A Girl, a Raccoon, and the Midnight Moon

by Karen Romano Young

  “Pearl girl,” he said, and if he noticed her touching his costume, he didn’t mention it.

  “Hi,” said Pearl. “Can I use the phone?”

  She called the Moon. When she got Jonathan Yoiks’s voice mail, she thought, Just as well—even better. She left him a message: “Mr. Yoiks, this is Pearl Moran of the Lancaster Avenue branch library. Raised here. Born here. And ready to volunteer to be the subject of your next Unique New Yorkers profile.”

  34: WHAT VINCENT WANTED

  OCT 13

  School performance day. Pearl was past worrying about what anyone at her school might think. If that vote on Election Day didn’t go the library’s way, why would any of her schoolmates matter? Pearl would lose her library home, move out of her apartment, change schools, and never see any of them again. So she did her best to keep a lid on her nerves. It would have been easier if Bruce would just let her use his raccoon costume, but since he wouldn’t, Pearl concentrated on putting the audience’s focus completely on Francine.

  Every night after closing that week, they had worked on the Rock Lady costume in the garden. Alice had made Francine put on a raincoat and draped one of her old silverish saris over her, folding it and pleating it to look like Vincent’s dress, and sewed it into place. Then, while Francine stood in the driveway in Vincent’s pose, they’d finished the “dress” with quick-drying varnish until the sari fabric practically stood up on its own. Oleg and Pearl did that part while Alice fed Francine a milkshake from the Cozy Soup and Burger through a straw as a reward for not moving. When they were done, Ramón had taken heavy clippers and cut the sari down the back, and Pearl and Oleg pulled the costume open just wide enough for Alice to help Francine slip out through the crack.

  Then Oleg added a mess of coal dust that Pearl had brought from the basement, sand from the driveway, and glitter from Francine’s supplies, so that the gray material seemed to stiffen into stone, with everything stuck on the varnish. Now, on Friday, the whole thing was rock-hard and looked as heavy as the Statue of Liberty.

  All the school stretched out before Pearl as she stood on the stage. Before her, the smallest kindergarteners sat in the front, and the looming eighth graders were crammed together at the rear. Everyone else was in between. Pearl deliberately avoided looking closely at her fifth-grade class, but nonetheless she knew exactly where Millie and Khadija were sitting, and how Elsa was glowering in the bored way she always had. Forget them, Pearl told herself desperately.

  She took a deep breath and began. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, keeping her voice small and quavery on purpose. “Boys and girls, I come here as a representative of the Lancaster Avenue branch of the New York City Library to ask for your help. Have you heard about our statue?”

  Pearl poured on the drama, letting her voice rise, picturing it like colored smoke. “So. Some of you know about our statue of Edna St. Vincent Millay. A beloved poet, silent. A death not forgotten. A person remembered. A statue, sending stories out through the air.”

  Here she paused, and stood looking out, meeting eyes—Alice had told her to plan ahead on whose eyes to meet because an audience can tell when a real connection was being made. Millie looked at her seriously, fascinated; Oleg smiled in a welcoming way.

  “Who here has heard in his or her lifetime a truly wonderful story, has had it told to them or read to them? A story that has come their way at exactly the right time, so right that you read it over and over again, play through it in your mind as you walk or eat or fall asleep, a book that you hand to someone else and say, ‘Drop everything and read this’?”

  She saw Elsa and Khadija look at each other and shrug. She thrust them out of her mind.

  “Do any of you know what part the statue of Edna St. Vincent Millay and the library that guards her plays in sending those stories out to you? Do any of you know that her stories are so powerful that they connect not only with people, but with the animals in the neighborhood?”

  Pearl saw some rolled eyes among the upper graders. But she stormed ahead. “Imagine that you’re an animal and you overhear stories about animals, like the ones in the Little Bear1 books, like The Cat in the Hat.2 Imagine such a magical environment where words and pictures swirl in the air! Is it any surprise that we have raccoons here who can read?” She paused and let that sink in. “It’s true. The Lancaster Avenue neighborhood has a special magic. The Lancaster Avenue branch library has raccoons who learned to read at the foot of the poet’s statue. The statue’s hand stretched out to the raccoons, inspiring them with stories. It wasn’t long before the raccoons could read whole pages, chapters, books.”

  Some of the younger kids looked at each other with their mouths open. Some of the older kids looked a bit bug-eyed.

  The raccoons had started as just a seed of an idea, but Pearl had gradually built it up, including the part about the lousy poems, and the Mallomar box, and the book in Vincent’s hand somehow making people think a book was a good thing to have. The raccoons had grown into a fully bloomed part of her story. On the stage, in front of all those people, Francine moved, bending and reaching as Vincent would, offering stories to the little raccoons around her feet.

  Pearl had her audience. And she knew that the best way to hold them was with drama. She built up to her great moment.

  “That’s how it was, until that night . . . that fateful night . . . that infamous night, when someone took from our statue poet that which should never have been taken—”

  Pearl whirled and pushed Francine in front of her. Alice’s stiff sari rose to a slender neck-shaped stump, making Francine look headless.

  “Her head,” Pearl finished.

  The whole school gasped.

  “Ew,” said several fourth graders.

  “And now,” said Pearl, “now Vincent’s hand is still stretched out, but she is not giving anymore. Now there is something she wants.”

  Here Francine lifted her arm and reached her hand, palm up, toward the children. She moved her legs stiffly to step forward, as though she was breaking out of a stone shell for the first time in years. The kindergarteners in front scooted their bottoms backward. A nervous ripple grew, and the hubbub spread to the back of the room.

  A Sidebar About Timelines

  Being more mature doesn’t just come from age. It comes from experience. Pearl was innocent. She simply didn’t believe that the library could close and the raccoons would have to move away to a place where they might quit reading. She hadn’t seen enough bad things happen to realize that they could. That’s innocence.

  Not all the traps are Havaharts.

  Not all the reading raccoons find writing jobs.

  And none of them has had the job of telling an enormous secret to the sharp, snapping, sometimes vengeful group of humans that make up New York City.

  But even if, unlike Pearl, I know that many humans aren’t great, I happen to know some really good ones: Bruce Chambers. Christopher Nichols. Ms. Judge. Tallulah. Pearl Moran. They each made me want to have hope, to tell the truth, to help Pearl build her story.

  I’d done the research Pearl wanted. I’d interviewed Grandmar and Mama Matilda and Tallulah. And Grandmar had brought me statistics from the midnight Moon’s printer: our own circulation numbers, broken down by the species of our readers—all nocturnals, of course: raccoons, rats, coyotes. I’d also learned that it was rare for any non-raccoons to be writers, because of the dexterity issue.

  I’d done all this, believed in our dramatic story despite my maturity, even though raccoons like being invisible, beautiful though we are. We show ourselves on our own terms.

  When Pearl and I saw each other last, I wrote:

  You want everyone calling themselves Reading Raccoons!

  Pearl said, “So? It’s just so they’ll think reading is cool.”

  I don’t think I want the eyes of the world upon us.

  She said, “What do you think will happen?”

  What if they take me into a laboratory and operate on my bra
in?

  Pearl put her hands over her face and shook. She rocked. She reeled. I leaned over and nudged her elbow with my whole head, hard. She looked up.

  Are you LAUGHING?

  “Silly,” she said. “I don’t think you need to worry about that.”

  I must have just sat there with my jaw hanging open.

  “Go on and write the best story you can,” Pearl insisted. She wiped the jolly off her face and bent toward me, serious now. “They’re New Yorkers. They’ve seen it all. But they’ll never believe us. Not in a million years.”

  —M.A.M.

  “What does she want?” Pearl intoned. The kids’ eyes were on Francine. “A cupcake? A latte? A phone?” Francine reached her hand out as though it had a life of its own and she couldn’t control it. “She can’t speak. She can’t shake her head. She can only keep her hand out, asking, begging, pleading. . . .”

  A child in the front row let out a scream as Francine’s hand swooped near.

  “Enough!” said Pearl, and Francine slumped like a puppet, her palm still raised and open.

  Ms. Judge stepped into the dumbstruck silence and asked, “What does the statue want?”

  It was a beautiful moment.

  “I know what she wants,” Pearl said in a hushed voice. Then she evoked visions she had never seen for herself but had imagined plenty. “She wants to see people climbing up the library stairs, the way the raccoons do in the middle of the night. She wants to see them reading the daily editions of the Moon the way the raccoons read the midnight Moon. She wants to see them with”—and here she recited the words she’d cooked up last night while lying in bed—“their nose in a book and a book in their paws, turning the pages with their toes and their claws. She wants you all to be readers . . . like our very own Lancaster Avenue Reading Raccoons!”

  The room burst into applause.

  Ms. Judge stepped onto the stage and summoned all the authority and chaos-quelling power only a principal can command.

  “People!” she said, her voice deeper than usual.

  She was as moved by their performance as everyone else, Pearl realized with pride.

  “I have an announcement to make. I want everyone in this auditorium to visit the library and find their very own personal stories. Real or magical. Fiction or nonfiction. Join the Reading Raccoons!”

  “And—” Francine stepped to center stage and raised her arms, waving them in a giant flourish to grab everyone’s attention.

  “Library cards are free!” Pearl exclaimed. “Absolutely free! All you need is an address where you can get mail sent. Find the book the Rock Lady has personally chosen for you. When you take out a book, you’ll get a ticket to the Halloween Howl!”

  Oleg slipped up the side stairs of the stage and escorted Francine down to the floor.

  Now Francine ran around the auditorium in a slow-motion way that was both gruesome and graceful, Pearl and Oleg at her heels, yelling, “Watch out!” and “Come back!” and making as much commotion as possible. They did a full lap, and then the three of them dashed from the room, leaving the children screaming and cheering behind them.

  1 The first of the Little Bear books by Elsa Homelund Minarik, Little Bear, was published in 1957 by Harper & Row, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak.

  2 The Cat in the Hat by Theodor Geisel (writing under the pen name Dr. Seuss) (Random House, 1957).

  35: HUNDREDS, MAYBE THOUSANDS

  OCT 14

  On Saturday morning, Pearl was busy working on an invitation, an announcement, and a sign when Mom called her to the phone.

  “Jonathan Yoiks wants you to be a Unique little New Yorker?”

  “Little?” repeated Pearl.

  “Go with it,” said Mom. She unmuted the phone and handed it over.

  “Hello?” said Pearl.

  “Pearl,” said Yoiks. “Were you really born in the library?”

  “Of course,” said Pearl.

  After she made an appointment for her interview, she swiped Ramón’s staple gun and printed out the photo of Vincent’s empty neck.

  CALLING ALL READING RACCOONS

  HAVE YOU SEEN MY HEAD?

  I’ll get a head on Halloween—will it be YOURS?

  See for yourself:

  HALLOWEEN HOWL!

  Admission: One library card

  See the re-heading!

  Donations will support the library.

  While posting the signs in every store window on Lancaster Avenue and Seventh Avenue, mailing them to the mayor and the library board, and slipping them under every door along the length of Clancy Street and Beep Street, Pearl thought about the old head. She knew that against everything else that was going on, it shouldn’t matter where the old head was. What good would it do to get it back? None, that’s what. The new head would actually bring more attention to the library, and that was a good outcome. But she couldn’t stop considering that:

  Nichols knew who took it.

  Mary Ann’s cousin Eloise knew who took it.

  Which meant that whoever had information just might have four legs, a face like a bandit, and eyes that saw well in the dark. So Pearl posted a few signs at knee level, too. And she was sure to fold one up tiny and push it into the mail slot behind the ivy at 221/2 Beep Street.

  “Pearl,” said Yoiks. “Give me a hand with this equipment, will you?”

  He loaded Pearl with his tripod and a circle-shaped thing in a round bag and his backpack, and followed her up the straight stairs all the way to the Memorial Room. Then he photographed her there, looking out the window onto Lancaster Avenue. He took some other artistic-looking pictures of her sitting halfway down from the top of the spiral stairs.

  He had to wait while a herd of kids from her school descended the straight stairs to take out books at the circulation desk. Pearl smiled to see them, and told Yoiks about the performance that had led them here.

  “Good,” said Yoiks, “but they make the spiral staircase vibrate, and I want a good, clear shot.” He wandered across the mezzanine’s glass floor into the reading room, where he took more arty shots, annoyingly not all with Pearl in them.

  “They’re not going to knock it down tomorrow, you know,” said Pearl.

  “Pearl—I want to say two things.” He looked at her through his lens. “One. You should keep doing anything you can think of to save the library.”

  “I am,” said Pearl. Hadn’t he heard?

  “Right,” said Yoiks. “Well, that leads me to number two. You shouldn’t expect to have much effect.”

  “Huh?” said Pearl. “Great! Well, thanks for the advice. That really helps.” She turned away from Yoiks and looked out the window. Here came some more kids from her school. Ha.

  Yoiks said, “Come on, Pearl. You’ve already done a lot. Tell me the whole story about Vincent that got all these kids in here to get library cards.” She thought he was just being nice to her. But then he was hitting record on his little recorder.

  Pearl swallowed and gave it her best shot. She drew herself up as tall and straight as Vincent and mimed the book in Vincent’s right arm, looked down at it, and lifted her left hand toward Yoiks. In her darkest, lowest, most mysterious voice, she said, “Vincent lifts up her hand and she’s so powerful that she makes cracks appear in the sidewalk, and wind blows out from the cracks, and books fly up into the sky, their pages flapping like wings. Vincent knows the exact book that is exactly right for each person at the exact time. They go flying out—” She paused to find better words. “Soaring, magnificently swirling and circling to find their readers . . .”

  “Is this some kind of fairy tale?” He sounded like he couldn’t tell if she was being serious.

  “Vincent is real. You’ve seen her! This is what she does. If you’ve ever thought, ‘Hey, I should read that book’—that was Vincent, inspiring you to read exactly the right book that you need at that exact moment.” Pearl really did believe this. “The books fly around the neighborhood, and they find the person who shou
ld read them next. All 41,134 of them.”

  Yoiks was taking notes now. He repeated, “Forty-one thousand . . . one hundred what?”

  “Thirty-four.” She sized him up. Was he going to print this, or was he just being a good audience, as usual? Or was it, possibly, maybe, it was an actually good story told by, dare she say it, a charismatic teller? She went on, full of hope. “But they don’t all go to people. Some of them fly into the trees, into hidey-holes in the backs of buildings. You know who those ones go to? Raccoons. And what are raccoons going to do with the books?” Pearl felt her story taking over her whole body, her whole soul, like she was at the top of a roller coaster about to plunge downward.

  “Make nests with them?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” scoffed Pearl. “The raccoons of Lancaster Avenue can read.” She said it with all the snottiness she could muster, as if any fool knew that.

  Yoiks peered up from his pad, looked at her through his owlish glasses, and said, “Reading raccoons?”

  “Yeah, the raccoons around here are special. Everybody near our library reads and writes—people and raccoons. To lose our library would be the worst kind of tragedy for all of us readers.”

  “You’re making this up.” He didn’t sound sure either way. But his skepticism was weakening, and his belief was strengthening.

  (Or maybe it was his awareness of how skeptical his editor would be that was losing, and his conviction about what he thought was important that was winning.)

  “Oh, does it seem magical?” she asked, as if it was just occurring to her. “I can’t help that.”

  He was silent. He met her eyes with a curious, cautious, “Is this kid all right?” expression.

  “Yes, Mr. Yoiks, I’m completely serious.” Pearl pointed at Vincent. She held her head high, looked Yoiks right in the eye, and said, “The raccoons are not magical, though they might seem to be. The Lancaster Avenue branch library simply taught raccoons to read. And you heard it here first.”