The Attic Child

by Lola Jaye

Most people were simply in a rush to talk about themselves, using interest in my life as a ruse. And as the relationship progressed, their “love” for you simply became about how you made them feel and nothing much more than that.

The cocoon of this bed felt like a sanctuary, far away from what lay beyond the bedroom door and the rest of this house I was expected to venture out and into at some point. The warmth and comfort, so reminiscent of my mama’s embrace.

This wasn’t the first time I’d emerged from nothing to nothing, anyway. The future never scared me as much as the past did.

I just needed him to understand. But of course, he didn’t. How could he? No one ever could, which was why it always just felt safer to keep myself to myself, so I never needed to explain.

It was pretty enough with its dark sandy pebbled beach and large Victorian houses, but I truly believed those waves spoke a story of endless pain which then transferred into the atmosphere and kept people away. Or maybe the place itself was fine and it was simply that house.

“In my work, it’s always been clear to me that history is on the side of the powerful and not the weak.”

Yet this little boy was tearing that away from me, transforming me into this feeling human being, which was a dangerous thing to be for someone like me. Because what if by allowing myself to feel his pain, it uncovered my own? My own truths, my own secrets?

This armor of mine had always been there, though it was covered by my own confusion and at times anger. Yet it had now come alive once more, allowing me to walk into school from that moment on with my shoulders erect and my gaze facing forward.

“It appears I’m a historian first and a human being second.

“You have a PhD?” “Sure do.” “So you’re a doctor?” “Without the prescriptions, diagnoses, operations or the wages.”

“I suppose when I feel misunderstood, I can get defensive.”

“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.”

The attic was full of containers, discarded items that no one wanted anymore. Perhaps that’s exactly what I was now.

Tilly had left me with the greatest of gifts—the need and desire for more.

Once you become soaked in the nectar of education, it stays with you forever and is the best investment a man can make.”

Yes, they needed financial security to succeed, but one thing I had learned was that the security of education was something nobody in this world could ever beat out of me, and I wanted to instill that confidence in others, if they so wished.

but a man enraged with his own insecurities, inadequacies and misinformation would never see beyond that.

Having been so tied up with reading about great men from the past I was never actually going to meet, I’d failed to seek out the greatness happening around me.

“If you can’t give back, then what is the point?

Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.