Mary's mother did not stay long after giving birth. The walls of her husband's sister's house, where she had hidden during the pregnancy, had grown too cold, too sharp. Every word there carried thorns. So she gathered what little strength she had and carried her baby back to her parents' house.
For two years, the child was her shadow. Mary toddled across clay floors, chasing chickens in the yard, her tiny laughter echoing in the evenings. Yet beneath her mother's forced smiles lived a deep weariness. She was young, too young, and each day stretched her thinner.
One night, when Mary was nearly two, her mother sat quietly, staring at the child asleep on a raffia mat. Her hands shook as she whispered,
"I can't do this anymore. I can't keep suffering."
The next morning, she left Mary at the father's family compound.
The house smelled of smoke and palm oil. Men sat in the courtyard, their voices low. Mary's father stood among them, stiff, his arms crossed. He glanced at the child once, his face unmoved.
"Take her," her mother said softly, almost pleading. "She belongs here."
Her father snorted. "I don't want her. She will only add to my troubles."
Mary clutched her mother's wrapper, sensing something was wrong though she couldn't name it. Her mother's tears dropped silently onto her hair as she tried to push the child forward.
"No," her father barked. "She is not staying"
The words struck like stones. Mary did not understand, but the rejection clung to her skin, heavy and sharp.
Days later, both families gathered in a room dimly lit by a kerosene lamp. The air smelled of roasted yam, but the tension was bitter.
"She cannot stay with us," one voice said.
"Her mother is too young, she has no means," another replied.
"And her father will not take her either."
Voices overlapped until someone suggested what felt like a solution.
"There is the boarding school… Sister Margaret's school. She can go there. At least she will be fed."
The room quieted. One by one, heads nodded.
And so, before her third birthday, Mary's future was sealed by people who never asked her name, never touched her cheek, never wondered what it meant to be two years old and already unwanted.