The Library Thief by Kuchenga Shenjé

Author:Kuchenga Shenjé
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Published: 2024-03-07T15:11:02+00:00

* * *

“You see. You run around with these white girls, and you will get yourself in trouble,” Miss Sey said.

“It’s just a meeting,” Sibyl replied, rolling her eyes.

“You want take your babies to House of Commons?”

“I have much bigger ambitions for them than that.” Sibyl smiled.

The jocularity between them was so well-grooved, it made me think of a carpenter beveling the edges of wood, and the peels of wood curling up, making smooth laughing sounds along the way. They jostled and poked each other with the jokes that only they could make.

Christopher, the father of the house, gone. The middle daughter, Persephone, I thought likely murdered, without anyone held accountable. The youngest son, Orion, living as a white man, with no contact with his former family at all. Arabella and Sibyl were the only ones left from the family that once burst against the walls of their home. Now, these giggling and gurgling boys were their future. The offspring of scandal but with the innocent faces of chubby cherubs.

“Don’t be too long,” Miss Arabella said, hugging me before she turned away from us both with a kiss of her teeth. “These girls.”

There was a light drizzle in the streets. We walked toward the docks in a comfortable silence. I wished Sibyl would walk closer to me, but she kept a respectable distance. We weren’t yet sisters. Although I knew so much about her, and I longed to ask inappropriate questions about Lord Belfield. If he was nice to her in the main, or blew hot and cold like he did with me? He wasn’t her husband, but I wondered if it felt like he was when he came to visit now. She knew him so well.

Instead, I settled on a mundane question.

“Was your father quite tall?” I asked.

“You’re asking because my mother is small.” She turned to me, amused.

“I suppose so.” I shrugged and smiled it off.

“Yes. Yes, he was tall. My mother thought he might be Hausa, but of course we’ll never know that for sure. Percy and I both took after him in looks and height. Orion has the same round cheeks as my mother. Only a few inches taller than her, as well.”

Walking along with her, every Negro man we passed tipped his hat toward her and she nodded back. I started doing it too. It was lovely to feel some sort of kinship with the Blacks of the area, when until Sibyl I had never considered any Black person I had met as potential kin. Why would I? I didn’t know there were this many in Liverpool. When we got to the dock she shouted out at one lifting a box.

“Agoo!”

The man grinned a gleaming smile and shouted back something unintelligible to me, but so full of mirth, it made me smile too. I looked back and forth between them shouting at each other and felt so lucky to be with her, this multilingual mother taking me to a women’s meeting. I waved back at him as we walked away and Sibyl seemed amused, so I felt comfortable to ask her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.