My heart beat like hummingbird wings beat, like their soft hearts, a sustained rhythm of feeling. It was here, at the pool bathroom, that we girls ousted ourselves as pagan worshippers of the profane, on purpose leaving alone the bulb light, the ticking counterpart to the boiler drone. Spinning in circles to chant our heady phantom sound. First to bolt was Bloody Mary. Always, I was the one to wrench open the heavy door before we reached number thirteen, the sun hitting my face while the others rejoiced with a vicious glee from the semidarkness.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary. I left jumping rope and playing ball to go live in my garden with my practiced docility, my instability of self, though mostly I lived in the peculiar memory institution only I had the key to—my mind—opening its heavy double doors with their two locks, wiping my black shoes on the welcome mat of an icon of a person reading a book. It was as though this spot of dreaming housed my every satisfaction. I answered the phone on occasion, when there were callers. Normally they would ask the Library’s hours, and I would recite the days I wasn’t in, while hanging up after a cursory invitation to stop by.
I lived in a Library, and nobody knew me.
pocket camera 