My father died when I was young, and my mother raised us, and she raised us on a particular understanding: that love in our family was a thing you earned by obedience, and that the child who obeyed most completely was loved most.

I had spent my whole childhood competing for that love and never quite winning it, because it was designed never to be won, only chased.

And so when she asked for my card three days into my marriage, she was not really asking for money.

She was offering me the one thing I had wanted my entire life — her approval — in exchange for the one thing that stood between her and my paycheck: my wife’s objection.

I chose the approval.

I chose it over Amina in that first week, and I went on choosing it, every month, for seven years, because the hunger my mother had built into me was stronger than the love I should have been building with my wife.