I have a confession. I don't like libraries. I haven't for years.
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What I like is to walk into a bright and shiny Barnes and Noble or Hastings and buy a nice new copy of whatever all for my very own. I love the way new books smell and look. I'm a sucker for packaging, in all its many forms.
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It doesn't matter if the book is very good or not, because I am long resigned to the fact that I do not get lucky with books. Plus, libraries are crawling with people who have better taste in books than me and I find that intimidating. When I walk into a Hastings most of the people there are buying used 50 Cent albums and video games with names like Bloodbath of the Damned XII. This gives me and my quest for knowledge a quiet kind of dignity. Plus, library lighting is unflattering. As are librarians.
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"Is this you?" the woman asks me with obvious disbelief. She holds my license closer to her nose, as though checking for a watermark.
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"Um. Yes."
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"You look different."
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"Yeah, I'm a little sunburned."
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I confess that I did not walk into the Coconino Public Library because I was looking to better myself, but because I really, really like signing up for new things. For instance, with my new Hastings account I could rent movies for half off for the next week, and I got a free 2-liter Sprite. With my Fry's membership card I get a discount on my groceries. On Tuesday I saved $2.17 and I have the receipt to prove it.
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If the thought of getting a membership to something new was not bolstering me up I might have turned on my heel and headed for the nearest Waldenbooks, but I really wanted that little dangly card on my keyring. Plus, I just moved here, and I probably couldn't find it. The Waldenbooks, I mean.
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"You also seem shorter."
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"It's a portrait shot."
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"You didn't grab your sister's license by mistake, now, did you?" What, does she think I'm ten or something? Maybe in thirty years I'll be flattered. I ask her whether this is a library and not, in fact, a nightclub, forgetting that my dangly keyring was hanging in the balance.
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She gives me a long, hard look and deliberately slides the license back to me. "You must be in possession of an Arizona driver's license in order to receive a library card. You may fill out a special request form, which will be reviewed by my supervisor at some point next week."
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I wonder whether I could get across the counter before the aged security guard takes me out with his flashlight.
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"If she determines that you are eligible for a card, we will send you a notice in the mail. You do have an address?"
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And the situation deteriorated from there. But as I walked back towards the front door, rummaging in my bag for my keys and my dignity, I saw something that stopped me for a second. It was a kid, a boy, and he was lying down on the rug with a huge book of illustrated fairly tales propped up in front of his nose.
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And I thought about something that I honestly hadn't thought about in years. I remembered the way I felt about the library when I was really small, before I turned twelve and was too embarassed to be seen in the fairy tale section. Before I started looking for the kinds of stories that mattered to me in the teen section, where I only found books with blondes and candy fluff plots, and then the adult section, where I could only find books that depressed and confused me. Before I started acting like I enjoyed books about facts and the Vietnam War and the plight of geishas.
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I remembered sitting down on the industrial itchy carpet between two towering aisles of musty-smelling books and reading about dragons and walking skeletons and riddles that were solved by peasants in order to save queens, and bottomless lakes with monsters thrashing in them and evil stepmothers locked in combat with slightly naive (but well-meaning) princes. Stories that affirmed what I already knew in my childish heart to be true- that darkness and despair exists, in terrifying proximity to us, and it can only be crushed by the brave and the innocent. I would sit and read until my skinny seven-year-old butt was good and numb.
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And I don't mean to minimize the importance of facts or the plight of the geishas, but I know that after that one shining season with the library, I could only find books that frightened me, books that sneered at my secret desires and replaced the adventure I craved with clever rhetoric and their idea of realism.
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I knew that all this was worthless to me, it didn't move me, but I also knew that if I didn't read these kinds of books I wouldn't be smart, I would only read kid stories, and that was a deeper fear. Whenever we went back I would check out three or four and then return them, untouched, a few days later. Eventually I began reading other things that were kind of like the stories I used to love, but with the proper degree of irony, the appropriately blasé endings. And after a while I forgot that I'd used to genuinely enjoy books at all.
All of this came back with startling clarity in the space of a few seconds, watching the now-uneasy boy with his book on the floor. I could feel the librarian's eyes hovering between my shoulder blades, daring me to come back for more. If her gaze had not been tempered by her seven-inch-thick readers I'm sure it would have killed me.
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But I was a woman who had spent the last three years reading college textbooks and little else, and death no longer fazed me. It was preferable to Nietzsche, at least. There were books out there, waiting to be read and loved. I would fill out every form she threw at me. I would wait seven and a half weeks with the patience of a saint. I would give her my middle name, my birth date, even my Social Security number if she demanded it, knowing full well that I was risking her stealing my identity and charging hundreds of dollars of cat food and control top panty hose in my name. Oh yes, I would have my Coconino Public Library card right there on my keychain, or there would be hell to pay.
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My God, I love the library. I really do.
