A poor, overweight orphan girl is forced into marriage with a homeless man; a few days later, he arrives in a Rolls-Royce.

She helped old women cross the road on market days, fed stray dogs with scraps, and gave reading lessons to the neighborhood children. She carried kindness as if it were the only inheritance her parents had left her. Sometimes, late at night, she would sit outside and watch the stars. « I know you see me, » she would whisper to her parents, « I’m trying. » It was always the same phrase: I’m trying to be good enough, I’m trying to be invisible enough, I’m trying to survive. One afternoon, everything changed after a reprimand from her aunt for an extra piece of yam.

“Do you want to swallow this whole house?” the woman thundered. “Do you think food falls from the sky?” Amara silently put down her plate. Her cousin Chioma came into the kitchen, giggling into her phone: “Mom, did you hear? Taylor’s son said no one would ever marry Amara unless they were blind.” They laughed heartily. Something tightened in Amara’s chest, like a rope pulled too tight around fragile wood. Later, she overheard her aunt talking to a neighbor: “This girl is becoming my biggest problem. No man wants her. I can’t feed her forever.”