Life in Tandem

My mind was a battlefield of ABC’s. Atrocities abounded as letters struck each other against the cool compress of my mind. Butchered sentences seized each other in an attempt to amalgamate to something more. Cruelties laid within my fiery breath as words screeched and tore at my brain. My very being cracked. I spoke. Wrong. 

“Cat... Sits.. The,”  I gritted my teeth and stared up. Up at the ceiling with its wooden thatches and sticky dirt pressed into the cracks.

“No, it's The Cat Sits. Try again,” Why this funny teacher was out here made my head spin. No, not teacher. I reminded myself. Librarian. Our newest librarian who has taken it upon herself to school me in the ways of English. She hasn’t been the first to try, nor will she be the last. I am a dream to her, of newspaper articles from San Francisco to Chicago gilding her name among the ranks of good-doers. 

“Cat sits the,” I tried to repeat after her. I truly did. Instead I spoke in the way that was horrifically my own, the words sliding from my tongue, deliciously intoxicating. They sounded right. They felt right. To me at least. Even if that isn’t enough for anyone else.

“No, damn it,” The librarian, who never thought to tell me her name, stomped her foot and followed the trail my eyes had left over the page, “You're not focusing.” She grabbed a stick from her pocket and wacked my upper arm. Her lips pinched, eyes of the drowned proud of herself. I coddled my arm in my hand, biting back a retort that would surely have the library burning down. Thankfully it was after hours, only she and I inside. 

“Am correct I,” it wasn’t a question. I knew what I was saying. In my head words found solace, pocketed neatly into that very nice song Mama sung to me. She said it would make me strong quickly. Like how milk would make me grow and honey would turn my hair to the stalks of wheat breathing like a solemn beast in the fields. I was far too old to believe such fantasies now, but the song has never left me. I don’t blame her for my tragedy. 

I received an answer once. A salesman came to our town in the thrashes of summer years ago, with a cart of potions and a mustache that reminded me of the lever used to bring water from the earth. He told me trauma had done as much and if I took three cups of laudanum three times a day I would be cured. Of course I would be cured. I would be asleep. Or dead. And the dead are lucky only in that they can’t mess up their sentences. 

“I see why the other women folk don’t like you,” Why she must use both her hands and her tongue in an attempt to hurt is beyond me. Most people choose one or the other, yet she is far less effective in her jibes. I am not stupid. The women folk don’t like me the same reason their pa’s told them to stop visiting. A girl who sits and whispers the alphabet to herself isn’t worth the windy paths threatening the ribbons in their hair.

“I know,” I say and flip through the book we have been reading. Leo Tolstoy. I like the name. As I do the title, Anna Karenina. Perfect, fitting my tongue like a drop of honey. 

“Speak right,” Another knock on my arm. Same spot. Same orange and purple spot. She drew her hand back again, the consequence of an unknown offense, I had spoke in a manner that was correct to her, when a knock sounded on the door of the library that was really just an abandoned barn. Denim walked in. 

Denim Elbert Franklin. I said his name under my breath. So perfect. Tranquility seeped into every syllable, letters finding the place they needed to be. 

“Hey there Ms. Walkins. I’m here for Sybil Bens,” He nodded toward me and I tried not to cringe from the sound of my name spoken aloud. It clanked across my brain, sharp iron tails knocked, echoing, aching in my every nerve. 

I tried to convince Pa to change my name, but he said what's done is done and he wouldn’t even have known where to go about changing such a thing like that. He said birth names were silly. It's the ones earned that matter, not given. Sadly I have yet to earn a name beside Alphabet Girl. 

“Hi,” I said, grateful that I could do as much normally. 

“Hi, erm,” He took a breath, looked up, before glancing back at me, “Great look you,” He said the words slow and concise, biting his lip at the end.

“Not you too,” Ms. Walkins said, eyes trailing over his tan form. He had been in the fields, sweat glistening across the dark amber of his skin. He rubbed a hand over his brow and I saw dirt cling to the thick dark streaks that were his eyebrows. I chafed at her heady stare and looked down at my hands. Gruff and plump, soft in all the wrong places. 

“Just for Sybil, Ms. Walkins” He said and extended his arm. I stood, wobbling slightly from having to sit on my knees for so long and made my way over to him. The librarian looked like she wanted to tug me back down and refrained. 

“Thanks,” I murmured and I felt his breath right beside my ear. He smelled of salt and lilacs, burnt wheat, and something uniquely him. Something copper and rich. 

“I don’t like her much,” I couldn’t hide the grin, nor the cherry blush skittling across my cheek, “Shall we go then?” 

We walked through the town and over the bridge. It would be a long walk today then. Occasionally we took this path when Pa was out in the fields, too far for me to join him and the others. Denim would keep my company for an hour or two before taking me back home. My chest warmed at the thought of spending more time in his presence, of simply talking with him. When Denim spoke I didn’t mind if the words clanked against my conscience. 

“Home?” I said and felt immensely idiotic. It wasn’t his home. Just mine. Though he did spend an awful amount of time there, smoking with dad, or playing cards with Mari. Mari who was once Martin, but Martin wasn’t really her. 

“Yeah. Apparently Father Jin wants another talk with Mart-Mari. Excuse me,” I shook my head. It was bound to happen. I minded more than Mari did. 

“Get he it not will,” I cussed and spat on the ground. Denim nodded and I could feel his eyes on me. His eyes were always on me these days and I didn’t mind. It was what everyone else would say that bothered me. Not to me. To him. The town thought him a wonder, a kindness and gift they never expected. I could never tie him to myself. Have him dredge through conversation with me, waiting while I formed words. 

I’m twenty-six. I’ve graduated in all aspects other than I can’t quite read. I can’t quite talk right. Pa helped once. He wrote out a whole novel in my language. It took him nearly a year but he did it, mumbling the alphabet to himself like I did at night when I thought no one could hear. 

That was the last time I ever read. I lied and told him I didn’t like it. I did. I savored each word, letting images unfold across my mind, breathing in the story like it was the only tether to my body, my life. 

I couldn’t bear to watch what little spare time he had dissolved into a book I should have been able to read, if only I was normal. 

“Louisa asked me out on a date and I said no,” He said the words in a guilty rush. Words that made my heart ache even though it didn’t deserve to feel such pain. Nevertheless, I wanted to know more.

“And?” A is my favorite letter to begin a single word. Lovely enough it nearly made me forget what I was asking for more of. If only a letter had such power. 

“I no said,” Denim chuckled and patted the hand on his arm, “I told her I’m still waiting to hear back from someone else. Said I'd consider then,” I kicked his shin.

“Is rude that. Gave her hope you,” Denim quirked his head, my flush rising over my rotund cheeks and to my slightly lopsided ears. 

“I think I missed your point there,” A goofy, lopsided grin spread across his thin lips and I struggled not to laugh. I made my face into an exaggerated pout and looked out over the fields.

“I know understand you,” I saw him mouth the words to himself, what they should have been, I know you understand. The exact reason he couldn’t love me. I would shuffle his life around. I would waste too much time. 

“Do I,” he said. A question to anyone but me. I opened my mouth, readying as witty a retort as I could manage given the deciphering needed to comprehend it and stopped. Why was I doing this? Why was I walking with him when he should be walking with Louisa? A woman he could actually marry. 

“Am back going I library the to,” I pulled my arm from his, flinching at the feel of his shirt, a soft cotton, rubbing against my bare wrist. I wanted to pull him to me. I wanted to bury myself in his arms and feel all those things I knew I deserved. Feel accepted and worthy of his love. 

Yet I did not. Because I was not normal. Not normal at all. 

So I turned down the path and I was almost there, to the library now empty, no lantern inside to hint at the presence of the librarian, when his arms came around me just as I had wished and I was pulled back into an embrace that was strong and warm against my back, and hands that gently caressed my hips. 

“Sybil Bens. I love you. Don’t go back. You don’t need to. It's why I wanted to walk with you today. Because your Pa said the librarian was now tutoring you, when, Sybil Bens, you don’t need it,” And then in a voice prouder, stronger, yet still just for me, he whispered it all again, only this time in a way that truly was for me. 

I turned in his arms, cupping his jaw in my hands, not caring that I had calluses or that the stumble of his jaw poked in between my fingers. 

“I love you,” I whispered. What amazing words those are. Already so in place. Even for one like me. 

“I love you,” And before he could pull me into his arms, I pulled him down into my embrace. We stood that way for some time before he pulled back, and seeing the library tugged me toward it. 

“I have an idea,” I had plenty of ideas as well, but I had a feeling by the innocent smile, excited, nearly anxious lighting his eyes, they were not the same. I followed him into the library, empty but  for several stacks of leather bound tombs, water stained and covered in dirt and sand. The trip from Chicago to South Dakota stealing away the stiffness of spines and the crispness of the pages. The ink remained sharp, however, unyielding even in the novel environment. 

“Okay,” Denim said, turning to me with hands on his hips, “I know you liked the book your Pa wrote you,” I opened my mouth to a habitual protest but he cut me off, “Don’t try it. You carried those pages with you for months. Please, give me a chance,” I nodded, lost in the dust, the soft amber glow of the setting sun over the library. Alone with the books it felt as if I too were a mere character, a broken puppet to another’s will, made to be played with. But then I looked at him and I didn’t feel like just another character. I felt like the novelist. I felt like I was the name written on the bottom of titles, rather than a word hidden in the brambles of paragraphs. 

“What if I read to you? In your way. And as I do, you can write it down and then you can read it,” His voice grew hectic, yet no less lucid, “Or I will transcribe all these novels down. And then we’ll change them all out. Let everyone else see, even that cranky librarian, how it feels,” It was such a childish prank. Such an innocent way of solving a problem of mine that maybe wasn’t the awfulness I saw it as being. 

“No. okay thats,” His face fell and I moved to him, taking his hands in mine. They were warm despite the chill wind pressing through the crooked slats of the library walls. 

“You're not going to say you will change, are you?” I shook my head no before leaning against him. 

“Change No. Accept Yes,” I would. I wouldn’t change. But I could accept that I didn’t have to. I could accept that I didn’t need the tutors. That rather than changing for the world, the world could change for me. Or even better, we could live in tandem. 

And live in tandem we did. Both the world and I. Denim and I. ‘I love you’ a bridge between us both. Something my way and his way. Unique to neither of us. Yet wholly our own.