The Book Borrower (5 page)

 

—You never came.

—I started reading. Deborah and the little girls stood in front of her. Squirrel had fallen asleep in Ruben's arms. She yanked her shirt down.

—What are you reading?

Ruben laughed. That book.

—Jeremiah's favorite book? Is it any good?

—I don't know. She should have gone to the park. Now she wanted to be with Deborah.

—They want you to teach at the Center. I was saving it to tell you in the park. She called me last night. She's calling you tonight.

—Who?

—Carlotta. The director. Can you start next week?

Ruben was afraid to drive a car and so she contrived not to have one; cars shriveled in her care. The next week, she took the bus. She found the building: an old school, remodeled and turned into a day-care center. She walked in through a crowd of children, some black, some white, who chased one another like puppies. She had to ask two grown-ups before someone led her to the basement, where five women sat at a round pressed-wood table in the middle of a huge, shadowy room. The school table had an aluminum base but the edges tilted when Ruben or the students put their elbows on it. All but one student were black. They didn't smile. Ruben talked too much. The women were ashamed at what they didn't know. They made the table rock, then backed away from it, discovering reasons to hurry back to the babies they cared for. What efforts someone had gone to, winning them time off, winning them Ruben. The director, it turned out: Carlotta, a big, loud, black woman who hurried through after half an hour, shouting encouragement. Her voice resounded in the bare room, which had been the school's gym. Far across the room were two high windows, with squares of sun below them, but otherwise the class-room was dark. Dusty bulbs hung in cages.

—No, we don't all work
here,
the friendliest one corrected Ruben. Me and Lily work here. The rest of these girls come from Barrett Street. The other city day care.

—Oh, of course. But which one was Lily? One was Dorothy, but which? The friendly one, who turned nodding toward Ruben, was Emma.

Deborah, who taught different students at different times, wasn't there. Ruben had imagined classrooms, with Deborah down the hall.

—Let's see what you know, Ruben said. They knew nouns but not verbs. All but Emma could read, some haltingly. Ruben had no idea how to teach Emma to read.

—What we really don't know is math, said Cecile, the white woman. Emma, smiling, didn't know what
a third
meant. Ruben tore paper in thirds, broke imaginary cookies in thirds. Emma, they all said with fondness, don't you even know
that
?

The day of the second class, the sleepy-looking sitter canceled because of a cold. Ruben brought Squirrel along. Ooh, said the students, as if they'd never seen a baby up close, as if there can never be enough babies. Emma took him from Ruben's arms. Handed a baby, the class sat back and the table didn't wobble. Each took her turn patting his back, smoothing his damp blue shirt. Ruben, distracted, had them read. A newspaper lay on the table and they passed it around. Patty Hearst had been captured! Friendly Emma could not read
captured.
She could not read
radicals.

The page in the math book was on graphs. It was hard to explain, and Ruben, too, would rather have played with Squirrel. She tried to remember not knowing what a graph was. She liked watching other women hold her baby, though it made her feel young and ignorant. He settled unshyly against each bosom.

In the park, next day, it was cool, and brown leaves blew into Ruben and Deborah's faces. Rose cried with something in her eye, and Deborah stood her on a bench and got it out with the wet corner of a tissue. Crouching, Deborah was big, in a denim tent dress and a gray poncho. She grasped Ruben's arm when she straightened herself. Well, did you see? Deborah said. They caught Patty Hearst.

—When the baby comes, said Ruben, Squirrel will have someone to play with.

—He'll have plenty of people to play with, as soon as he can play, said Deborah. Squirrel sat up in an umbrella stroller. He didn't have enough muscle tone yet not to look squashed. Deborah laughed at him, mushed in his bright blue sweater and hood, not much face, and Ruben looked and laughed, too.

Jill was at nursery school. Now Deborah swung her arms, bending in the fallen leaves under gray clouds as if to chase Rose, though she didn't; but Rose ran anyway, fell and ran, fell and ran, laughing.

—I was so happy when she turned into a revolutionary, said Deborah. Now I want to sneak her out of jail.

—Who?

—Patty Hearst.

—But that was totally unreal. How could she turn into a revolutionary? I was ashamed of her, said Ruben.

—Why couldn't she?

—Because they were just a bunch of criminals. They kidnapped her. And I don't think you can
turn into
a revolutionary.

Deborah shrugged. They made her father give money to the poor. It was like a ransom.

—But they were violent and destructive, said Ruben. Is violence ever all right?

—Patty Hearst is an idealist, said Deborah.

Ruben was irritated, but she didn't want to talk about Patty Hearst. Patty Hearst made her feel guilty and uncomfortable.

—Teaching is good, she said. But hard.

—Don't worry about it, said Deborah. They pay so little. Whatever you do is fine.

Ruben looked to see if she meant it. But they want to learn!

—Oh, they'll learn.

—How long have you been doing it?

—A year.

—Do they ever take the test?

—One did. But she was different.

In Ruben's presence, two students had talked about Deborah's class. We did laugh, they said, shaking their heads. We did
laugh.

The next day Ruben's sitter was over her cold, and the class elbowed and rocked the table, backed away. Emma had not come.

—Where's Emma?

—She's no good at this. She can't do it.

But without Emma, Ruben was lonely. Nine chairs were at the table, the empty ones nearest the teacher.

Nobody understood graphs.

Ruben struggled, explaining what she read in the students' book, her head tilted toward the door as she listened for Emma. Out of her anxious head came an idea, and she drew a bar graph showing how many children each woman had. She was on it. Hers was the shortest line. The five of them, she and the four who'd come, leaned over the table together, hands splayed. Big Cecile had four children, little Lily had five, while lively Dorothy had three and scared Mary two, but Mary also cared for her niece. Ruben didn't know how to show that on the graph. The graph was in ink; finally she lengthened Mary's line in pencil.

—A niece is different? said Mary.

Various voices: Not so different. Not different at all.

Ruben heard Squirrel's cry as she walked into her house. Her milk let down. She had not thought of him for three hours. She'd fretted her way home, thinking how to lure Emma.

 

Too cold to stand in the playground and watch Rose run in the leaves, Ruben and Deborah walked, Rose in Squirrel's stroller, Squirrel in a sling on Ruben's chest.

—All the way home, said Ruben, I fuss about the class. Good fussing. Yesterday I forgot Squirrel. I forgot I had him.

—When I teach, said Deborah, I walk in thinking of God.

—What does that mean?

—You couldn't teach if there were no God, said Deborah.

—You couldn't?

—But that's not what I'm talking about, said Deborah. I started in the wrong place. I walk in thinking about God, but then I forget God. I forget to worry about the babies.

—The babies aren't God.

—No, said Deborah, the babies aren't God. They walked some more and Deborah said, God wants the babies. God could kill the babies.

—I don't think I like your God, Ruben said.

Deborah said, I think God doesn't care much about whether they live or die. He has other plans for them. And maybe He wants them because we want them. They could die because we love them.

—I think maybe you're crazy, said Ruben.

—Just because we love them, said Deborah, stopping and looking at her, they could die.

—Not
because.

—Because. I think because.

They stopped for a light. Ruben swiveled her head to watch for traffic turning when they crossed. Baby Rose in the stroller led the way into steel and combustible gasoline.

—You think God kills babies because mothers love them?

—I don't know why anyone dies. Not many babies do, not many. Deborah patted her big belly. She had to stretch to push the stroller.

—Do you want me to push that?

—I'd rather push than wear Squirrel. My back would hurt more.

Deborah was quiet for a while. Then she said, still pushing, It has something to do with love, the danger they're in. I know it does. We put up with the students, but we don't love them.

—Oh, said Ruben, interested. This I have thought about. This is my only contribution to philosophy. This is the Three Levels of Stuff.

Deborah laughed. I like the way you say
stuff.
You have a Brooklyn accent.

—I do not, said Ruben, though she was from Brooklyn. She had worked out the Three Levels of Stuff when Squirrel was first born, during those frenzied, lonely weeks. There are three levels of stuff, she said. First level: food, shit, and sleep.

—Sex?

—I don't know about sex. She hadn't thought about sex when Squirrel was first born.

—Go on. Second level?

They walked. Let me explain third level first. Third level: art, maybe God, death.

—The spirit.

—The spirit, said Ruben. First level things make you think of third level things. When you take care of a baby you know he could die.

—I think sex is both, said Deborah. It's both first level and third level.

—Maybe.

—But what's second level? said Deborah.

—Second level, said Ruben. Second level is offices.

—Offices?

Where Harry had rushed when she was frantic because the baby had vomited in the wrong way, the dangerous, possibly fatal way she'd read about. Where she pictured Harry stopping as he walked down' a corridor in which the sun made squares on the floor, holding a file folder open in his right hand, reading something slightly unsatisfying that had just been typed.

Ruben said, Offices exist so the people in them can forget about death. Like the place where you get a dog license.

—Oh, I want a dog! said Deborah.

—Oh, me, too.

Ruben couldn't remember why she started to talk about the Three Levels of Stuff, but Deborah said, So you think teaching is second level, and that was why. Deborah continued, But teaching can be third level. Teaching proves the existence of God.

—Now how is that? But Squirrel cried. And when he stopped, after Ruben shook him back to sleep, bouncing as she walked, Deborah turned, bigly and warmly, to Ruben, her mouth open in a loose oblong, her light hair on her face. Are all mothers afraid? she said.

—I don't know. But I'm glad I found you. Since I am and you are.

—Oh, yes, said Deborah. But sometimes I think we talk each other into it.

Ruben felt a stricture in her throat. You want to take this walk? It's not too tiring?

—Maybe we should turn back now, said Deborah, and Ruben said little on the way back.

 

 

When the sleepy sitter had a toothache, Ruben brought Squirrel to class again. He cried and she nursed him. The group argued about breast-feeding. Lily said, Nobody's eating from my breast but my boyfriend.

—That is so foolish, girl, said Mary. Forget you said that, before you
think
how foolish it is.