BEFORE CHRISTMAS

The sun has begun to set and looks like a destructive dancing flame, barely below the narrow treetops. I can see it through the ivy-covered window behind the newspaper section, as I move backward through the study tables. I usually ask Carmen to wipe those down. She will sigh and slide off the loveseat, go and find a rag and Thieves’ Spray, and lightly touch the tables with both. But she brushes crumbs and paper scraps off and makes the tables smell good and that’s what matters.

I took her to Gold Rush Cafe a week ago for breakfast on Sunday, a quarter mile from the library. She told me she was almost done with the children’s section. 

“Are you reading anything?” I asked, drawing my fork across the swollen, buttery pancakes. 

“No,” she said, looking around in case anyone has heard me talk. “I've just read them all.”

I smiled. ” I took a gulp of coffee. She drank her milk. I remember when I first got the job at the library, reshelving books, vacuuming, and cleaning the bathrooms. Madison was just a baby, and so was I, just a girl fresh from Manhattan. She would sit with the Cat and the Hat books in the corner by the stained glass windows as I tried to teach her to read over the vacuum noise. She is so smart, I think. I look at her out

 of the corner of my eye as I move closer to the front. She goes to the Arts and Sciences Magnet School downtown, for free. She taught herself to read. She writes these little poems and paints them on the partitions of the library bathroom. She thinks I cannot tell, but I know her handwriting. 

She writes pretend love notes in the books, too, when she thinks I’m not looking. I know the other librarians love reading them and watching the love stories develop. My little sister is a writer. 

I push the vacuum under the shelves and between the plastic chairs. I don’t mind her being embarrassed by me. I was embarrassed by my parents. She still loves me. I do it because I love her. The wind blows through the skinny, bracketry pecan branches and ruffles through the ivy on the windows, just barely budding with life after a cold winter. I always feel so peaceful after hours here in Lakewood. There is wind and cleanliness and silence except for the occasional page-turning from the children’s section. The caladiums outside move in the breeze and rush of cars. The small bookish building sits on an isthmus amid a sea of asphalt and rush hour, calm and patient and quiet.

I am overcome by despair. It is darkness. Our bishop at Immaculate Concepción talks about the dark night of the soul when there is no spiritual life except despair. I stand, bent over from the weight of two years doing my part-time job, taking care of my little sister, study for my SATS in front of the great library window. Throughout the years I compare myself to the writers around me when the hum of the vacuum begins to bore into my brain. I can never aspire to be like them.

Madison sits on the bright red loveseat in the children’s section, her bare feet pulled up and a book balanced on her knees. She walks here from school at 3.25 every afternoon except Fridays, and sits in the same seat reading until 5.30 until we drive home she does homework and I do the bills and the laundry. We eat dinner and I clean and we go to bed. On Fridays, she has a choir and walks over at 4.30, and reads for an hour. 

It is too late for me to be like the great writers, but it is not too late for Madison. 

Reluctantly, I bend over again and continue the motion, back and forth, humming to myself to limit the vacuum’s damage to my ears.

The sun has begun to set and looks like a destructive dancing flame, barely below the narrow treetops. I can see it through the ivy-covered window behind the newspaper section, as I move backward through the study tables. I usually ask Carmen to wipe those down. She will sigh and slide off the loveseat, go and find a rag and Thieves’ Spray, and lightly touch the tables with both. But she brushes crumbs and paper scraps off and makes the tables smell good and that’s what matters.

I took her to Gold Rush Cafe a week ago for breakfast on Sunday, a quarter mile from the library. She told me she was almost done with the children’s section. 

“Are you reading anything?” I asked, drawing my fork across the swollen, buttery pancakes. 

“No,” she said, looking around in case anyone has heard me talk. “I've just read them all.”

I smiled. ” I took a gulp of coffee. She drank her milk. I remember when I first got the job at the library, reshelving books, vacuuming, and cleaning the bathrooms. Madison was just a baby, and so was I, just a girl fresh from Manhattan. She would sit with the Cat and the Hat books in the corner by the stained glass windows as I tried to teach her to read over the vacuum noise. She is so smart, I think. I look at her out

 of the corner of my eye as I move closer to the front. She goes to the Arts and Sciences Magnet School downtown, for free. She taught herself to read. She writes these little poems and paints them on the partitions of the library bathroom. She thinks I cannot tell, but I know her handwriting. 

She writes pretend love notes in the books, too, when she thinks I’m not looking. I know the other librarians love reading them and watching the love stories develop. My little sister is a writer. 

I push the vacuum under the shelves and between the plastic chairs. I don’t mind her being embarrassed by me. I was embarrassed by my parents. She still loves me. I do it because I love her. The wind blows through the skinny, bracketry pecan branches and ruffles through the ivy on the windows, just barely budding with life after a cold winter. I always feel so peaceful after hours here in Lakewood. There is wind and cleanliness and silence except for the occasional page-turning from the children’s section. The caladiums outside move in the breeze and rush of cars. The small bookish building sits on an isthmus amid a sea of asphalt and rush hour, calm and patient and quiet.