My Sister

The end of the day begins when the vacuum's roar starts up in the back rooms of Lakewood Library. It blends into the familiar sounds of the two librarians on the last shift reshelving books and swiping old cards, before locking the glass doors behind them. It blends into the sounds of a rush hour passing by and heading home to dinner or to night shifts. It signals to my brain that the day is over and there is one last thing to do before I can go home, do my homework, and eat dinner.

The vacuum is old and weak; it no longer pulls as strongly as it should. I have to run over lint and spilled jelly (not allowed in the library) six times, counting before it disappears. I walk all through the library, from the far back with the ivy-covered windows and the outdated newspapers, to the front, with the RFDA detectors and the brightly colored children’s section. I pull the plain carpet pattern in one direction, then the other. I try to make all the lines parallel so that it is obvious someone has vacuumed.

After a few minutes of the familiar rhythmic motion and noise, I straighten and look around. The building is almost empty except for myself and Carmen, silent except for the AC and the vacuum, and smells like old plastic book covers and Thieves’ Spray on the study tables. I’ve vacuumed this floor every evening from 5 to 6.30, Monday through Friday, fifty weeks a year, for two years. Since Madison was in fourth grade while still learning how to do long division. And in the day I reshelve books and straighten the newspapers in their stands.

Every day. two years. 

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.

She has read so much. Much more than I have in my 17 years. I only did six years in primary school in Manhattan, and then I worked at the tire shop for four years before my mom had my sister who has now passed away. Madison is nine and in the fourth grade -- they let her skip third -- and has done nearly twice the schooling I have. If we were in Manhattan right now she would be in the tire shop working for some extra cash. 

When Madison sees me looking at her, out of the corner of my eyes, she stops scribbling into the margins of Danny the Champion of the World. I smile and keep my eyes on the blue-and-orange carpet blocks.

After I finish with the adults’ and young adults’ sections, I take a break from the noise and flick the vacuum off. 

“Clean this mess, Carmen,” I say, louder than I meant to after half an hour of vacuum noise. 

“I did the tables yesterday!” she says, groaning, but she puts her pencil behind her ear and dogears her page. 

“It's necessary in order for you to be able to eat”

She knows that; they have to be cleaned every afternoon. She sighs loudly but goes and finds the rag and the spray. I follow her and get the bucket of cleaning supplies and get ready to tackle the bathrooms. The two dark brown doors are covered over with flyers and advertisements, all kinds of events and parties and dances and shows. I open the door to the women’s with my elbow. It’s already pretty clean because I did it yesterday. And the day before that, and the day before that. Antier is the Spanish word, a very succinct way to say the day before yesterday. 

The once-beige walls are boring no more. Three years ago Madison brought supplies from art class and painted the walls white. Then after it dried the night, and no one noticed the next day, she came with dark purple, red, yellow, blues, greens, and many shades of brown, and started to paint desert plants and small brown people watching colorful hot air balloons float into the ocean-colored sky. She wrote down the poems she had memorized for fun and the ones she had written, calligraphy on the inside of the stalls. 

A few weeks later someone else added a sunset and a cactus plant to the floor in the men’s. And a poem to the mirror in the women’s. And more and more added over the weeks and years. Madison is proud of herself but not as proud as I am. My strong little sister.

The clouds knit together tightly outside the thick glass in the children’s section. The wind begins to pick up and shakes the narrow trees violently. She stops wiping the tables to say, “It’s going to rain, sissy.”