In Umuoko, a village where sons were seen as the pillars of a home, the Okafor family was a house without columns. Six daughters, no son. A family of women, an absence that whispered through every conversation, every stare, every hushed prayer from distant relatives.

Nneka, the eldest, had heard it the most. “Your father needs a son to carry his name,” uncles would say, shaking their heads. “Who will inherit his land?”

Amaka, the second, was the first to fight back. “What about us?” she would snap. “Don’t we carry his blood too?” But her defiance only brought laughter. Women didn’t inherit land. Women left.

Adaeze, the third, was the quiet one. But her silence wasn’t submission—it was fury, bottled up behind her careful eyes. She had seen her father’s shame, the way he avoided gatherings where men spoke of their sons, the way he walked with a weight that had nothing to do with age.

Chisom, the fourth, felt it at school. Teachers pitied her, friends whispered. “Six girls? Your father must be heartbroken.”

Oluchi, the fifth, tried to make up for it. She became everything a son should be—she farmed, she climbed trees, she fought boys who mocked her sisters. She thought if she acted like a son, maybe, just maybe, the world would stop seeing them as a burden.

And then there was Ifunanya, the last. She didn’t know a world where she was unwanted. She laughed, she played, she believed her father’s love was enough.

Until the day her mother got pregnant again.

The prayers doubled. The expectations thickened. “A son is coming,” the relatives declared. “The redemption of the Okafor name.”

Nine months later, when the midwife came out of the room, her expression was unreadable. “It’s a girl,” she announced.

Silence.

Then, a long, exhausted sigh from their father. Not of disappointment, but of release. He stood, wiped his face, and walked into the room to meet his wife. He took the newborn in his arms and smiled.

“She is mine,” he said simply. “Like all the others before her.”

And that day, something shifted in the Okafor household.

Because they were six daughters, now seven. No sons.

And they were enough.