Chapter 54
Elise Campbell at three years old was a person of strong opinions, specific preferences, and the total authority of someone who has never yet been told they shouldn't have strong opinions.
She had opinions about her shoes (she had a pair of red ones that she would wear to the exclusion of all others until they literally fell apart). About food (she ate almost everything with enthusiasm, with the exception of plantain prepared in any way other than exactly as her grandmother made it). About books (she had favourites that she required to be read in sequence, in full, without editorial modification, and if Marcus attempted to skip a page he received a correction that was both immediate and complete).
She was, he thought, entirely herself already. The particular Elise-ness of her was present at three the way his mother had told him his Marcus-ness had been present from birth.
He took her to school with him occasionally on Saturdays when Nia was working and the programme wasn't running sitting her at the back of his empty classroom with books and paper while he marked essays. She would draw for an hour with complete seriousness, then bring him her drawings for assessment.
'What do you think?' she said one Saturday, presenting a large red thing.
'I think it's very good,' he said. 'What is it?'
She gave him the look the same look his mother gave him when he asked unnecessary questions.
'It's a yard,' she said.
He looked at the drawing again. He could see it now: a square, the shapes around it, the tall vertical line that was probably the mango tree.
'Very good,' he said.
She took it back, satisfied, and returned to the desk.
He watched her for a moment this small person who was his and Nia's and herself simultaneously and felt the same thing he felt every time he really looked at her: that large, sometimes alarming love that his mother had written about, the love that was also the specific terror of having something worth losing.
He understood his mother more deeply every year.
He wrote in his journal: 'Elise at three: she knows who she is. My job is to protect that knowledge, not to replace it with mine.