#521 Charity Begins at Home- Fatima Shaik
Loutie is a mute, she lives with her parents in Louisiana.
They are a old couple, very religious, but not exactly pure of soul. They can
physically be best described as very large people.
“Words like wide, broad, heavy or fat are not used in this
house. They are much too personal for people in Mama and Papa’s condition.”
Loutie herself is a bit slow, but we see her thought process
as she goes about her days. They told her that she was a twin, and her brother
never made it. So, she waits for another one, and she thinks about children
often.
“I am a special and
innocent child for no matter how old I get, Mama said. She told me that over 30 years past when my mind first wouldn’t work with my mouth. We could never get
me to talk. The things I hear stay inside and don’t come back.”
Life in that house is almost dead. It’s stagnant and oppressive as August weather in Louisiana. Her mother has been talking about
her own death for as long as Loutie can remember.
“She planned for her funeral over 20 years ago. Since then,
she’s just been waiting.”
This is the first story in Shaik’s collection, What Went
Missing and What Got Found. So far, so good. This was a unique look into the
mind of a non-traditional narrator, so I like that. I hope that Shaik’s
Afro-Creole background adds a new viewpoint from other collections we’ve seen
here.
Notable Passage: “This is the plan: I will end the suffering
of the foreign babies. And when they are all happy, I will be free to be happy,
and everyone else will be too. Just like Jesus, I will be free for the sake of
all the people and, in the process, I might even get famous.”
No comments:
Post a Comment