undertaken by a preadolescent girl over the course of a single summer, seemed highly not-likely to succeed.
“No,” my Nana Minnie said, tugging her apron free of my stubborn hold. “I mean you ought to read a book.” At this she abandoned her boiling fruity corpses. Nana turned to face me, grasping my shoulders, and ushered me from the kitchen, down a short hallway to the parlor, where bookshelves ranged from floor to ceiling, filling an entire wall. There she bade me choose from among the aged leather-bound tomes.
It must be noted here that I was not yet as passionate a reader as I would soon become. My Swiss school, although appallingly expensive, was largely weighted toward awareness of flashpoint environmental issues and the squelched civil rights of oppressed indigenous peoples. On the basis of these ethical priorities I protested that I couldn’t consider reading books which had been bound in the dead hides of factory-farmed, no doubt highly stressed cows.
My nana merely shrugged her weary, apron-yoked, farm-wife shoulders in response. Saying, “Suit yourself, little missy,” she exited the living room, returning to the dreary pastime of canning tomatoes or pickling field mice. Doing so, she called back to me over one calico shoulder; she warned, “You can read a book or you can beat the rugs. Take your pick.”
Such are my morals that I couldn’t fathom inflicting any form of violence, even upon an insensate floor covering. Nor did I fancy the other forms of stooped, agrarian fieldwork suggested by my nana: another weed pogrom… confiscating more warm ovum from poultry nests… Strictly as a political compromise I chose to select a book. My fingers trailed the dead leather of the various spines.
Gentle Tweeters, in response to your charges that I’m too precocious for an eleven-year-old, please accept the fact that people do not change over time. The elderly are, in reality, aged tikes. Conversely, the young are juvenile codgers. Granted, we might develop some skills, achieve some profound insights over a lifetime, but by and large who you are at eighty-five is who you were at five. One is either born intelligent or not. The body ages, grows, passes through near-lunatic phases of reproductive frenzy, but you are born and die essentially the same person.
That… that is proof of your deathless soul.
Standing in my nana’s parlor, at last I resolved to shut my eyes. Thus blinded I pirouetted a full three rotations and extended an unseeing hand in the general direction of the shelved library. My fingertips brailled their ribbed bindings, the titles embossed there. The cracked grain of the leather felt soft, even crepey, not unlike the skin of my nana’s calloused hands. After stroking them all, my touch settled on the one I could sense was my destiny. Here was the book which would deliver me from my immediate impoverished circumstances, my long television-deprived days, my Internet-starved boredom. My blind fingers closed around the book and pulled it from among its brothers. I opened my eyes to this new future.
Printed across the worn cover in gilded type was the author’s name: Charles Darwin. Here was a book to shelter me. A story I could hide within for months.
My Nana Minnie’s voice, hollering from the recesses of the farmhouse kitchen, called, “Time’s up, Pumpkinseed. Them peas ain’t going to shell themselves….”
I called back, “But I
“One what?” she called.
Putting a child’s happy smile into my voice, I called, “A book, Nana!”
A silent pause elapsed, broken only by the mating cries of icky out-of-doors birds trying to entice one another to engage in avian sexual hijinks. Indoors, the air smelled of cigarette smoke and the steam from my nana’s tireless torture cooker.
“What book?” my nana asked warily. “How’s it called?”
I turned the book sideways, searching its spine for the title. “It’s about a dog,” I said. “It’s about a cute little dog that travels on a maritime adventure.”
In response my nana’s voice sounded jolly, her tones rounded almost to laughter, the voice of a younger woman. In almost a girl’s voice she shouted, “Let me guess. It’s
My hands cracked open the book, and the pages smelled like a room where no one had walked for a long time. This paper room smelled enormous, with varnished wooden floors, and stony fireplaces filled with cold ashes, and dust motes swimming in the sunlight that fell through the room’s tall windows. Mine were the first eyes to peer inside this paper castle for generations.
No, the book’s title wasn’t
The author was not Jack London, but who really cared? If I were to read slowly enough, this book would fill my entire desolate summer holiday. To tedious, odious upstate it would deliver all the joy and excitement of a bygone canine universe. Already, my head was nodding over the open volume, engrossed in the words and perceptions of some long-deceased narrator. I was seeing a vanished past through the alien eyes of that dead man.
Flipping to the title page, I read, printed there:
DECEMBER 21, 9:00 A.M. EST
Papadaddy Three
Gentle Tweeter,
To help alleviate my tedium, Papadaddy Ben suggested we construct a housing unit for the indigenous birdlife. A sort of avian Habitat for Humanity, minus Jimmy Carter and his ilk. Actual architectural planning played a very small part in the project. We sawed boards to fashion rudimentary walls, floor, and roof, cobbling these together with nails. A not-unsatisfying process. Last, we applied a coat of sunny yellow paint.
Brush in hand, my papadaddy asked, “You remember me telling you about Leonard? Your ma’s guardian angel.”
I feigned deafness and concentrated on my painting technique, avoiding leaving brush marks and drips. I worried about the paint smell, concerned that I might be contributing to the birdhouse equivalent of sick building syndrome.
Oblivious, my papadaddy forged on. “What if I was to tell you the angels call your nana as well?”
I dipped my brush and dabbed yellow around the invitingly round door of the house. I wondered whether the birds who’d set up housekeeping would migrate, as did my parents, between similar dwellings in Nassau and Newport and New Bedford. Likewise, would their migratory patterns be determined by the income tax rates of each location?
Papadaddy took my silence as encouragement. “I don’t want to scare you none, but do you remember how I mentioned your big showdown? From what Leonard tells your nana, the forces of good and evil will be testing you.”
My Chanel playsuit felt snug in the hips.
“On some island,” he added. “Your big test will come on an island.”
Despite Ctrl+Alt+Hurtling my nana’s cuisine out the kitchen window, I was gaining weight as if by osmosis. Genetics or environment, I worried that my body-fat percentage was nearing double digits.
“According to your nana, somebody’s going to die pretty soon.” Papadaddy dipped his brush and resumed his work. “Just so you know to be careful, the one who dies might be you.”
