Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge (best short novels .txt) 📗

curling at the bottoms. His eyes were deep and wide-set and black, and his mouth was thin. This was because he sucked his lips in whenever his mouth was relaxed, a habit his mother had switched into him. When his mouth was allowed to fully rest, as it did in sleep, his lips were as full as any of ours, fuller even than my own. His mother beat him because his lips were, in her imagination, the only sign that he was a Negro. Holding them in or letting them loose was a choice between life and death, she believed. But I would only learn this from him later, when I lay close enough to trace his mouth’s outline for myself, with my little finger.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said, and then he turned and said the same to Experience and Louisa. He had a trace of an accent, I assumed it was French, and this made him sound even more distinguished. I felt a pang of acknowledgment, that this was the person my mother had chosen to relish instead of me. And, of course, shame with myself, that I had proven my mother’s doubts correct, that she was right to bring him in when she thought I might not see my schooling through. And underneath it, running as high and bright as a mountain stream, a longing that Emmanuel Chase should think well of me, which I hated myself for even wishing.

Lucien rushed forward to embrace him and slap him on the back. It was the masculine version of the hundred little flatteries he had directed my way to make his mother laugh, though now he seemed to have forgotten her entirely, focused only on Emmanuel Chase.

“Long time, old boy. Too long, old boy. What a sight, old boy,” Lucien said, his voice curving up into an approximation of a gentleman—different from the voice he’d used on me and Experience and Louisa.

To which Emmanuel Chase only said, “Yes.”

And for that, I felt another pang, that Emmanuel Chase was very politely making a fool out of Lucien in public, a pastime I had liked to do myself as a child. But my jibes had never landed, because Lucien had never cared what I thought of him.

At the house, Lenore played much cooler than my mother had. She said, “Oh, look, a ghost,” when she saw me, forcing me to accost her with apologies and swears of devotion until she grudgingly accepted my embrace.

The house was full then, for once, in the evening, with Mama, Lenore, myself, the Graces, Madame Elizabeth, Lucien, and Emmanuel Chase, who, I noticed as we all sat down to dinner together, had taken the head of the table. Mama sat to his right.

“There won’t be much time to rest,” Mama said, “before you must begin preparations for the performance.”

“The Graces can rest here during the day,” I said. “I’ve already volunteered for the LIS.” I waved my hands, a flourish, in front of me. “Behold, a mule.”

This made Mama laugh, at least. Lucien, too, though Emmanuel Chase only smiled and kept his face close to his plate.

“And you must tell us,” Mama said, “how your studies are faring and what the college is like and, oh, how are Mr. Grady and his wife doing?”

I had expected this, and I had a dodge—what I had learned from so many years as a doctor’s daughter. That nobody wished to speak of any greater subject than themselves. So I turned to Emmanuel Chase and said, trying to keep the envy and the fear of him from my voice, “My studies are boring, but a doctor all the way from Haiti, that is much more fascinating. Mama has spoken of your talents, but she has not mentioned much of your history.”

Emmanuel Chase laid down his knife and fork, as if he was about to make a speech. I thought, At least I have guessed right about you. You are vainglorious.

“My father was born free here, in Maryland, and my mother was a slave. She escaped twice, to join him—the first time, she and my three brothers were recaptured; the second time, she made it away, but with only one of them. In Maryland, she and my father had five more children—I am the youngest. My father joined the Church of England. They do not have much of a presence in Maryland, but their faith is strong.

“Even before war broke out, he wished to leave this country, but my mother would not hear of it—she wished to stay, in case my two brothers ever found a way to return to her. But my father could not see how colored people could make anything of ourselves here. He petitioned the church to send him to Haiti—the president there had promised land to any American Negro who could come. And my father was determined.

“Right before the diocese agreed to send him, we got word that my two other brothers had died—one of a whipping, from an overseer in Mississippi, and the other drowned while trying to cross the Delaware River. So we left, certain we would miss nothing back here. We left the same day war broke out at Fort Sumter, though we did not learn of it until we arrived in Haiti.”

Emmanuel Chase spoke as if he had practiced this speech many times in his head and had warmed to telling it. He paused for breath, for gasps, for admiring sighs, and Madame Elizabeth and the Graces humored him. I noticed, though, that he seemed to take their noises as genuine—he was not so savvy as to realize that these were the sounds women learn to make to keep men talking. I thought, again, I know you. And I widened my eyes as he spoke, made my smile slightly bigger. Then an extraordinary thing: as he finished his first speech, as he said “arrived in Haiti,” he raised his eyes to look in mine, as if to say I know