Koly lives in a village in India with her parents, her maa and baap, and two brothers. When she turns 13, her maa says it’s time for her to marry. Koly knows her family’s poverty is to blame. They barely have enough to eat. If she marries, she’ll go to live with her husband’s family, and her own family will have one less mouth to feed.

Koly’s baap works as a scribe. He owns a stall in the village marketplace where people who don’t know how to read and write can pay him to write letters for them. Koly’s brothers attend the village school. The village also has a school for girls, and Koly begs to go, but her maa says school is a waste of time for girls. Koly tries to learn by looking at her brothers’ schoolbooks, but can’t read them. When she’s sent on an errand, she hovers near the school’s open windows to listen to the lessons but doesn’t understand what she hears. Maa teaches Koly embroidery, a skill that has been passed down to every woman in her maternal ancestry “as far back as anyone could remember” (4). Maa embroiders the borders of saris and sells them in the marketplace.