The Empire of Dirt by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

SIX

THERE WAS AN ALBINO FAMILY LIVING IN TOWN. The mother and her three kids, two girls and one boy who were all older than me, would walk around like elves, their heads always covered up in the summer to make sure they didn’t get sunburned. One day when I was still little, my mother explained what albinism was; before that, I had always just thought of them as being incredibly blond.

“Can you see their eyelashes?” she said. “They’re white. And their eyes seem blank. Or red, if you look closer. They can’t see as well as we do. And they can’t be out in the sun, or they’ll get burned.”

“Like vampires,” I said.

“Like vampires,” my mother echoed. “Your grandmother actually believes that, you know. She says that back in her day it was a mark of the devil. When their daughter was born—they named her Bianca; now, you tell me if that’s not a little cruel—it was the first time anything like it had ever happened around here. The parents are old now and their hair is white too, but when they were younger it was darker than dark, and they were always so tanned. But even so that girl came out this way—bleached. Your grandma says that when the priest found out, he went to bless the house. Keep in mind this was in the sixties, not the Middle Ages. Anyway, it took a while to figure out that she was an albino. Rumor has it the father threatened to leave. He thought the child wasn’t his.”

“Why was she born that way?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It’s something in the genes.”

“I think they’re beautiful,” I said.

“They are,” she said, nodding. “And they shouldn’t be living here. People here are stupid, much too stupid. They belong in another world.”

We used to see them in church every Sunday. They would sit on the raised step in the last row, but right at the very end of the pew, so that while some of them remained in the shadows, others were illuminated by the light coming in through the church window, creating a portrait of pristine purity and celestial radiance that I was sure they wouldn’t have chosen. The mother always wore black or gray, and a hat she kept on throughout the service (Grandma had once told me that it was allowed, but only for women), while the girls wore pastel-colored gowns—teal, turquoise, or indigo—that went all the way to the floor in winter and just below the knee in summer. For the boy, who was the youngest, raw-cotton suits—navy or baby blue—and a pale shirt. The father always wore a good suit, always the same starched dark gray jacket and trousers, and followed his wife and children from a few steps behind, as if to protect them or to admire their cruel, defiant, desperate beauty—something that he was still not accustomed to, something that he had not been given access to, and that he would never accept or truly understand.

As

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