Becoming Johanna

by C. A. Pack

the book away from the goat that she hadn’t given much thought to what the other animals may have left behind.

  “What should I do with this?” She jiggled the shovel containing the pile of loose hair.

  The little old man pulled on a handle near the closet door. It opened up into a chute. “In here,” he answered.

  Johanna dumped the snippets, and Malcolm Trees nodded toward the closet. She put the tools away without saying another word.

  He picked up a parcel and handed it to her. “Be careful. Templars can be ruthless.”

  She nodded, and delivered the package as instructed.

  The following morning, Johanna found a huge pile of work on her desk, no doubt due to another nocturnal visit from lazy Lucinda. She busied herself with getting it done, so she wouldn’t have to stay late.

  Johanna’s boss startled her. “How did it go last night?” He had actually come out to her desk to ask about the book delivery, rather than call her into his office. Even Lucinda stopped typing and gawked at him.

  “Fine,” Johanna answered, not offering him any additional information.

  He stared at her in silence for a minute or so, then walked away without saying another word.

  “What’s that all about?” Lucinda asked casually.

  “I have no idea,” Johanna answered. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  Lucinda returned to her typing, with a scowl on her face. About the only things she and Johanna had in common were that they worked for the same company and neither of them liked their boss. He reminded Johanna of the cold and calculating headmaster who had used an iron fist to rule the orphanage in which she grew up. She didn’t know why Lucinda hated their boss, but she knew Lucinda would never ask him anything.

  A few days later, Johanna’s boss told her she would have to pick up two parcels and deliver them to two different destinations.

  She didn’t mind visiting the library, but she hated her boss for intruding on her personal time. She thought he waited until the last minute to ask her to make deliveries as a demonstration of his power over her job. She wondered if he told her to make two deliveries because he had tried to make one himself and had failed.

  “Where are they going?”

  “They’ll give you the addresses at the library.”

  “I hope they’re local,” she said, walking toward the door. “I don’t have a lot of gasoline to devote to running all over creation. And my fuel costs are getting out of hand. I asked the garage to send you the bill.”

  She watched his face turn white, then red, just before the door closed behind her. She hadn’t really asked anyone to send him the bill, but saying so made her feel like she was taking back control of her life. She smiled. She didn’t do it often, but when she did her face instantly changed, and her beauty emerged.

  In Exeter, she again felt like someone had switched the streets around. It took her an extra half-hour to find the library, and it seemed like she stumbled upon it by accident.

  She entered the vestibule and walked over to the button on the brass plaque. She pressed it and said, “Illumination.” The doors opened, and she walked inside, smiling at having figured out the key to gaining entrance.

  The little old man stood waiting for her. “Feeling pretty proud of yourself, are you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Very few people come to our door, and rarely does anyone gain admittance. It would seem that hardly anyone ever seeks illumination. They punch the button, pound on the door, and rant and rave in general, but no one is going to get in unless they say the right thing.

  “You managed to gain entrance the first couple of times through sheer, dumb luck.”

  He said it matter-of-factly and without malice, but Johanna’s smile vanished. Her mind immediately transported back in time to the orphanage in which each child had been treated with such contempt, they couldn’t help but feel worthless.

  The headmaster of the orphanage had been invited to sit in on the youngsters’ weekly spelling lesson. Their teacher made a big fuss over him, and he began drilling the students.

  Johanna waited her turn with both enthusiasm and trepidation. She wanted to excel, but she feared humiliation.

  “Johanna, spell judgment.”

  Johanna stood ramrod straight, her excitement building. Her teacher had just gone over the spelling the previous day, and Johanna had memorized it. She really wanted to impress the headmaster, and she now had a chance to shine.

  “Judgment, j-u-d-g-m-e-n-t, judgment.”

  Her teacher nodded his head in approval until the headmaster shouted out, “Wrong!”

  Her teacher just stared, his mouth hanging open.

  “There is an E in judgment. J-u-d-g-e-m-e-n-t.”

  Johanna knew she was right. She spelled it just the way she had been taught, and she stood her ground. “I spelled it correctly,” she stated, with a slight quiver.

  “You dare to challenge me?” the headmaster bellowed. “Prepare to be punished severely.”

  Johanna looked to her teacher for support, but found none.

  The headmaster left the room momentarily, and returned carrying a massive Oxford English Dictionary and a cat-o’-nine-tails. He scanned the well-worn dictionary to letters beginning with J, and there it was: j-u-d-g-e-m-e-n-t. It didn’t matter that the OED also included the other spelling; only that Johanna be punished for defying him.

  He whipped Johanna five times in front of her classmates. Her teacher had betrayed her by not defending her. Her so-called friends made fun of her afterwards. As a result, Johanna learned to embrace isolation and numb her feelings against pain.

  “What impressed me,” Malcolm Trees continued, “is how you learned from it.”

  But Johanna didn’t hear his last sentence. She had already switched to self-preservation mode. She masked her feelings of inadequacy with a harsh retort. “Why don’t you just give me the parcels then, and we’ll be done with it.”

  “Wait here,” he answered, surprised at her sudden change of mood. Her curt manner made him involuntarily retaliate. “And for heaven’s sake, don’t open any books.”

  “Be quick about it, then. I haven’t got all night.” Her own rudeness shocked her, but she would rather die than let this little old man know he had the power to hurt her.

  The first parcel was very large. “You’d better hold this with both hands. It’s an encyclopedia, and lord knows what page it might open up to if you should drop it. You could unleash the tidal waves caused by the sinking of Atlantis, the hideous and painful boils from the bubonic plague, or perhaps the bombing of Hiroshima. It could be catastrophic.”

  “Where’s it going?”

  “Look here,” he said, thumping the top of the package. “It’s practically around the corner.”

  “Is there a second package?”

  “Oh. Yes. I have it right here.” He walked over to the desk and took a miniature parcel out of the drawer. “I’ll slip this into your pocket,” he said, matching word to deed. “You had best deliver the larger one first.”

  The encyclopedia weighed a ton, and Johanna rested it on the refectory table to get a better grip. In doing so, she knocked Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol on the floor, and the Ghost of Christmas Past sprang into action, conjuring up a festive ball. In an instant, Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig danced around the library, swirling to and fro, knocking more books onto the floor. Suddenly, a young boy in a wheelchair began asking where he could find The Secret Garden. Trying to avoid him, the Fezziwigs danced right into a British soldier, who held the body of Gunga Din. They all went down hard, causing mass confusion.

  “Go,” the little old man said, pushing Johanna toward the door. “I’ll deal with this.”

  Johanna suddenly found herself alone in the dim vestibule, clutching the encyclopedia for dear life. She didn’t remember actually walking out the door. She felt almost as if the old man had transported her there by magic.

  She carefully placed the large parcel o
n the seat of her car, and drove to the address written on it. The old man had been right about the location. She probably could have walked there if she weren’t afraid of dropping the encyclopedia and unleashing who knows what.

  After the first delivery, she took out the smaller package and looked at the address. Her stomach lurched when she saw her name and address on it. She slipped it back into her pocket and drove home. She wanted to make sure she was someplace safe and familiar before opening it.

  Johanna’s attached cottage could almost be called ramshackle, even though she worked hard every weekend to keep it from deteriorating. She had a small living room, a smaller bedroom, a tiny kitchen, and a minuscule bathroom—pleasant but humble. It wasn’t her dream home, but it was all she could afford. She was only seventeen years old, and she liked being able to say she lived in a one-bedroom flat, even though she had friends with studio apartments larger than all her rooms added together. Now it looked like she would lose her home to a developer who wanted to build condominiums. Her landlord had informed her she would have to move out by the end of the year. Perhaps my next flat will let me have a cat, she mused. At least one positive thing might result from her dilemma.

  She locked the door and pulled down the shades before taking out the tiny parcel. It would never do to have a neighbor witness something that might be difficult to explain.

  She sat on the diminutive sofa in her living room and gingerly opened the package. Inside, she found a small journal. It had the