Ramadan Ramsey by Louis Edwards

Author:Louis Edwards [Edwards, Louis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780063012059
Google: 0ugHEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Amistad
Published: 2021-08-09T23:00:00+00:00

It was as if Clarissa, at the age of forty-nine, was staring into a mirror and seeing, for the very first time, its true response to her. Before, what she’d seen had been misted with secrecy. Her real reflection—she knew this now for sure—had been obscured behind the fog of all she didn’t know about herself. Oh, the outline of her face, the outline of her, had been there and, looking at only a shadowy likeness, she had even been able to pretend she didn’t feel ugly inside. Maybe, she had sometimes told herself, the her she didn’t know was actually beautiful. Maybe what was hidden from her and the world was a beauty. Maybe one day that would be revealed to her, ridding her of self-doubt. But every line of the letter was like the swipe of a hand removing mist from the mirror. Now she saw herself whole, her silhouette filled in with the textures of specificity, the garish colors and jagged edges of the truth. As she had madly searched through her mother’s things, mere greed had seemed her motivation, but she had really been looking for her own beauty, for “evidence,” to use her father’s word, of her own worth. What she had found instead was her singularity, the thing that made her special. But no—it wasn’t pretty; neither was she. Yet there she was. There it was: the portrait of someone too grisly to look at—or, so it was written, to love. Not who she was necessarily meant to be, but the improbably horrid thing that had been made of her.

“Okay,” she mumbled, folding the letter and tossing it back where she’d found it, thinking that as good a place as any for it to remain buried. Fine! If beauty and love were Alicia’s birthright, then ugliness and hatred would be hers.

Charged with the acceptance of her fate, she got up and muscled the top mattress back onto the bed. After hastily and sloppily making the bed, she gathered the clothes, bills, and boxes, flung and shoved them all into the closet, and shut the door. As she was walking out of the room, she stepped on the twenty-dollar bill she had found under the mattress. She picked it up and casually fanned her face with it. This simple, wristy motion engendered in her the illusion of composure, softening for the moment her hardened heart. Heading down the hall on her way out, she could almost be said to have been sauntering. Sustaining this act, she opened Ramadan’s door, flounced into his room, and extended the twenty to him.

“Here you go,” she said sweetly.

“What’s that for?” he asked.

“I found it in Mama Joon’s room. I’m sure she’d want you to have it.”

Ramadan shook his head and went back to his studies. Clarissa dropped the money at the foot of his bed and hurried out. He glanced at the bill and saw the portrait of a frizzy-haired Andrew Jackson. Picking it up, he noticed a striking resemblance between the warrior president and the heavy-breathing Clarissa.

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