Elena Ferrante

Lila sat down there, and I strolled around, pretending to go somewhere else

She took a piece of chalk and wrote on the blackboard (now I don’t remember what, I didn’t yet know how to read: so I’m inventing the word) “sun.” Then she asked Lila:

“Cerullo, what is written there?”

In the classroom a fascinated silence fell.

Nunzia shook her head no emphatically.

Cerullo, that small dark-haired, dark-eyed child, in a dark smock with a red ribbon at the neck, and only six years old, answered, “Me.”

According to Rino, Lila’s older brother, she had learned to read at the age of around three by looking at the letters and pictures in his primer.

Her body repulsed me, something she probably intuited. She was a dark blonde, blue-eyed, voluptuous.

Certainly she wasn’t happy; the household chores wore her down, and there was never enough money.

If, however, I came in second after Lila, I wore a meek expression of acquiescence.

I was a pretty little girl with blond curls, happy to show off but not aggressive, and I gave an impression of delicacy that was touching.