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That afternoon, Lilah dropped into her desk chair for a breather from the after-school rush. As she sat surveying the room, she had an inexplicable mental nudge. Something wasn’t quite right. The orange blink of the cursor on the computer monitor seemed to signal her. Above it, she saw the bold words: “F___ you, Mrs. Lambchop!”
Sharply, she surveyed the room, her eyes resting on an angelic, blond boy, sitting cross-legged in a corner of the fiction section. No, it couldn’t have been Alan! His mother had been bringing him to the library since he was a toddler. Now, he was eight years old and cocky, losing some of his innocent charms, but still respectful, often stopping at the desk to talk about his new baby sister or his dog, Bruno. But wait, he was leaning forward and laughing. Who was he with? She rose from her chair and walked to the end of the room opposite Alan, choosing a place where she could observe him without his seeing her. From her vantage point, she could see that he was with Jimmy, a noisy, impudent boy. Now, Jimmy was peering around the end of a row of shelves, looking directly at her desk and giggling. She gripped the new fiction display, struggling for control. She wanted to shake Jimmy’s shoulders until he lost his smirk. For a second, she teetered on the brink of irrationality.
When she was past the point of overreacting, she moved to a point closer to the boys. Jimmy laughed, then noticed her, rolling his eyes and slapping his hand over his mouth. She glared at him with an intensity that could have curled the pages of the book he was pretending to read. He shoved the book into the stacks and hightailed it to the exit.
Shaken, she walked unsteadily back to her desk and dialed Mary, demanding that she come to the children’s library. Mary sighed and made an excuse to step down to the children’s section.
“Look! Just look!” Lilah demanded, swiveling the monitor so that Mary could see.
Looking at the screen, Mary was almost relieved to find that the situation had nothing to do with Mr. Chesterton. She summoned her best “What-is-the-younger-generation-coming-to?” attitude and said, “Oh, Lilah, children today, I just don’t know… Please try not to let it upset you so much.” Then, with the efficiency she applied to reference transactions, she reached over the desk, pulled the keyboard toward her, pressed the “Screen print” key, ripped the printout neatly from the printer, then deleted the offending message.
Dropping the printout into her skirt pocket, she said, “Lilah, you’re shaking. It’s been too much for you! Why don’t you say you don’t feel well. Go to the office and relax until 6 o’clock? Please! I have to go back to desk duty now.”
The next morning Mary made breakfast as usual. When the smell of bacon and eggs didn’t bring Lilah to the kitchen, Mary climbed the stairs to check on her. She shook her gently. “Time to rise and shine,” she said brightly.
Peering over the edge of a multicolored quilt, Lilah appeared disoriented at first. Then, she rolled over on her side away from Mary’s probing eyes, and said decisively, “Can’t go in today!”
“What’s wrong, Lilah? Is it yesterday’s incident? Are you really sick?”
“Sick, sick! Yes, sick. Tell Mr. Know-it-all I’m sick!” She jerked the cover over her head.
“Okay. I’m sure it’ll be okay. There are no special programs today. And you’re so seldom sick.”
She sat on the bed a few moments, then patted Lilah’s shoulder, and said, “I’ll call at noon to see how you’re doing.”
At lunch time, Mary took her ham sandwich and apple to the staff lounge. She wanted to call Lilah from there, but Alicia, another reference librarian, was chatting over the phone, presumably to her husband, a burly truck driver who was on the road a lot. Alicia was a redheaded, hippy woman of ample, though not obese, proportions, with cunning eyes and a snide sense of humor.
There was to be no privacy in the staff lounge, so she went to the lobby to use a pay phone. Lilah answered after several rings, and, in a voice that lacked inflection, said that she was okay. In the background, Mary could hear a soap opera theme song. She decided that Lilah was in a self-pitying mood. She was thankful it was Friday. That would give her the weekend to work it through.
On Monday morning — contrary to Mary’s hopes — Lilah ignored the 6:30 a.m. alarm, murmuring that she did not feel well enough to go to work yet.
The same thing happened the next two days. On Thursday, when she again rolled over and put her pillow over her head when the alarm buzzed, Mary could no longer keep quiet.
“Lilah, what is wrong? If you’re sick, then you need to go see Dr. Henderson!”
“No, I don’t want to see Dr. Henderson! I just need rest.”
“Okay, Lilah, okay,” she sighed. Once again, she would have to go to Mr. Chesterton’s office and report that Lilah would not be in. Lilah simply refused to take responsibility for calling in herself.
About Barbara Kussow
