The Attic Child

by Lola Jaye

“I am Celestine Babbington and . . . and I am from Africa.” “Incorrect. Your life is here now and you must reflect this in your opening statement. Begin again.” I swallowed. “My name . . . my name is, is Celestine Babbington and I am from . . . I am from this great land that is Britain.” Mr. Prentice stood back and nodded approvingly. “But of course you are. It doesn’t matter where you may have started, this is where you now live, and it is a land that has given you many opportunities, one of which is attending one of the best schools in the country. You may be seated.”

My blood is boiling

“I wish you could understand. Even though what happened to the people in my family did so some centuries ago and without me present, it doesn’t mean that today I don’t feel the pain. It doesn’t mean that such legacies have missed me.” His voice broke again. “It also doesn’t mean that even today in 1993, I’m not experiencing another version of it everywhere I turn. Just look at what happened when the guy with the trolley gave me back my change by putting it on the table instead of in my hand.”

If this could happen in the 1990s to an educated, grown man, then what had a young African boy gone through in the early 1900s? Whether he was my great-grandfather or not, he was also a child. A little boy who deserved so much better. I didn’t want to think only of the pain he’d felt, losing his home and his identity and living in an attic, but all of it.

Why was it that back home, with my family in our village, the presence of a white man brought wonderment to me but never suspicion—until they hanged my father?

I held no malice for my people. We were all just trying to survive in this country. That much I now understood.

“I am twenty-five years old, sir, and it is now my aim to do better.” “You will. Just be aware that sometimes the journey can become derailed by something or someone. It is never a straight line.”

What I also needed to remember was that nothing had defeated me, even when perhaps it should have. That night after the registry had burned to the ground, I’d been tempted to end my own life by ending the life of another. Yet I had survived for a reason, a purpose, and was willing and ready to fulfill that purpose and continue to make my mark on this world by helping others.

Any American I’d met had always been upfront with what they thought of you, and Della was no different.