Lucy Jane Bledsoe

One


I pushed open the library door, walked in like I knew what I was doing, then panicked. All those books made me short of breath, a little dizzy. I leaned against the copy machine and willed myself not to turn around and walk out again.

It didn’t help that it was September, a time of year that still reminded me of the smell of chalk, erasers, smudgy old textbooks, rain. A time of year that still, though I’d been out of school for ten years, meant confinement, the end of hard play and fruit off the tree.

Besides, libraries were much worse than schools, more condensed. Both places gave me that feeling, like my bowels were made of ice, but at least in school I had some good times too. I loved arguing and laughing in the hallways, hanging out with friends in the lunchroom that always smelled like gravy, and finding a hundred situations a day to finesse. High school teachers were pushovers. Oh, we definitely had some good times: food fights, torturing substitute teachers, sex in the shop lab with my first boyfriend, long confessional meetings in the girls' bathroom, smoking cigarettes, cutting English. Or Math. Or American History.

School was okay. I graduated, didn't I?

But libraries. They were nothing but books. Lots and lots of books, rows and rows of books. There was something almost arrogant about libraries, or maybe about the books themselves, as if they had some right to whole buildings of their own. Everyone whispered around them as if they deserved all that space.
I was ready to leave. Not even thinking of Mickey's grin, the one that showed he loved me, the one that made me love him, the reason I came in the first place, could keep me here. He'd just have to make his big career move without me because I couldn't do this part.

Then I saw the librarian. She didn't look like any librarians I'd ever seen before. She had ultra-smooth skin, very short black hair and wore big silver earrings with dangling feathers. She stood behind the desk scowling at a huge stapler which lay jacked open on the desktop, her defeated hands resting on top of it. The sight allowed me to finally breathe. Women and machines were my specialties. I waited for her to look up and when she did, I winked. Which got me a big smile.

No way was I going to walk to the back of the library and enter the Literacy Project room with this fine woman watching.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

"Actually, I was going to ask you that," I said, approaching her desk. "Looks like you're having a little trouble with that stapler." I eased it out from under her hands and fiddled with it for about ten seconds, all the time I needed to dislodge the staple jam. I realigned the row of staples, shut the machine and handed it back to her. "Should work now."
She smiled. "What do I owe you?"

She was definitely flirting. And why shouldn't she? I'm not bad-looking. I'm medium height with a cyclist's muscular legs and thin upper body. My shoulder-length brown hair is cut in a wavy shag. I have nice brown eyes, wear squarish-shaped tortoise-shell glasses and have dark skin for a white person. I'm not a knock-out or anything, but I have been told, a few times, that I have very nice breasts.

For a few seconds I enjoyed the encounter with this librarian enough to forget where I was. Her next question brought it all back, hard. "What can I help you find?"

I told myself I could handle it. I started out strong with, "You got any books by...," then stalled out. I couldn't think of a single name. I knew I'd seen authors on Oprah but nothing came to mind. She laughed a little, as if she were nervous for me. Which made me feel grateful to her. Which in turn made me feel indebted to her. Which in yet another turn made me want control over the situation. I felt the first tinglings of a crush. Struggling to finish my sentence, I finally just blurted Mickey's name. "...by Mickey Rodriguez. He writes books about bikes."

Smooth, real smooth.

The librarian tapped at a computer. "Mmm. Nothing by that author."

She probably knew I was lying. "Fine," I said. "No problem." I hesitated before leaving, considering asking her out, anything to get some leverage on the feelings of confusion approaching terror that were rocking me. I don’t know why I let Mickey talk me into coming here. I don’t know why I made an appointment with those people in that back room. I don’t know why I thought I was even close to ready for this.

"But let me show you the sports section," the librarian offered. "I'm sure there are a lot of cycling books. Or did you mean motorcycle?" A tiny smile tickled the corners of her lips which gave me a dose of courage. My inner butch kicked in. I wanted to say, "Oh yeah baby, I meant Harleys," but I only muttered, "No, uh, cycling cycling."

I followed her to the opposite side of the library from the one I was supposed to be on. I looked at my watch. Five minutes late. When I spoke to the Literacy Project director, Marilyn, she had made a big deal about punctuality, respecting the tutor's time. I already knew I was supposed to be feeling grateful. I hated being indebted to anyone and I felt indebted already, even before meeting my tutor.

"Yes, here's a whole row of cycling books," the librarian said, leading me down a cramped aisle and gesturing to a high shelf. To steady myself, I concentrated on the fullness in her smile, and in her body. She wore a baggy, thigh-length yellow fuzzy sweater with black stirrup pants. I like big girls in stirrup pants. The skinny ones look too birdlike, but she had these good stocky legs. Her fuzzy sweater just covered her large behind. "Were you looking for bicycle repair books, or...?" Her smile was patient.

"Uh."

"You just want to browse?"

"Thanks," I said and then, after she left, browsed for five minutes so she wouldn't suspect anything. I would pretend I hadn't found what I wanted and just leave. I hated feeling this scared, this out of control, as if I were spinning real fast. Mickey had a lot of nerve pushing me into this. He could take his hundred thousand dollars and start a bike shop by his own crazy self.

Ever since Mickey and I made our deal, after I'd confessed my secret to him, I'd been hearing my father's voice in my head much more than usual. Now as I stood in this narrow canyon of books I could hear him defend me: She's too damn smart for school, that's her only problem. He would toss the report card in the wastepaper basket or tell my mother to ignore the teacher who had asked them to come in for a conference. Then he would put a proud arm around my neck, gently knuckle my head and say, Reading is for people who are afraid of real living. After that, we would spend the evening working on our current project: a model airplane, one of those that cost hundreds of dollars and took weeks to complete, or taking apart the blender motor, or a neighbor's car. "Why pay a mechanic?" my father would ask the neighbor. "Lori and I'll fix that for you this weekend." One winter we took apart the gas heater and didn't get it back together for two months. Mom was furious. I didn't blame her. That winter was real cold.

As I made tracks out of the library, I dragged my hand along the backs of the books, proving I wasn't afraid to touch them. I stopped at the door. Suddenly I couldn't move in either direction, out or in. My back started tingling, as if I were being pricked by a thousand tiny needles. Later, months later, I would recognize those prickles as the beginning of authentic desire, a pure feeling of what I wanted for me, though there would be hundreds of setbacks, false moves and embarrassing returns to adolescent behavior before I came close to recognizing this. At that moment, though, the tingling was enough to turn me around, enough to face me towards the Literacy Project door. Perhaps it wouldn't have been enough to make me suffer the humiliation of walking past that voluptuous librarian on my way to that door, but right then she was nowhere to be seen.

"Sorry I'm late," I told Marilyn, sitting down in her small office off the Literacy Project room. A big clock on her desk showed me to be a full fifteen minutes late.