Dad pulls me into the smoky glow of a Thursday evening, my ‘top boots’ rearing up out of the night, above the puddled pavement, like blackened hulls, crashing into the sodium-trembling puddles.
My school is just across the street; every light burns, and I can see the people bending, making it all clean for next day. My breath escapes from the furry cave that hides my guide, only his strong-arm and mitt in sight. I can taste the chimneys’ flavours. We pass granny’s house: she’s in, because I can see her T.V. flickering behind the tightly drawn curtains. Dad and me get her books too.
We pass places that if I go to I get into big trouble.
Suddenly, I see, jogging into view, the glow from our little lantern. Not far now. I am too small to reach the handrail, but I bite and gulp at each steep stair. I feel hot. Dad stamps his feet; I lift my boots, one-by-one. Detached, I stand back and watch dad pull one of the large, gold-handled, glass doors open.
We are here.
Our boots stand on a strange moving carpet that looks made of brush. I look at the posters on the glass windowed wall of the library: dinosaurs, big ‘A’s and big ‘zees’. I can here my dad’s muffled voice: it tells me to unzip my hood and my jacket. The small vestibule is suddenly a cacophony of tearing zips and wet nylon. He pulls at one final fingerprint-smudged glass door, and we enter the hermetically sealed cave; one giant step puts us onto a squeaky linoleum floor.
Like a dentist, dad pulls different shapes and sized tablets from his plastic bag and piles them on to the counter; I crane my neck but by this time the librarian is obscured, but I can only hear her sing-soft voice. But I have already broken free! A couple of steps from the desk, I find the horse-shoe-shaped bay. There is a round wooden table with some chairs in the middle - a hovering pearl where discoveries can be slammed onto and gorged upon. It is uninhabited; all mine.
Dad sails past my little island, heading for “the big section”. The shelves are encrusted with colours, shapes, symbols and words. I search for ‘T’. My finger is making various waves across a variety of paper and glossy textures, until – Ah! My quarry presents itself and instantly releases a little gush as it leaves its companions. I carry it two-handed to the wooden plate. I seat myself.
The little boy and little girl on the cover wear black hair, just like my Lego men at home. Their cheeks red-rouged, one of them lies back on a dentist’s chair.
Topsy and Tim Visit the Dentist. My left hand clutches the buttermilk gloss, thick and heavy. My eyes are assaulted by the richness of the colours inside: watery sapphires, deep azures and flush pinks, each safely bordered by thick pitch. Simultaneously, the book releases an even richer perfume of sweet-stale musk: dried flowers, long-exhausted air-fresheners, and wood polish - that which already peppers the room, and I spiral into their world of harmony; of soft pastels, and warm and smiling softness; reflecting my own, and further affirmed through occasional smiles from under a chestnut-coloured bob resting behind the counter…
I am shaken from my dream by a boom from the other section, and I pilfer more treasures before the journey home begins in reverse.
The journey is less wearying: I savour getting safely home.
Labels: books, childhood, present tense, reading
