Small Ceremonies

Before I begin, I look.

There’s the two old ladies behind the help desk, both of them round and plump and short, one a brunette and the other with bright red hair. There’s the young boy, younger than the rest who work here, with brown skin and brown hair that almost looks red when the sun catches him, just outside the front door smoking a cigarette, an intern maybe, or maybe just a lazy employee, or maybe he’s a good employee who doesn’t get paid enough to throw out his back hauling heavy books all day and can’t be bothered. He’s left a cart full of books beside me for like thirty minutes while he smokes and texts and occasionally smiles and looks back inside to see if anyone is watching him. After a while, when he does come back inside, the old ladies look at him all nasty. He doesn’t talk to them and they don’t talk to him, but when he turns away their eyes follow him all crazy and I wonder if that’s the way they look at me, if they watch me when I’m not looking. I wonder who else watches me. On the other side of the room, where they keep all the books for kids, I hear a happy woman with a happy voice reading to happy children and every now and then they all laugh and clap together and the elders on the computers around me pause from squinting at their screens and look in their direction and shake their heads all annoyed, like they didn’t see the sign by the entrance that says story time starts at one. The storyteller woman comes here every Wednesday and today we looked at each other for the first time. I wasn’t sure what to do when our eyes made contact, so I offered a wide, exaggerated smile as she came through the main entrance and she looked at me quick with a friendly non-smile and a little wave before waving again to the redheaded librarian behind the desk. She’s a beautiful woman with beauty marks all over her cheeks and nose and white teeth and a braid that reaches her lower back. She always arrives early for story time and greets each child with a unique smile and voice, each precious snowflake settling into their own patch of precious ground.

For the most part it’s quiet. People have their heads buried in books, some in wrinkled magazines, a few others sinking deep in green armchairs, trying their best to sleep while pretending to read. Every once in a while a book slips and thumps on someone’s chest and their head snaps up, awake and alert, their eyes red and tired but open. I don’t like to read. I get lost and the words never make sense in my head.

It’s my fifth time here and each time I’ve not been able to make progress. Littlefeather says I just need to sit down at a computer and the words will come. They’ll arrive in my head once I start thinking about what it is I want to say—no, need to say, no, have to say—that people don’t think the way we used to because of all the stuff we’re doing on phones and computers. She says we’re turning into computers, becoming one with them, one with machines, and that it’s only the beginning. Soon we’ll be no different than robots, under the control of someone else, they’ll know where we are and what we think, and soon thinking won’t be thinking anymore, it’ll be knowing. There will be no more ignoring. Scary hey. But not much different than the way our people have been since Europeans arrived on our shores. No control over our own lives.

I’m in a chair, sitting, watching, but mostly waiting. Waiting for a spot to open up at one of the computers. I’ve come to learn that older people tend to type loudly with one or two fingers . . . clack . . . clack . . . clack . . . whereas younger people are able to write like they’re playing piano or something. Me, I’m not sure I type well, not fast I mean, but I guess we’ll see. An elderly woman at one of the computers is ready to leave. She’s stuffing her travel mug inside her bag and places her glasses inside their case. She logs out and I stand and before the woman even rises to leave the spot, I’m no more than three feet behind her. She looks back at me annoyed, like maybe she thinks I’ve given her no space to make her exit but there’s plenty. This I must do, be there ready to go, at the point of no return, because I’ve returned before, checked out, chickened out, and each time it was because I gave myself too much time to think.

I’m sitting, waiting, trying to think of what to say. Nothing. Nothing’s there. Whatever’s inside me is blank. A blank nothingness. I feel I should leave, yes, time to leave. I rise from the chair, the plastic armrest squeaks, but I stop halfway, like I’m squatting above the part where my ass is supposed to go and I wonder how many farts this ass-worn cushion has absorbed in its lifetime, because I notice that the plump blond librarian is walking in my direction and so I sit back down.

“Ma’am,” the librarian says, “the computers are reserved for those who sign up at the front desk.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I forgot.” I look at her with my kindest face. “I’ll just be a minute.”

I return my attention to the screen but for five seconds more I can feel the woman’s eyes still on me before she turns and walks away. I look up as she sits down beside the redheaded librarian and they hunch over and share whispers and the blond woman’s eyes shift back to me for an instant and then the redhead turns and looks over at me too. I look away and pretend to be busy doing something important and make tapping sounds on the keyboard but not fully pushing down on each letter . . . tap . . . tap . . . tap.

My email is open, the one Littlefeather helped me make. She said no one, not even the government, would be able to read my emails with this special account. It hides the messages, encrypts them she says, meaning that they’re private and only I and the person on the other end can read them and that no outside person or thing can spy on me.

The redheaded librarian stands up from her chair behind the help desk and because of her plumpness you can see the effort it takes, like her joints and bones and muscles and organs and heart are crying for help and so is the chair, complaining loud enough for the whole library to hear.

“Ma’am,” she says at least nine feet before reaching me. “This computer is reserved. I have to ask you to let this gentleman over here take over from you.” She points to a man turned away from us, browsing a selection of DVDs in Chinese along the wall.

“I’ll just be a minute,” I say. “I’m sending an email to my son. It’s important.”

She sighs and her face turns red like her hair and she turns to look at the blond librarian behind the help desk and back to me. She’s staring at me in a dirty way as if to say, You again. “Please be quick.”

“I’ll try my best.” Yes me, why not me?

As she walks back to the help desk and slides through a gap in the counter I wonder if her hair is dyed red or if it’s a wig, if she’s pretending to be somebody else. Who is she really? Why choose to be seen? Why would you want to be picked out of a crowd so easily? To my left the beautiful woman with the beauty marks is waving goodbye to a little girl in a flowery jacket who appears to be leaving story time early with her parents. Her smile is big and her teeth almost sparkle from the light flooding through the main entrance, and the little girl waves her little hand and I imagine that they both love each other for what they do for each other. I turn my attention back to the computer screen, back on the email I need to write before my time is up.

The words are coming to me now. I see them, unfurling in my mind like the credits after a movie. I see them. They’re a light blue color, like the beads of my earrings. Like a small ceremony. And they sparkle and dance below my ears just like them too. They sing like birds. I want to say that I’ve always loved you, cared for you, still do, and that if we ever see each other again I’d say sorry and then shake your hand because a hug wouldn’t feel right. Not after all this time. Would you think I’m fatter or slimmer than before? Everyone always says I’m too skinny. I want to say there’s always been this piece of you deep inside me, in the center of my chest where you used to think the heart was, it’s scarlet and bright and warm, and when I rest my hand on that spot suddenly the whole world breaks open and turns brighter but it doesn’t last. Not until the next time. Now the words are vibrating. They’re hummingbirds, yes, hummingbirds, and they hum and buzz . . . bzz . . . bzz . . . bzz . . . the same ones outside Koko’s house hovering around the rosebush. They sing and dance, sing and dance, dance and sing, like they’re moving to the beat of a drum. Maybe one day I’ll say all this, just let it out. My fingertips are touching the keys now, warm from the lady that was here before me. And then I begin.