Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part Seventy Seven
“Nothing in here mentions her or who she was. How was I supposed to learn information the book didn’t give me?”
Jaqueline sat up and shrugged. “She mentions arriving here, she talks about how similar the ways to plant crops are. She mentions eating jackfruit under the palms. She even dedicates the book near the end to her first child, the only one she saw live.”
Felecia looked down at the yellowed book in her hands and then up at the old woman opposite her on the bed. “This is a book about growing mushrooms and tubers. None of that was in here.”
Jacqueline turned her attention back to her own book and spoke low, “I’ve read every book in this library, girl. All of them and more times each than I care to count. These books were all I was allowed to keep in the end, not that shack of empty promises in that meadow, not my Abe, nothing else beyond what keeps a body alive.”
A long, heavy silence fell over them until Felecia swore that she could hear the awful mushrooms growing in their beds in the room beyond before Jacqueline whispered, “Read it again, and quit skimming.”
Felecia did skim, she always had, she didn’t read books so much as devour them all at once and with good reason. On the rare occasions when father was home, reading was a privilege because Nana didn’t care to argue over what Felecia did while he was at home. The books on offer though were always the trifling sort that mother liked to read.
Nothing wrong with a woman learning to read. Women can learn to perfect so many crafts that way and fill their down time with entertainment besides. Subjects matter though, reading about manly pursuits only leave women feeling wronged, jaded against what they ought to be learning and doing. It’s foolish for a woman to be wasting time on history or science or politics or philosophy, it’s not as if any of that nonsense has done men much good as is.
Felecia was offered that ridiculous speech by father when she was all of eight years old and caught on the wrong side of the family library. Eight was too early for Felecia to be subjected to what women or men read, she wasn’t either one of those. Felecia was eight and a curious child, she liked books, all of them and she wanted to read more of them, and more after that. Neither of her brothers read much, one only had his murder mystery pulps and the occasional book of moldy, sea related poetry to keep him busy and the eldest, well, Felecia was never sure he knew how much less if he cared to try. Why should all those great books go to waste?
Still, Felecia loved her father, the ever infrequent yet all powerful being of her early childhood. She wanted to please him and keep on his good side and so she chewed miserably through all the womanly books in the library while he was home and spent so much of her spare time, machinations, and subterfuge to find time to read everything else while he was gone. No matter how many times Nana changed the lock on the library door or forbid her to “waste time on nonsense.” Felecia read it all eventually no matter how many beatings or starvings or bouts of kitchen duty it netted her, but she read fast. She skimmed, she got the gist and scanned for the important bits because most of the time that was all she had time to do.
Felecia started in again and took her time, she lingered and looked hard for the bits of personal information that Jacqueline had mentioned. As it turned out, Felecia wasn’t a quick reader/learner she was just quick to miss things. There were several miserable hours spent soaking up that knowledge and trying not to let it ruin what was left of her purpose while she really read the material of the moment.