The Attic Child

 The rest of my writings for the American Cancer Society's write 30 minutes a day in May were offline. I worked on the memoir I've been writing.

I just finished a really good book but it's not for everyone. It can be gut-wrenching.

The cover of The Attic Child by Lola Jaye caught my eye, a profile of an African child wearing a clawed necklace. I read the inside jacket and was intrigued. What an emotionally riveting story it was!  My gut was twisted with anger in some places, my heart felt like it might break in others, and yet I was also filled with hope and joy.

The story is about two children imprisoned in the same attic but decades apart.

The first child, 9-year-old Dikembe, was born in the Congo and had a loving family. Unfortunately, the Congo was occupied by Belgians, and, under the leadership of King Leopold, they were burning villages and committing acts of atrocity. Dikembe’s father was killed by Belgian soldiers. To save her youngest son, the boy’s mother sent him away with a British explorer circa 1901.

Dikembe believed his situation was temporary and that he would soon return to the Congo. Meanwhile, his benefactor, Sir Richard Babbington, treated him as a son. Sir Richard clothed, fed, and educated the boy, and Dikembe lived a life of luxury. However, there were drawbacks. The first was that Babbington changed Dikembe’s name to Celestine. As Dikembe slowly began to realize this might not be a temporary situation, there were other troubling signs about Sir Richard. The man drank like a fish, and he seemed to develop an emotional dependence on Dikembe/Celestine.

Everything changed when Sir Richard suddenly passed away. The will was read, and the house went to Sir Richard’s relatives, the Mayhews. As nothing was specified (then) about Dikembe/Celestine, the Mayhews decided to keep him as a servant. Now, instead of being a pampered son, the boy found himself an overworked servant. Worse, Agatha Mayhew evicted him from his bedroom and locked him in the attic. The attic was bare of anything other than a few trunks and a blanket. The windows were boarded so there was no light. There was no bed and no toilet. It became a barbaric prison.

In the 1960s, Lowra was a happy child with loving parents. They often visited Spain on vacations, and Lowra believed it was because her mother was of Spanish descent. When she was still young, her mother died. She and her father made the best of it and were happy. They were very wealthy, and she was a pampered little girl. Her tutor was Nina, and it was a shock when her father married Nina. Her father mysteriously disappeared while on his honeymoon with Nina.

Nina returned alone and took custody of the grieving Lowra. They didn’t get along very well, and Nina’s moods were unbalanced. One day, Nina was so angry that she dragged Lowra into the attic and locked her in. Until she was 15, Nina only allowed Lowra out for visits with social workers and her grandmother. Nina bullied and abused Lowra so that the child would either say nothing or say she was fine.  She finally managed to escape when she was 15 and was placed in a shelter.

All of this is emotionally wrenching. Both children suffered intolerable abuse and somehow survived after they escaped. The road to healing was long and hard. It began when Lowra visited a museum and saw pictures of Dikembe/Celestine forced to pose with his benefactor Sir Richard. With the help of a historian, Lowra set to work trying to track down the unnamed boy.

In spite of the barbaric way the children were treated, there is still love and hope throughout their lives after their escape.

In the afterword, the author wrote about the inspiration for the book. It is based on a real picture of a child with despairing eyes she saw in a museum exhibit. The picture stayed with her even as she wrote other stories. During the pandemic, she said that the child’s voice demanded to be heard and she wrote this story.

It's a painful read but the author tells Dikembe’s story in a way that is so engrossing, I could hardly bear to put it down and go about my day or to sleep. There is one non-explicit incident of child sexual abuse. In addition to the awful abuse, the story also covers racial and class issues. I thought it was an excellent book and will look for others by this author.