The Book of Lost Friends(32)
I open my hand and, there in my palm, glittering in the gas lamp’s flickery light, sits the little gold locket Missy Lavinia’s been wearing since she got it for Christmas Day when she was six years old.
She’d be dead in her grave before she’d give that up.
CHAPTER 8
BENNY SILVA—AUGUSTINE, LOUISIANA, 1987
The books keep me going. I dream of those books hidden away at Goswood Grove, of tall mahogany shelves with volumes upon volumes of literary treasures, and ladders reaching to the sky. For several days in a row, when I come home from school feeling discouraged by my lack of progress with the kids, I put on my duck shoes and make the trek down the farm levee lane, slip through the crape myrtles, and follow the moss-carpeted paths of the old garden. I stand on the porch like a kid before the Macy’s display window at Christmas, and fantasize about what might be possible if I could get my hands on those books.
Loren Eiseley, who was the subject of one of my favorite term papers, wrote, If there is magic in this world, it is contained in water, but I have always known that if there is magic in this world, it is contained in books.
I need magic. I need a miracle, a superpower. In almost two weeks, I have taught these kids nothing but how to bum cheap snack cakes and sleep in class…and that I will physically bar the door if they try to leave before the bell rings, so don’t try it. Now they skip my class altogether. I don’t know where they are, just that they’re not in my room. My unexcused absence reports sit unbothered on a massive stack of similar pink slips in the office. Principal Pevoto’s grand plan to turn this school around is in danger of falling victim to the way things have always been. He is like the overburdened character in Eiseley’s often printed story, throwing beached starfish back into the ocean one by one, while the tide continually deposits more along an endless and merciless shore.
With most of the classroom books now missing, I have resorted to reading aloud from Animal Farm daily. This, to high school kids who should be reading for themselves. They don’t mind. A few even listen, peeking surreptitiously from the battery of folded arms, drooped heads, and closed eyes.
LaJuna is not among my audience. After our hopeful encounter at the Cluck and Oink, she’s been absent Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and now Thursday. I’m disappointed in a soul-crushing sort of way.
Across the hall, a substitute teacher screams incessantly during my readings as she attempts to control science room chaos. The science teacher who started the year with me has already given up and claimed she had to move home because of a flare-up in her mother’s lupus. She’s gone. Just like that.
I keep telling myself I will not quit. Period. I will gain access to that library at Goswood Grove. Maybe I’m expecting too much, but I can’t help believing that, for kids who are given so few choices on a daily basis, just having some could be huge. Beyond that, I want them to see that there is no faster way to change your circumstance than to open a great book.
Books were the escape hatch that carried me away during long, lonely times when my mother was gone. During the years I grew up wondering why my father didn’t want much to do with me, and the times I landed in schools where, with my wild black curls and olive-toned skin, I looked different from everyone else, and kids curiously inquired, What are you, anyway? Books made me believe that smart girls who didn’t necessarily fit in with the popular crowd could be the ones to solve mysteries, rescue people in distress, ferret out international criminals, fly spaceships to distant planets, take up arms and fight battles. Books showed me that not all fathers understand their daughters or even seek to, but that people can turn out okay despite that. Books made me feel beautiful when I wasn’t. Capable when I couldn’t be.
Books built my identity.
I want that for my students. For those lonely, hollow faces and unsmiling mouths and dulled, discouraged eyes that stare at me from the desks day after day.
The school library will not be a suitable source, even temporarily. The kids are not allowed to take books out because they can’t be trusted with them. The city library, housed two blocks from the school in an old Carnegie building, is slowly fading into oblivion. The good, fully modern, and well-equipped library is, of course, situated out by the lake, far beyond our reach.
I need to know what help can be found in the hoard at Goswood Grove. To that end, I have asked Coach Davis if I might borrow a pair of the binoculars they use in the announcer’s stand during games. He shrugged and muttered that he’d have one of the students bring them over after last period, but this being Thursday, he’d need them back by Friday for the football game.
Following the last-period bell, I diddle around my empty classroom until Lil’ Ray and the skinny kid with the always perfectly coiffed hair finally show up at my door. Michael, the other boy, is one of Lil’ Ray’s favorite toadies.
“Mister Rust. Mister Daigre. I’m assuming Coach Davis sent you with something for me?”
“Mmm-hmmm.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Because Coach has sent the boys, they are as meek as lambs and display good manners, to boot. Lil’ Ray apologizes for not getting here sooner. Michael nods.
“It’s all right. I appreciate the delivery.” They eyeball the snack-cake drawer, but I don’t offer. After dealing with these two knuckleheads desk wrestling and mouthing off daily in class, I’m shocked and almost peeved by all this politeness. “Tell Coach Davis thanks.”