A Girl, a Raccoon, and the Midnight Moon

by Karen Romano Young

  The prints in the book matched the prints by the statue. But what did that really mean, anyway? Pearl already knew the raccoons hung out by the statue. There was no way they could have stolen Vincent’s head. Pearl sat down on the warm bricks and leaned against the base of the statue, turning her face up in the sun.

  When she looked down at the books, there was a catalog card on the lap of her blue-jeans skirt, right where the shadow of Vincent’s fingers fell. It had fallen out of one of the books.

  On the card was written in what looked like Sharpie:

  Someone had been researching raccoons before Pearl. Fair enough; it was a library. But what did “Arak Lancaster” mean? Who was that? Lancaster, like the old owners of the library? The “I like it” after the cross-outs made it seem like someone was choosing names. Why that name? And who was naming someone that? There weren’t any more actual Lancasters around here—were there?

  Pearl climbed the stairs again, this time all the way to the third floor. She turned on the lights in the Memorial Room, where ghostly portraits showed the puffy faces, weird hair buns, and old-fashioned clothes of the family whose house this had been before they gave it to the city, along with the garden. Pearl walked along looking at the names: Herbert and Amalie, Walter and Margaret, William and Carol. . . . Each couple was 20 or 25 years younger than the last, passing the house down the line. They all held hands over the same little white table, which had been passed down, too, and was still sitting there now, empty, under the portrait of William and Carol, the last. All these people were Lancasters. But nobody was named Arak.

  Pearl decided to put the catalog card with the names in her pocket and its puzzle in the back of her brain. She picked up Raccoons Are the Brightest People and tried to fit what she was reading with what she already knew about raccoons.

  She realized her knowledge was a bit fuzzy. (Indeed!) She hadn’t thought about the neighborhood raccoons for years. And, she realized, while she used to spend a lot of time thinking about raccoons, most of those thoughts seemed silly now. If she divided up what she knew about raccoons into nonfiction and fiction, the facts would have come from former park ranger Bruce, and the made-up tales would have come from Mom. There were raccoons around the neighborhood, said Bruce, the same as there were in any North American city. They lived in the library garden up in the trees, and they slept in the day and came out at night: nocturnal. Those were the facts.

  A Sidebar About Legends

  Legends are stories that get bigger with multiple tellings. They can seem like obvious lies; for instance, Paul Bunyan having a big blue ox named Babe for a pet4—nonsense—and yet it’s a lie you want to be true, because who wouldn’t want a big blue ox for a pet? You might say it’s a myth, which is less of a lie and more of a story. Whatever the reason, people like the idea, so it sticks around and gets retold as a tall tale. Sooner or later it’s described as a legend, which is weird because that makes it respectable, which is a funny thing to become after all those not-truths. But really, what could be more respectable than a reading raccoon?

  —M.A.M.

  But before Bruce had come to the library, most of what Pearl had known about raccoons came from made-up tales. When Pearl was four, Mom had taught her to put a bowl of water outside the garden door at night for the raccoons to drink and wash their food in, and sometimes a saucer of milk for a treat. Each week they set out used copies of the Moon for the raccoons to shred to line their nests. Mom told Pearl that the raccoons actually read the Moons before they shredded them, which was why she didn’t give them the Star or the News, because she didn’t want them reading “that trash.” Mom showing Pearl these things seemed no weirder than other parents teaching kids to fill bird feeders or to put acorns out for fairies.

  “How did the raccoons learn to read?” little Pearl had asked.

  “Same as you,” Mom always told Pearl, even in the years after Bruce arrived, shaking his head at the fiction. “By having so many stories read to them.” When Mom was a child she had come to this very library for story hours, and the children’s librarian, someone Mom loved named Mrs. Whitney, had read books outside by Vincent’s statue. “The raccoons always woke from their daytime sleeping and lay drowsy in their nests, listening to Mrs. Whitney’s tales.”

  When Pearl was smaller, she was always peering up into the trees trying to see any raccoons at all. Bruce reminded her that in the daytime they were inside the trees, snoozing. At night Pearl slept through their activities: scouring the neighborhood for left-behind tidbits, washing their food in the bowl, drinking the milk, taking the newspapers away to read, or using shredded newsprint to fluff up their nests. But occasionally, on lucky nights, she’d see one of the little bandits in the alley at dusk.

  “When they reach a certain age, young raccoons go off to seek their fortunes,” Mom had told Pearl, and Bruce did agree with that, because, he said, “They are territorial. They get competitive as they near reproductive age, so only a couple of raccoons stick around any area. The rest go off to find their own place.”

  Mostly, Mom’s stories were about the raccoons that lived near the library. “Mrs. Mallomar and her daughters, Matilda and Eilonwy, are the library raccoons,” Mom always affirmed.

  “Mallomar, like the cookie?”

  “Yep. And Matilda is another name for the moon. Are you surprised?”

  Pearl had thought maybe it was Matilda like the one in the Roald Dahl book she loved.5 Then she thought maybe that Matilda had been named for the moon, too. When she asked who Eilonwy was named for, Alice handed her a book with a boy and a pig on the cover.6

  Pearl had asked once, “Where’s Mr. Mallomar?”

  Mom had shrugged. “He went off to seek his fortune, too, I guess.”

  “Like my dad?” Pearl was always trying to find out about her father.

  “Just like,” Mom had said. “Gone forever. Let’s focus on who’s here.”

  Pearl looked up at Bruce to see what he would say, but he was studying Mom with a little sweet smile, and he didn’t say anything at all.

  1 Raccoons: A Natural History by Samuel I. Zeveloff (Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2003).

  2 Raccoons Are the Brightest People by Sterling North (Dutton, 1966).

  3 Rascal by Sterling North (Dutton, 1963).

  4 Paul Bunyan: A Tall Tale Retold and Illustrated by Steven Kellogg (William Morrow, 1984).

  5 Matilda by Roald Dahl, illustrated by Quentin Blake (Jonathan Cape, 1988).

  6 The Book of Three is the first of The Chronicles of Prydain pentalogy by Lloyd Alexander (Henry Holt, 1964–1968).

  6: HEAD OF THE LIBRARY

  AUG 30

  The next morning, Mom sent Pearl to the newsstand. Tallulah seemed half asleep as she gave Pearl her change. “Late night?” asked Pearl.

  “Late edition,” said Tallulah, yawning. With the Moon tucked under her arm, Pearl passed Gully’s store as he came out with his own paper in his hand.

  “Look here!” he said. “My neighbors are in the paper!”

  Pearl blurted, “I’m not.”

  Gully peered at the picture Jonathan Yoiks had taken in the garden. “Bet you don’t even know who that kid is!” He pointed to Francine. He leaned closer, smelling of sweat and coffee. “Brazilian,” he said, as if it was a secret. “The kid showed up after school ended. Never seen her before. Not sure she’s legal. Every day all summer she’s home by herself banging on things and blaring that music while her granny’s out shilling her trash sculptures.”

  “Oh?” said Pearl. She turned away, scowling. Gully didn’t go on. What did he mean by legal? Was it illegal to make too much noise? Or to be Brazilian? She almost smiled, thinking of Francine tap-dancing up there on Gully’s ceiling, then remembered she didn’t much like Francine, gave Gully a look, and left.

  Pearl hadn’t always disliked Gully. When she was younger, she had realized he held the key to candy, Magic Markers, tie-dyed bandanas, and little toy sushi imitations that had been a fad fo
r a while at school. She went to his store a lot. But lately she had realized that the only time Gully came to the library was when he thought there was some drama going on. And she had also become aware that he kept his own collection of information, his own version of stories. Gully loved gossip.

  She didn’t open her copy of the Moon until she had crossed the street to the library.

  The paper had a big headline:

  LIBRARY LOSES ITS HEAD.

  The story said how the library was low on money and reflected the transient neighborhood. Pearl laid the paper on the reference desk in front of Ramón and asked, “What does that mean?”

  He spun the dictionary toward her. Pearl sighed, and turned to the Ts. “‘Transient’ means impermanent, transitioning,” she said. “What does that mean?”

  “It means a lot of people coming and going,” said Ramón. “It means change.”

  Nichols came out of the hallway bathroom, his face shining because he’d just shaved and washed and combed his hair. He did this sometimes in their bathrooms. It wasn’t allowed, but who would ever want to enforce that rule? To hide the fact that they’d noticed, Ramón and Mom kept their eyes on Pearl, who said, to fill the silence, “Aren’t people supposed to come and go in a library? What’s wrong with being transient, anyway?” Then she stomped upstairs.

  Bruce was sitting in his rat’s nest writing something. Pearl held up a sheet of pink paper that Ramón had given her.

  She said, “Look, Mr. Nichols drew this picture of Vincent. He’s a good artist, don’t you think? And Ramón copied a bunch and they’re going to put them up on all the trees and signs and light poles.” She handed over the sign. “Ramón put up his own $100 as a reward.”

  But Bruce’s eyes stayed on his papers and his fingers were on his phone, running up and down the calculator, tapping out numbers.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Telling myself a story,” said Bruce.

  Was he teasing her?

  He seemed to realize she might think that, because he looked up and said, “I mean it. Numbers tell the story of how the library is doing. I’m trying to make your mother’s circulation numbers show that we’re supporting ourselves, that enough people come here and take out books to make it worth staying open—and adding a garden gate.”

  “But do the numbers show that?”

  Bruce shook his head.

  “No happy ending?”

  “Why not?’

  He blinked, reached out, and touched her cheek. “Because numbers don’t lie. Because money talks. Because money can buy happiness.”

  “You mean business is bad, Bruce?” said Pearl. “Like Gully says?”

  “I’m sorry, Pearl girl. It’s just—people aren’t coming in, so books aren’t going out.”

  From outside the window came an echoing, tapping noise, as if someone was hammering on the bricks down in the garden, around Vincent’s feet. Pearl felt her face tense up, but Bruce smiled.

  “There’s someone new now,” he said. “I’ve got you to thank for that. You and your vocal cords.”

  Francine was in the garden, having broken her granny’s rule about going out again, dancing in her tap shoes up and down the stone paths, in and out of the lavender plants, tossing back the dark braids that fell all the way to the waist of her shorts. When she got to the base of the statue, she jumped back. “Ooh!” she squealed. Pearl could hear her overdramatic tone from three floors up. She figured this was the noise Gully had yelled about, tap-dancing banging around in the apartment. Then Francine stuck her hand in her shorts pocket, climbed up the base of the statue, which was definitely not allowed, and pretended to put something into Vincent’s outstretched hand. It was nothing, Pearl could see that from here. Francine was just doing some kind of pantomime. Now she darted away from Vincent as if her shorts were on fire. “That girl needs a doctor!” said Pearl.

  Bruce said, “Aw, she’s just a little kid.”

  “She’s ten like me,” retorted Pearl. It had said that right in the caption of the newspaper picture. “She’s just short. Anyway, who does she think she is, just walking in here?” Pearl couldn’t stand that Francine had been in the newspaper representing the library, instead of her.

  She wished he’d say, “I’m all ears,” so she could talk. But Bruce gave her a little pat on the shoulder.

  “I’ve got to get this budget proposal sent out, Pearlie girlie, and it’s giving me such a headache.”

  “It’s all right, Brucie goosey,” she said, started to leave, and promptly tripped over the foot of the coatrack into the hall, which toppled, walloping the tall cabinet. The raccoon costume started to slide from its hanger. The head of the raccoon rocketed toward them off its garbage can holder, its black-screen eyes dark and empty.

  Suddenly Mom appeared, in time to grab the shoulders of the costume, push back the file cabinet, and manhandle the raccoon head back into place. They all teetered, then steadied themselves, staring at each other, panting.

  A Sidebar About the Library Staff

  You’ve got to have a library manager who runs the business of the library; figures out the budget (how much money goes to paychecks, book and materials collections, building maintenance, and so on); takes care of marketing (proving to the public that the library is a great establishment you’d want to visit); and solves whatever problems come up. That was Bruce Chambers, and he wondered lately whether he should have stuck with parks instead of books.

  Then you need a circulation librarian. At Lancaster Avenue, this person was also the collection librarian, and was also Pearl’s mom. Ramón was the reference librarian, who helped people find answers—which meant looking things up in books or finding magazines or using the internet or whatever. Alice was responsible for choosing all the best children’s books to order, and setting up things for kids: story hours, costume parades, arts and crafts workshops. Simon was the page, who was responsible for keeping all the books on the shelves in order.

  This was probably the smallest number of people who could ever run one branch library, which ought to tell you something about its budget problems. I’d heard there used to be more people working here, and there used to be more patrons, too. Things had been going downhill since long before Vincent lost her head.

  —M.A.M.

  “Sorry!” Pearl yelped.

  Bruce said, “Mrs. Moran, ma’am, I thank you for saving my head.”

  “Did Pearl show you the Moon?”

  Busted. With a sigh, Pearl pulled the paper out from the chair cushion and handed it over, not wanting to hear Bruce’s response to the picture. Also, she recognized that when Bruce called her mother Mrs. Moran—not Patricia or Tricia or Trish—he was flirting, making up for yesterday’s quarrel. This realization made Pearl itchy, and she didn’t want to stay in the room with it, glad though it made her.

  So she took off. Through the frosted-glass second-story floor Pearl could see the dark blue-black of Alice’s head and the reddish blob of the sari she was wearing, downstairs at the circ counter, stamping date-due cards. (Alice: “Patricia, why are we still using this ancient date machine?” Bruce: “Because she doesn’t trust the computer.” Mom: “Do YOU trust the computer not to crash? Keep stamping, Alice.”) Clunkbum went the old date machine, stamping “SEP 20,” three weeks from today. School would have started by then. Ugh.

  Pearl was not enthusiastic about school, but at least it would make a change. It had been a long, hot, dull summer before the theft. There had been hardly any books to put away, only one story hour a day for Alice, hardly anybody coming through the door except parents needing something to do with toddlers, or the lawn mower men picking up their check, or the tired people who fell asleep with their heads on the table or behind a newspaper.

  Face it: The library had been slower than ever since last November, when the brand-new Knickerbocker branch of the library opened—only thirty blocks away, in a “nicer” neighborhood with high-speed Wi-Fi in the air, solar panels on
the roof, and, in the basement, not bugs and slugs, but a coffeeshop and a gift store.

  And since circulation—books getting borrowed—was the number the whole library was measured by, Mom had all kinds of strategies about how to increase that number. The plan had been to build up “services,” to make the library a hub of the neighborhood. Bruce counseled people on their résumés to help them get jobs, Alice’s husband, Danesh, offered financial planning to help them manage their money, Ramón taught English as a Second Language, Mom scoured secondhand shops for more DVDs, and Bruce scraped together funds for more computers and faster internet. The whole idea was that if more people came to the library for more things, they’d get library cards, they’d take things out, and circulation would go up. Then support for the little neighborhood library would go up, too.

  But it hadn’t caught on yet. Would it? Pearl knew the situation was getting desperate—all she had to do was watch her mom and Bruce—but she tried to ignore it, the same way she tried to ignore their arguing. She was unsuccessful in both efforts. That was the trouble with her family being the library staff—when something went wrong, EVERYTHING went wrong.

  Clunk-bum, said the SEP 20 stamp. Tappety-tap, went Francine out in the garden. Beneath Pearl in the fiction section, Simon was straightening shelves. Shuffle-thump. Clunk-bum. Tappety-tap-tap. They were all sounds you’d never even notice if the library wasn’t so completely dead.

  The stamping machine suddenly stopped. “Simon?” Alice called. “Someone’s here with a clipboard. Where’s Trish?”

  7: A HECKUVA PLAN

  STILL AUG 30

  A clipboard? That sounded official. Pearl slid swiftly down the spiral-staircase bannister and landed at Simon’s feet.

  “Shh!” he told her, and pulled her behind the S shelf.

  “Hahaha!” came a loud laugh. Then, “That’s a heckuva plan!”