I handed her my library card. She took my three books, opening the covers in the most perfunctory of manners. Flip, open, scan and check went the first one. She paused examining the second book's cover - judging it. I found myself biting my lower lip and then immediately cursed myself for shifting my weight as though I were nervous, but it was awfully stuffy in there. Open, scan and check went the second, and then for some reason - whatever it was - she flipped the third one over, made a face that was a consternation revelation if I've ever seen one, sucked her teeth and said, "Umph." Open, scan, check and she tucked the receipt into the third book, gave me a curt nod, a smile and handed my library card back.
I looked at what was my library card and saw instead what felt more like the race card - and this one was the Joker.
In the space and time of that simple, 2-minute transaction I allowed Ms. Snarky Librarian's snide handling of my reading selections to unnerve me a bit. I had one of those TV moments where you know that in reality, I collected my books and just left the library, but in the split second before reality set in I had the imagined reality where I in the oh-so-perfect-world-of-curt-retorts kindly informed her that despite the look she gave me - the "What kinda black person checks out a book actually called, 'Self-help'?" - this book here on top, the one that garnered the highly unnecessary suckin' of the teeth was actually an ironic, bitter-sweet collection of short stories that captures the highly idiosncratic guide to the young female's existence.
Of course, maybe since she's a librarian she's an astute and deft scanner of jacket covers, so maybe she already noted that reason and instead dismissed the book on the basis of its cover - quite the hideous display of 80's graphic "art."
With regards to the diss she gave what was the second book, I'd have smartly retorted (as if retorts could be anything but smart. What a word: retort.) that this happened to be one of the most popular novels of all time, still popular to this very day because it paints a world "in which personal relationships are based more often on gain than on love and respect," a world that too many women still find themselves scrambling in today - doggedly pursuing that man "in possession of a good fortune" who "must be in want of a wife."
Quite proudly I'd have checked the appearance of her inherent prejudices, too, but I didn't. Instead I did just what closing time called for, and what the rather belligerent officer's bellows insisted all patrons do, I collected my books, pocketed the spade that was my library card and left feeling jaded by my own presumptions, but certain that I'd just been appraised ... and I was not liking the value.
Meanwhile, outside on the sidewalk a man who looked very much like a vagrant eyeballed me so hard I looked at myself wondering what he must've seen. Then he did what I hate, telling me I should smile more. "You'd be fine if you just smile."
I frowned and cocked the eyebrow that, when untweezed, obviously does not do my disdain enough justice. So he decided that maybe I didn't hear him and he repeated his call, but louder. It came out like a bark and a couple of people on the sidewalk stared at me and at him and I wondered why sometimes, just when I'm most wanting to go on about my business, when I'm most lost in my own thoughts, does there always seem to be somebody who sees me as a great scene waitin' to happen. I mean, there are times when I fancy myself in a great movie and all, but I mean, really. (I know it probably seems a touch over-dramatic, too, but this is me talking to you and I am telling you this happens - not terribly often, but enough times to be something of a trend.)
I thought of the quote I had just sent Rachel, along with a bumbling sermon of sorts - You train people to treat you by how you treat yourself - and I wondered about the vibe I am giving off in the world and the reverberations it's sending back ...
I have pondered this often, wondering what it is about my face that implores annoying people to talk at it so, wondering why men feel the need to order me into smiling when it's not like I'm frowning, why when I give people the human decency that is eye-to-eye contact I have to watch their faces change from what looks like suspicion and wariness to calm accompanied by chatter about how young people don't look folks in the eye these days unless they're wantin' to take somethin'.
And I think about the incredible passages I've been re-reading in To Be Young, Gifted and Black in which Lorraine Hansberry reflects on her childhood where she was "a serious odd-talking kid, who could neither jump double dutch nor understand their games, but who - classically - envied them ..." and how her ambitions, her talent and the way in which she viewed the world set her apart from those she envied, but also brought her no closer to anything or anyone else ...
I've thought about all these things in the course of the past day or so and have realized - woefully - that they are things I've been thinking about forever and still I have no answers, just ever-evolving theories as I try to peel away the layers I've tucked myself under.
The cyclical nature of these thoughts reminds me of wheels I've seen stuck and spinnin' in the mud, in the ditches from my youth. Almost every summer somebody that didn't know how to drive got stuck in the mud, usually when they backed out of somebody's driveway. Nobody's driveway was set at a right angle, they were all sloped so that you just eased off the road into them, and we had no circular driveways so if you eased in forward, you had to ease out backward, and a lot of people struggled with this. It was always the same scene, and I always found it amusing and could see it coming so along with the adults, I'd yell to whoever was about to leave to "Watch yourself backin' out. You're gonna run into that ditch and then we'll have to call Isaac to bring his truck down here and pull you out."
The way we all said it, it seems now like we were issuing a dare, and it was one that people apparently couldn't resist. Our driveway had a really odd angle and a really deep ditch, and when people backed out of my yard I'd be sure to take a spot on the edge and pilot them out. Usually my dad would be on the side where the ditch actually was, so I took my spot in a place where I could comfort you, reassuring you that yes, you had plenty of driveway on this side and what you wanted was to not be able to see the driveway on my side because then you knew you'd be okay ... I knew these things because I learned to back out of my driveway when I was seven. My Daddy thought it was important that young kids know how to drive in case of an emergency. Living in the country made him nervous I think, so he always made sure that I knew where the store was, the police station, fire department and the hospital, and on special, easy summer mornings, he'd make sure I could actually drive that route.
Anyway, long aside there, but the memory of the mud took me back because I remember watching so many tires just spinning and I remember thinking how awful it must be to be that stuck and how that makes me sigh now since, metaphorically speaking, I'm doing pretty much the same thing.
This leads me to a close though. For now I'm just going to enlist Lorrie Moore for a little Self-Help . Maybe it'll prove prophetic or something.