Article by Raychel Stark Art by Perry Davis
Assigned to clean and arrange the chamber of dust and novels, I felt inclined to reflect on my childhood.
The library might have been the first place where I was given independence. When I was five, I picked up Winnie the Pooh and nestled myself into the corners of the towering shelves. Surrounded by dark, unopened books, where angels, wizards, dragons, fairies, and witches, huddled cover to cover, I felt at home. The angels were once as plentiful as species of flies. I was away from the clutter — distancing my mind from the long car ride to the library, one full of exchanged screams between my parents. Far removed from the pull and push of being a rebellious six-year-old, I escaped from the crime of being too small to know. But I knew. I knew about Pooh, Christopher Robin, Eeyore, Tigger, Owl, Piglet, Rabbit, and I knew I wasn’t an average six-year-old. I knew my parents were arguing about my inauspicious future. I composed myself in the fort of the books I made, later breathing in the authors so distant from A.A. Milne– Malcolm X, Marx, Melville, Merwin, Millay, Milton, Morrison.
I’m seventeen now, and rather than looking at an assortment of picture books, I’m ordering them from A-Z by the author — a treacherous task to anyone who has worked in a library. When did life become so monotonous? So stale and soulless? William Trevor: The Children of Dynmouth, Henry David Thoreau: Walden, Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Book after book. Stack after stack. No longer could I sit in the corner, knees to chest, and indulge in The Hungry Caterpillar. Now I am old. Now I am made for sorting and dusting.
I envied Winnie-the-Pooh’s tight friendships. If I ran deep into the shelves, would I eventually reach 100 Acre Wood? Would I get to the house at Pooh Corner by 1:00? If I read enough fantasies, could I reach my own fantasy, touch my own imagination?
The one person that understood me the most has always been myself. I investigate my hands; they smell of antiquity — old, rotten, rusted knowledge, the crevices filled with dust. I bend one finger after the other. The mind communicates with the physical body in such confusing ways. I explore each wrinkle and vein on my hand trying to understand how my brain and body are connected. Can I think without it being a thought? Can I change without being seen? What is shown more to my parents, my hands or my soul? They think I don’t know, but I know.
The golden, capitalized titles of each book glisten and bulge out. The letters flirtatiously mock me and tell me what I have the possibility to wallow in. I can only peek behind the cover and playfully stamp the return date. The head librarian pulls out each date card. She shows me, with a loud chunk-chunk, how to stamp an almost purposefully crooked due date on it, below a score of previous crooked due dates that belonged to other people, other times. My boss is a beautiful, shriveled woman, part of a clan of bergamot-scented, timeworn bookworms that I would never fully be a member of. She felt she owned the library with fussy self-possession. She established the sanctuary as a place where she would secretly write her 25-stanza flowerful poems as children whispered about her vile, dismissive, condescending sniffs and stares.
My first memory of librarians was in a big room with heavy wooden tables that sat on a creaky wood floor. My creative, sincere, young mind wide-eyed the room. A cone of bright, white light encircled the heavy oak chairs that were too low. Or maybe I was simply too short.
Maybe that’s why I chose to sit on the ground with a too-big book. My childhood librarian had a welcoming smile. She sensed the anticipation in my heart of all those books — an entirely new realm just waiting at my fingertips and a space to sort the rainbow while inhaling the odor of the words of zealous authors. She knew I loved Winnie the Pooh and pushed me to read The World of Christopher Robin.
My mother often forgot to pick me up, or maybe she came late on purpose. Maybe I misbehaved and deserved the silent treatment. I often expected to be in the library for longer than usual. I watched families pass by — mom, dad, and child, all holding hands, embracing one another’s warmth. My tiny body held so much grief; my repressed frustration with the order of the world led me to scheme about what could be. I never wanted to think about my tantrums or losing my mother’s clutch or why I sat alone. I stretched out my four-inch hand, staring at its incompleteness, stretched my other four-inch hand, wondering what about me was never enough, and suddenly both hands grasped one another, in the same manner as the mom, dad, and child, as I read The Giving Tree, holding back the screeches that so desperately wanted to escape.
It’s getting late in the library and the moon is full. It’s as full as it was in that poem by Coleridge, which I often recite in my head. The one where he carries his year-old son into the orchard behind the cottage and turns the baby’s face to the sky to see, for the first time, the earth’s bright companion — something bright to make his crying seem small. If I want to follow his example, tonight would be the night to carry some tiny creature outside and introduce them to the moon. I gather myself into my arms, the sleeping infant of myself, all limp and full of dust from my work day. Drunk with the light, all I want to do is put my knees to my chest and rock back and forth. But, instead, I run circles through the lawn; I attempt to lift myself up, wrapping my arms around my chest, my eyes nearly as wide as when I was an infant.
I disliked school. Sitting in class, receiving instruction, I could not be passive. I had to be active, learn for myself what I wanted, in the way that suited me best. I was not a good pupil or an attentive, mannered child, but when I roamed the stacks and shelves, I had the freedom to select whatever I wanted, to follow paths that fascinated me. Free to roam and enjoy the quiet companionship of other readers, all, like myself, on quests of their own. What my class, what my friends, what my family did not provide, I would find within a book.
Now, I could step foot into the big kid room: the shrine of knowledge my mom and dad attempted to keep a secret from me. Something was hidden in here, whatever revealed my inadequacy, why I was undeserving of nurture. The books were mostly brown, black, and blue, as if the authors forgot the whimsical gift of creativity.
The moon is not full tonight, but the stars stick out. I go outside and reminisce. I sink into the sky’s dark sea of black as I ponder over burnt-out stars, wishing their beautiful light could somehow be brought back. But that dust has crumbled, scattered like ashes in the brisk solar wind. The memories stand transfixed, unaltered by time, suspended, in infinity’s domain without end. I am forced to navigate the sea without stars for direction. It leaves me rambling without course, scrambling to find out why. My hands rub against one another to create heat, but my burning passion is extinguished without a real fuel source. I could be shot across the atmosphere driven by high tides of lonesome tears. Maybe I am fit for the picture books — an alien, a witch, a dragon — belonging to some distant constellation. Up there, I fly through galaxies of milky ways. I create spaces and gaps and absences in the field; far from home, I am what is missing.