Ms. Soni, who goes by the nickname Thandi, was, in effect, a migrant worker in the global economy. She traveled around the world to work for Disney, moving so often she can’t remember all the cities, leaving behind children to be raised by relatives, wiring money back to support as many family members as she can.

She struggled, physically and psychologically. But now she wants back in, for a simple reason — her family needs the money.

“I just want to save like there’s no tomorrow and then come back home and build for my kids,” she said.

She was seated on a twin bed in the tiny room she shares with her 10-year-old son; a jaunty straw hat sat atop her head. Pausing repeatedly to look away, catch her breath and wipe her eyes, she described herself as humbled and humiliated: “I’ve been trying to see how on earth did everything get to this point, but trying to look back is not going to fix it.”

She left the show in the summer of 2016, hoping to take care of a college-age son who had had some kind of psychotic break while she was away. But she quickly lost a house she had purchased with her early earnings, and they wound up moving into the shack.

Most of her belongings are now in storage, but just below her journal, she keeps a copy of the script and the score. Just in case.

Her life story, as she tells it, is one of unrelenting woe.

Raped at 10 by a neighbor, she gave birth to a child who was given to another family. A runaway at 14, she led a life she doesn’t like to detail. “It was bad for a girl child,” she said, rolling up her pants to show scars on her legs from a South African bullwhip called a sjambok.