demanded pieces. And so, I gave him nothing."
She stood, adjusted her wrapper, and said one last thing before walking away:
"Haneefah, when the time comes, and you must choose between being a good daughter and a whole woman—choose yourself. Or at least, leave a map behind for your younger sisters."
That was the first time I realized Aisha wasn't cold.
She was grieving.
Grieving the girl she could've been.
Poem at the End:
She wore silence like silk,
Folded dreams into her hijab,
Let the world praise her steadiness—
But I saw the wind shaking her branches.
Aisha—
The house didn't fall
Because she held up every wall
And buried her joy in the foundation.