BEAUTY COSTS EVERYTHING

Chapter Two

I was reading a novel by Ama Atta aiddo "the Girl who can" as I heard someone called out my name. It was my mother, she called out to me. I stood up and hurried to her because she was going out.
"Akosua, Can you look after the cocoyams I just harvested?" She asked.
"Sure, Ma" I replied as she smiled. I have never seen my mother smiled like she just did now. She looked happy that made me happy too.
"Ma, Where are you going to?" I asked stepping a little bit closer to where she was standing.
"Oh, I'm going to the King's palace to ask the crown prince if he still wants to marry" She answered, turned, and walked away.
I sighed as I walked to where I was wondering why my mother is a hurry to ask the prince to marry me. Sometimes I feel why men like me so much. Last month, someone from France asked my mother that he wanted to marry me. I didn't who he was and he never introduced himself to me. I rejected him when he proposed to me with a 500,000 dollars diamond ring. The news circulated around the village and you know you have the loud birds(gossippers) circulating it around the village.
Flashback to the villagers POV:
"Have you heard what Akosua did" She Efya Adapa murmured.
"Yes my sister, she had rejected a 500,000 dollars diamond ring, if I had that ring I'll be a millionaire by now"
"Yes my sister" 
"What a shame... if I was to have that opportunity like I would have done anything to have that ring"
"Yes, my sister"

It's hard to be in a city where there are rumors circulating around. People will say this and that but they know the real reason why I don't want to get married at a young age.
Now I have no choice but to marry the crown prince.
Sometimes I want to be different... not look like me. Everyday I'm being looked at. Anywhere I go, people have something to say about how I look. What would it be like without the beauty I have. I want to be the first woman in my family to have finished university. For the past 20 years, since my great great grandmother got the opportunity to finish school and travelled abroad. Nobody had such an opportunity to have a better life. It is difficult to afford school stuffs. I have a school teacher named Ms Linda who encourages me to take my education seriously because she knows that I'm going to bring my family out of poverty. My mother thinks it's a waste of time... she thinks how I can bring my family out of poverty is to marry a wealthy man. I tried my best to convince her that I don't want to. I understand why she kept forcing me to marry a wealthy man because she's sick and needs money to go to the hospital.