Читать книгу The Book Keeper - Julia McKenzie Munemo - Страница 9

Prologue

I’d like to show you a snapshot of my family. It will reveal a fact you need to know. Otherwise what follows doesn’t matter. No, that’s wrong. It does matter, but without knowing this—without seeing this Polaroid I keep on my fridge—you won’t know why it matters quite so much to me.

We’re all dressed up for a wedding. Our elder son is four, and he leans against his dad’s hip, squinting unsmiling into the camera in a sharp seersucker suit. The baby is one and I’m holding him. His considerably more rumpled seersucker is all bunched up around his neck, and he looks cross. I want to reach back through time and pull it down, let him breathe a little better.

My husband and I stand a hairbreadth apart—there’s a slash of green grass hill between us. My pale white skin looks washed out in the October sun, but my thick brown hair falls nicely against my face and my rust-colored dress is fabulous and I’m smiling at the camera. My husband isn’t smiling, but not because he’s unhappy. He never smiles for a picture. His suit is dark gray and his tie matches my dress and he looks fabulous, too. I don’t know if it’s the quality of the film or the slant of the sun, but even after all these years on the fridge, in this picture the shades of light and dark on his black skin are perfectly rendered.

There it is. The fact you need. Why didn’t I just come out and say it? I’m a white woman married to a black man—our children are mixed race. My intention wasn’t to fool you, but to take you there slowly. Normally, you’d just see us on the street and know. You’d decide whatever it is you’re going to decide. And this is a story about how some things take time to come clear.