Ariel's Quiet Light

ng in. Ariel's aunt unmarried, blunt, and practical, lived there with two older nephews, Nana and Kojo, boys who were all elbows and quickness. The aunt had been a shelter o

er. He had been late for work and distracted by finances. He muttered what could pass for relief, "Maybe she'll have better help there," and c

harity and practicality. The cousins watched like cats watching a new thing on the porch. Ariel tried to be invisible. She took tasks: fetching water, sweeping

ledger of everything and scolded loudly when expenses didn't match up. "We cannot afford laziness," she announced one afternoon, slapping a hand on the wooden table. She compared Ariel, bluntly and publicly, to the ways the family had been wh

ins of lessons stolen on the back of grocery receipts. Her days rippled with small cruelties: food that arrived late, chores that doubled overnight, cousins who stole

d then quickly stitch it up with a practical command. Those moments tasted of something like kindness before they wer

s at the corner. Efua laughed like a bell and knew Ariel's mother. She would give Ariel advice along with handfuls of nuts: "Don't let the small badne

nes. She worked out algebra in the margins of bills and dreamed that one day, someday, she would walk into a place that would accept the woman she might

how to put her brilliance away like a shining thing hidden in a drawer. If she laughed, it was low and quick. She began to keep a ledger in her mind of what she