When Women Were Dragons(59)

On the first Saturday in October, Beatrice and I walked to the library, my back bent under the weight of my book bag, and Beatrice running ahead of me. She kept her arms and outstretched, like wings.

“I’m flying, Alex!” she cried. “I’m really flying!” Her hands fluttered prettily, like a dancer’s. She hopped onto a concrete wall and leaped off. Any other time, I would have taken a moment to admire her strength and agility and grace. But on this particular day, I felt weighted down, and afraid. How was I going to get it all done? I asked myself for the hundred thousandth time that day. What would happen to us next year? I fussed. Each question felt like a stone on my back. I started walking with a persistent hunch.

“Little girls don’t fly,” I said.

She stopped and glared at me. “Why do you always have to ruin things?” she pouted.

I didn’t have time for this. “It’s not ruining. It’s science. Little girls don’t fly. They walk, just like big girls.”

We said nothing more until we reached the library steps.

Our town’s library had been built in the 1890s by Mr. Carnegie and then expanded in the thirties. Mrs. Gyzinska, who had been head librarian even way back then, had also finagled a way to get the Civilian Conservation Corps to send over a couple of artists to paint murals in the children’s section and another in the reading room—richly detailed forest scenes with woodland creatures ambling through leafy, wide-branched trees, as well as the occasional fairy or brownie or troll peeking out from clever hiding places. There was also a ceiling littered with galaxies and stars over the science shelves. She had . . . unusual connections for a small-town librarian. She took the helm when she was quite young, and simply never left. And lucky for us. It was the prettiest building in the whole town. All roads seemed to lead to the library.

Beatrice skipped inside and waved brightly at the assistant librarian.

“Hello, Mr. Burrows!” she said far too loudly, but he didn’t shush her. She fluttered her arms. “Do you like my wings? Today I am a—”

“Little girl,” I said reflexively, and also with more volume than I had intended. “Today she is a little girl. Just as she is every day.” I thought about my mother in her overalls, hauling Beatrice inside when she said something wrong. I grimaced, forcing the memory away.

Beatrice glared at me. Mr. Burrows gave a wan smile but uncurled smoothly to his feet. He was, most of the time, an unflappable young man.

“Everything about you is lovely, Beatrice,” he said diplomatically. “Wings or no wings. And anyway, the library has some new materials in the arts and crafts room, and I have been anxious to give it a go.” A clear lie, but I didn’t say anything. “Perhaps we can make a pair of wings for your sister. Or for me. Can librarians have wings? Perhaps everyone should have wings.”

“Alex doesn’t need wings,” Beatrice sidled over to Mr. Burrows and she took his hand. “She only walks. Like a sucker.” She shot me a hard look, but I could tell she was temporarily placated. She skipped to the back stairs.

I made my way to the stacks.

I had been working for well over two hours when Mrs. Gyzinska approached the desk where I sat slumped over a particularly vexing problem set.

Ever since my mother passed, and I started spending more and more time at the library, Mrs. Gyzinska made a point to come and sit with me. Sometimes offering a chat, but usually she would just sit for a good long time, without saying a thing, painstakingly addressing her paperwork or simply reading a book. I appreciated this. It sounds strange, but I appreciated not having to explain myself. I appreciated not having to talk, but also not being alone. Every once in a while, she’d walk with me out to the back garden and we would talk for a long time about mathematics or chemistry or Jane Austen. I enjoyed her company.

I never actually told Mrs. Gyzinska about our living situation. She certainly knew that I was in charge of Beatrice. She often inquired after the well-being of my father and my stepmother, and I always said, “They’re fine, thanks for asking,” even though really I had no idea, and each time she pressed her lips together in a thin, tight line.

“Well,” she’d always say. “At least they have their health.”

Which was an odd thing to say. I never remarked on it. We just let it stay there, between us, untouched.

I didn’t look up as she approached my desk. As usual, she said nothing. Mrs. Gyzinska was fastidiously true to the rule of silence in the stacks. She rapped her swollen knuckles on the old oak desk to catch my attention. She waved at me to follow her and then walked toward the back workroom. Despite the curve of her shoulders and the crick in her spine, despite the slight limp of her left leg, she still maintained a swift pace. I hurried to keep up.

Mrs. Gyzinska was very old (it was hard for me to say, really, how old she was) and had been a widow for most of her life. When she was young, she secured a scholarship to attend a prestigious university out east, where she eloped with the young scion of a prominent family (squarely against his parents’ wishes). Old money, as they say—the kind of wealth that has its own weather system. And then her husband died young, not long after their wedding, and under embarrassing circumstances. I never found out what those circumstances were, exactly, only that the family used it as a way to prevent her from inheriting his portion of the family fortune. To keep her quiet, they offered her a small, but self-sustaining, fund to ensure a comfortable living, as well as a separate, much larger account to fund whatever organization she wished to attach herself to, knowing that philanthropy would open more, and grander, doors for their former daughter-in-law than a degree ever would. It was because of the deep pockets of this family—with no connection to my small town in Wisconsin whatsoever—that we had such a well-funded and excellent library system. Everyone in town knew this story, and everyone pretended it was a huge secret. Mrs. Gyzinska became head librarian and chief commissioner for the county system when she was only twenty-four years old, and maintained the library’s excellence until the day she died.