They take it morning by morning.
They take it before sunrise, when the house is still dark and your body is begging for one more hour of sleep. They take it through buckets of dirty water, piles of laundry, plates scraped clean by people who never ask if you have eaten. They take it with promises sent back to your parents, lies dressed as good news, report cards printed by wicked hands, and smiles wide enough to fool a village.
At 4:30 every morning, while Lagos still slept beneath the heavy smell of generator smoke and rain-soaked gutters, Adaeze woke up in a storeroom that smelled of old stockfish, kerosene, and forgotten things.
Her bed was a thin mat on the floor.
Her pillow was folded cloth.
Above her head were cartons of imported tomato paste, sacks of rice, Christmas decorations, broken plastic chairs, old curtains, and suitcases that belonged to people who had rooms with windows.
Adaeze had no window.
She had a small square vent near the ceiling, covered with dust and cobwebs. Through it, she could see a narrow strip of Lagos sky. Some mornings it was black. Some mornings gray. Some mornings faintly blue before the city woke and swallowed the color.
