In short chapters, I followed the lives of three orphaned girls supposedly looked after by their uncle. While gradually losing their innocence, many a chapter was a blow to the gut, showing the longing for love, the rejection, the discrimination and their search for identity. This is an exquisitely written novel, slowly revealing the girls’ background and the creative language growing with them. Very emotional and special.
Above me is space, below me space, between Noreen and me: space. Noreen has so much space around her, even when we share a room, even when my body becomes a cat, a little radiator for her to steal heat from. There’s so much space in her eyes, black holes that I can’t touch. I wonder where it came from, how it stole into her.
Aisha is making her own space too, even when she sits next to me, I don’t know where she is. In some other body, in some other world, in some place I don’t have the key to.
In school they talk about science. About space and planets. But everything is make-believe. Mars could have water. Pluto could be a planet. Could not be. There are things in space that my teachers can’t explain: black holes that can crush a sun, suspended air where nothing moves. I wonder what crept inside Noreen, what space crushes her. All around me, my classmates have their own planets, balls of light that they orbit.
And us, at home, a different breed: born alone, born together. My sister-mothers. Untethered.
