WHAT A WOMAN COSTS

SOLD

CHAPTER 1

They say a father’s love is priceless.

Mine had a price tag.

Thirty thousand naira and a crate of malt.

Sometimes I still repeat it inside my head because even now, after everything life has done to me, it still sounds impossible. Too small. Too cheap. Like the kind of thing people make up to shock strangers.

But it happened.

My father looked me in the eye and sold me.

I was fifteen years old.

The funny thing about betrayal is that it never arrives looking like betrayal. If it did, maybe people would run from it. Maybe children would stop trusting the adults who smile while ruining them.

But betrayal usually comes dressed as love.

Or opportunity.

Or family.

That day, I came back from the farm carrying cassava in a dirty basin balanced on my head. The sun was hot enough to make the skin on my shoulders burn, and sweat had soaked through the back of my faded blouse before noon. I remember being irritated because one of my slippers had snapped on my way home, forcing me to drag my left foot through the dust.

I remember ordinary things because my life was still ordinary then.

Painful, yes.

Lonely, yes.

But still ordinary.

I had no idea I was walking toward the end of my childhood.

The first thing I noticed was the car parked outside our compound.

It was black and shiny, the kind of car you only saw when politicians came to the village during election season pretending to care about poor people. For a moment, I actually stopped walking.

Nobody in our family owned a car.

Nobody even knew anyone who owned a car.

I remember staring at my reflection in the tinted window before lowering the basin from my head. My face looked dusty and tired. My wrapper was stained from the farm. One of my braids had loosened near my ear.

I suddenly became embarrassed by how poor I looked.

Then I heard laughter from inside the house.

Not normal laughter.

Excited laughter.

The kind people use around money.

My stepmother was the first person I saw when I entered the compound. She was carrying a crate of malt inside with both hands, smiling so hard her cheeks looked swollen.

That woman only smiled like that when something good happened for her.

The moment she saw me, the smile disappeared.

“Why are you standing there like a fool?” she snapped. “Go and wash your legs before entering this house.”

I looked past her.

A man was sitting inside with my father.

He was fat.

Not the soft kind of fat that comes from happiness. The hard kind that comes from power. His wrist carried a thick gold watch, and his shoes looked expensive enough to feed my family for months. He did not look at me immediately. Men like him rarely looked directly at girls like me unless they wanted something.

My father looked nervous.

That was what unsettled me the most.

My father was not a gentle man, but he was proud. Even poverty could not remove that pride from him completely. Yet that afternoon, he sat like somebody trying very hard to impress another person.

I greeted them quietly.

The man’s eyes finally moved toward me.

Slowly.

Carefully.

The way buyers inspect goats in the market.

Something cold crawled up my spine.

“She’s grown,” the man said.

I still remember his voice.

Calm.

Almost bored.

My father forced a laugh. “She’s a hardworking girl.”

I hated the way he said it.

Like he was advertising me.

My stepmother entered again carrying two glasses and a bottle of malt. She placed them carefully in front of the visitor before wiping her hands on her wrapper.

Nobody offered me anything.

I stood there awkwardly, dust still clinging to my feet.

Then I saw it.

The envelope.

Brown.

Thick.

Resting on the table between them.

The man pushed it forward lazily with two fingers.

My father picked it up immediately.

I watched his thumb slide inside.

I watched him count the money.

Once.

Then again.

As if he was afraid some notes might disappear.

Thirty thousand naira.

That was the amount that changed my life forever.

At the time, I did not know exactly how much was inside the envelope. I only knew money made people behave strangely. My stepmother kept glancing at me and then at the envelope like both things belonged together somehow.

Now I understand.

They did.

“You’ll be going to Lagos,” my father finally said.

I frowned slightly. “Lagos?”

The man leaned back in his chair.

“There’s work there,” he said casually. “Better opportunities.”

Opportunities.

Another word people use before destroying you.

My heart started beating faster, but not from fear.

Hope.

That was the dangerous thing.

Hope.

Because no matter how badly my father treated me after my mother died, some stupid part of me still wanted him to love me. Children are foolish like that. They keep searching for affection even after rejection becomes familiar.

“You’ll help the family,” my father added.

I looked at him carefully, searching his face for something soft. Something fatherly.

I found nothing.

Still, I nodded.

Because what else was I supposed to do?

The truth is, a small part of me felt relieved.

I hated that house.

Ever since my mother died, nothing inside it had felt warm again.

Not the walls.

Not the food.

Not the silence.

Especially not after my father brought his new wife home wearing one of my mother’s wrappers before the ground on her grave had even settled properly.

Sometimes I still think that was the moment something inside me truly broke.

Not when he sold me.

Not even during Lagos.

It was seeing another woman standing in my mother’s kitchen, touching my mother’s things, sleeping in my mother’s room, speaking like she belonged there.

After that, home stopped feeling like home.

It became a place where I survived.

And survival can make people mistake danger for escape.

That evening, my stepmother cooked rice.

Rice.

We only ate rice during Christmas or funerals.

I should have known something was wrong.

She even gave me meat.

Real meat.

Not bone.

Not skin.

Meat.

I remember staring at it inside my plate while unease slowly spread through my stomach.

My younger brother sat on the floor beside me eating with both hands, too young to notice the tension hanging in the air. He was the child my mother died bringing into the world.

For years, I hated myself for resenting him.

But every time I looked at him, all I could think about was her absence.

How unfair life was.

One person entered the world while another disappeared from it.

That night, I heard my father and stepmother talking quietly after they thought I had slept.

“You should have asked for more,” she whispered.

My chest tightened instantly.

More?

“For a girl like her, this is good enough,” my father replied.

A girl like her.

Not:

my daughter.

Not:

Hadiza.

A girl like her.

I lay completely still on my mat.

Something inside me started shaking.

Not loudly.

Not violently.

Just enough for fear to enter my body for the first time.

“She’ll survive,” my stepmother muttered.

Survive what?

I wanted to ask.

But fear glued my mouth shut.

Then my father said something that would follow me for the rest of my life.

“At least she’ll finally become useful.”

Useful.

I did not sleep that night.

I stared into darkness listening to insects outside while my thoughts moved in terrified circles inside my head. I kept trying to convince myself I misunderstood them.

Maybe the money was for something else.

Maybe I was overthinking.

Maybe Lagos really was an opportunity.

Maybe fathers did not sell their daughters.

Not really.

Not people like us.

By morning, I was still trying to believe that lie.

The man returned before sunrise.

I noticed my father could not look at me directly anymore.

Guilt has a smell.

Bitter.

Cowardly.

Heavy.

I smelled it all over him that morning.

My stepmother packed my clothes inside an old bag without speaking much. The few dresses I owned looked small and tired folded together.

Nobody asked if I wanted to leave.

Nobody asked if I was afraid.

My father stood outside while the man loaded my bag into the back seat of the car.

For one stupid second, I truly believed he might stop everything.

I thought maybe he would suddenly remember I was his child.

Maybe he would say:

Don’t go.

Maybe he would hug me.

Maybe he would apologize.

Instead, he reached into his pocket and handed me two hundred naira.

“Behave yourself in Lagos,” he said.

That was all.

No love.

No warning.

No protection.

Just two hundred naira and a goodbye.

I climbed into the car trying not to cry.

Not because I would miss home.

But because deep down, some terrible instinct was already whispering that I would never return as the same person again.

As the car drove away, I looked back once.

My father was already counting money again.