I masquerade with the alias of “Smith,” my husband’s name. “Smith” is camouflage. If I use my real name, my Jewish name, I’ll blend even less well into this Bible Belt landscape. Over the years, I lived in DC, the West Indies, New Jersey, Boston, Israel, Galveston, Houston, Missouri. I am an island girl, a Jersey girl, a Sabra, a Texan, a Midwesterner, changing masks, identities, wanting to blend with the locals. I’ve shed my father’s last name as well as the name “Flint,” that of my first husband, before now evolving to “Smith.” Yet I don’t feel like a “Smith.” Ironically, despite (or because of) all the names, the disguises, I now worry I’ve never blended anywhere, never felt at home, never felt like a “me” who belonged.
Belle would probably call me “Troublesmith,” because I’m good at creating it.
The name is Smith. Trouble Smith.
Growing up in St. Thomas, I secretly spent hours at the public library in the Lange Building on Dronningens Gade, the main street of Charlotte Amalie. My father told me that I—just a girl—didn’t need to learn history, English, French, science. So I told no one I went to the library. No one knew of my contentment, at one with books, sitting at a wood table on the second floor. Termites tunneled most of the books as if they, too, devoured words. The result resembled miniature portholes. I could see straight through a book from cover to cover, as if I peered through a portal onto the world itself.
I loved all elements of books indiscriminately: the covers, the paper, paragraphs, sentences, punctuation marks, ink. I equally loved the way words lined themselves up in sentences. I could not have said that I understood the concept of “ideas” back then, but it was, nevertheless, the first time I sensed a relationship between an idea and a concrete word. So I also loved the way words could all be shaken up, used in any order you liked, thus establishing an entirely different set of ideas. It was magic. Black, inky magic. It was the first time I ever felt powerful, learning things girls weren’t supposed to, as if I knew voodoo, too. For a few hours, I was no longer the daughter of my father, that bank president who uprooted my stateside life by bringing me to an isolated, insular island.
The next morning I call my mother in New Jersey to tell her about the asbestos. I stand by the kitchen window watching deer graze on weedy grass at the edge of the forest. During the night, pollen from loblollies settled over my VW, green mingling with red dusty clay, like a pointillist painting.
“What should I do if they just sit on the report?” I ask. “Or never even write it?” I slide a piece of bread into the toaster.
She’s a lover of causes. In the 1940s, before I was born, my mother sat in the backs of buses with black passengers when she lived in Washington DC. Earlier, my Russian grandfather, to avoid his draft into the czar’s army, emigrated to the United States, where he joined the Socialist Party. So the idea of “protest” is entwined in my DNA, my personal gene pool.
“Call the newspaper,” my mother says. “TV.”
“You think it’s really dangerous, you know, if you aren’t actually working with it in a factory?”
“Children go there,” she says. “Anyway, research it. In the library.”
We laugh. The toast pops. I spread peanut butter on it. “Guess I could call the EPA.”
Or, I could be that red-masked Wonder Girl swooping into town on a Kawasaki. . . .
“Sure.” My mother’s voice warms to the fight. “And write your congressman and senators.”
In case of emergency call . . . Smith. Trouble Smith.
I park in front of the public library a few minutes before five. Broad Street, 130 feet wide, hovers like a mirage in the damp afternoon, automobiles floating down asphalt. The buildings have faded to bleached brick and stucco: Koman’s in the old Kress building; the Forrest barbershop with its ancient red-and-white pole; the Cherokee Lodge in the Masonic Hall; Lynn’s Uniforms; the Partridge Restaurant, established in 1933, its neon sign mute, unblinking; Esserman’s department store shrinking out of business. Only a few remaining metal canopies jut onto the sidewalk, offering a suggestion of shade. The marquee of the old DeSoto Theatre—which first opened on October 29, 1929, the day the stock market crashed—is blank. All the once-fulgent buildings, back when cotton barges flowed along Rome’s Oostanaula, Etowah, and Coosa Rivers, now droop and sag. The three rivers themselves are stained magenta, amber, puce—dye runoff from carpet factories—the water sludgy with chemicals from paper mills. The street resembles a deserted stage decades after the play ends. Façades of buildings are mere trompe l’oeils. Knock on a plywood door. No one answers.
Belle, I’m relieved, is gone for the day. But she taped a note for me on the counter, face up, for all to see. “It has always been my policy to ‘love it or leave it,’” Belle writes, in part. “To stir a cauldron often results in unpleasant vapors. One must be willing to accept the consequences.” She adds, “We expect you to continue to work as assigned.”
I stomp into the music room, cranking up the feeble record player. Maybe the racket will drive away the patrons. I play soundtracks from Grease, Saturday Night Fever, Urban Cowboy, and Xanadu. The vinyl records are dusty and scratched, the needle blunt. I march down aisles, straightening books.
Earlier today I spoke with Dr. Jim Hubbard, an asbestos expert at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. He said that EPA guidelines state that if a ceiling compound or mixture contains more than 1 percent asbestos in public schools, concern is shown. He promised to send me a bunch of brochures outlining the dangers.
I also did some research at the Berry College library. From a study conducted by the Environmental Sciences Laboratory of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, I learned that mesothelioma (asbestos-related lung cancer) killed the actor Steve McQueen, whose naval ship contained asbestos. “Only a few asbestos-related diseases occur prior to twenty years from the first time of exposure. However, the duration of exposure need not be long, only a few days for mesothelioma,” Dr. Irving J. Selikoff writes in the May 1984 issue of the EPA Journal.
Now, seated behind the checkout counter, I skim dictionaries and encyclopedias for additional information about asbestos. Asbestos, “quicklime,” from Greek. The letter a, “not”; the word sbestos, “extinguishable.” Once, wicks for eternal flames of vestal virgins were made from asbestos. It also insulated suits of armor. According to legend, Charlemagne tossed asbestos tablecloths into fires to convince barbarian guests he possessed supernatural powers. Egyptians embalmed pharaohs with it. Bodies of kings were cremated in shrouds of it, cocoons to preserve their ashes, preventing their remains from mingling with the wood of funeral pyres—religious miracles if ever I saw them, which I haven’t.
I’m so engrossed in asbestos I’m surprised, when I glance at my watch, that only a half hour remains before closing time. I meant to straighten more shelves. I’ve vaguely been aware of patrons roaming the aisles, but I failed to ask if I could assist them. But since I’m not, in fact, a superhero, I don’t particularly envision myself as placed on this planet to serve them, anyway. I am the person who gives librarians a bad name.
No. That’s not entirely true.
Some of my fellow librarians, the real librarians, prefer hoarding books to checking them out—would prefer the library be a museum, a jail. Belle, for example, is content only when rows of books sit orderly and pristine, each locked in its own Dewey Decimal slot. Books tilted sideways, or shelves with huge gaps, make her apoplectic.
And who can blame her? You finish shelving one cart of books only to discover someone else returning every book they’ve checked out since the Gutenberg Bible was printed. Once I replace a book I, too, expect it to remain there. Indefinitely. Until the end of time. To reshelve the same book two or three times is an imposition. In fact, I’m a firm practitioner of William Faulkner’s riposte upon quitting his job in a post office: I won’t be at the beck and call of every son of a bitch who has two cents to spend on a stamp. Or an overdue book.
Yet I worry I am beholden. Not so much to the patro
ns or to this job but to this life. How did I end up working in this library in a town I never knew existed until my husband got a job here—setting the bar so low for myself, I trip over it.
I feel trapped in my own Dewey Decimal slot, unable to budge. I’ve been divorced once. Twice would compound the failure. Besides, I feel as if I’m running out of masks, disguises, identities. Would another town, a different last name be any better?
Before I leave the library that evening, I re-read Belle’s memo. I consider unpleasant vapors in the library. I consider stirring cauldrons. I consider consequences.
A few days later, I sneak a stack of EPA brochures into the library. How to pass them out? Maybe I could just “happen” to leave them in the break room. But when I go there at 7:30, the usual time for my break, Mr. W. stands pouring a cup of coffee. I pretend to busy myself straightening napkins and paper plates. Mr. W.’s green suspenders are stained, his collar frayed. I’ve heard rumors he was angry when Abigail was named director, feeling he’d been passed over. “I guess no word yet from the county about the report?” I innocently ask.
He sniffs. I want to warn him to breathe shallowly. Then, without lowering his voice, as if no need to keep this a secret, he says, “Miss Abigail’s known about the asbestos for two years.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Suspected it since they found it in the library over to Cave Spring.”
As if losing his taste for coffee, he sets the mug on the counter and stalks out. I pour the coffee down the drain, then sit on one of the chairs, the upholstery worn and ripped. I shake the brochures out of the envelope. On the covers, with a red ballpoint pen, I write, “Welcome to the Asbestos Factory!” I slip one into each employee mail slot.
That evening, after I return home, I set up my Smith-Corona portable typewriter on the kitchen table. I scroll a piece of paper into the roller and type out a letter to Senator Mattingly. I type a duplicate letter to Senator Nunn “to bring to your attention the fact that your constituents are at risk.” Next I type a petition to be signed by myself and other employees to send to the Board of Trustees of Sara Hightower Regional Library. I state our concerns about working in an asbestos-riddled building.
The following morning I again call Dennis Scott, the county health inspector. “I’m sorry to bother you,” I say. “But I wonder if you have the report yet?”
“It’s locked up and I won’t show it to you,” he says. “But you have nothing to worry about.”
“Then why can’t I see it?”
“It’s in Commissioner Smith’s office.”
He slams down the phone.
I look up the number for Ronald Smith, one of the county commissioners. Since we share the same last name, maybe he’ll think we have something in common. However, by the time I dial, Dennis Scott has warned him. As soon as I identify myself, before I even ask about the results, he says, “I’ll release the report when I’m good and ready. I’m through talking to you. Do you know what I mean?”
He, too, slams down the phone.
Abigail waits for me at the circulation desk holding one of my EPA brochures. “How dare you.” The pulse in her temple throbs.
Later that evening, I convince seven other part-time employees to sign the petition for the Board of Trustees. None of the full-time employees, not even Mr. W., sign.
I drive to the Rome News-Tribune building the following morning. I ask the receptionist if I can speak to a reporter. I tell Kim Leighton about the asbestos. I explain about what I am now calling a “cover-up.”
He introduces me to the newspaper’s publisher. I repeat my story. They plan to check other sources and print an article.
During this conversation, I learn that a few years ago Floyd County voters rejected a bond referendum to build a new library. I surmise that the library and county officials don’t want to spend money removing asbestos from an outdated building. They want the money for a new one, instead.
After the interview, I stand alone in the newspaper’s parking lot. A flag wilts against the silvery pole radiating spirals of heat.
Something is wrong.
I want to turn around, go back inside, find the reporter again.
Wait! Stop the presses! That’s not the whole story, I long to say.
What I did not tell the reporter is that I am the emotional equivalent of General Sherman’s march to the sea. I actually want to burn Rome to the fucking ground because I’m angry at unbalanced librarians, bungling county officials, small-town prejudice, polluters, Foucault, an unknown arsonist in Galveston who torched several buildings that my first husband was restoring (where’s asbestos when you need it?) . . . and angry at that husband for loving those buildings more than he loved me. I’m equally angry at my current, overly intellectual husband, as well as angry at each and every page in his book—even angry at termites—because, likewise, where are they when you need them—need them to devour every single word he writes? Or devour every book in this library. I’m angry at voters, President Reagan, the Chamber of Commerce, Rotarians, anti-Semites, standardized tests, deconstructionists, Republicans, literates, illiterates, faulty engine rods in Volkswagens, Sylvester Stallone, the “Just Say No” campaign against drugs, the movie E. T., people researching genealogy, furniture-moving companies, slow drivers, organized religion, pecan pie, people who fail to see the beauty of kudzu, and restaurants that serve presweetened iced tea.
I also did not tell the reporter that existentially speaking—and in my heart of hearts—I don’t really give a damn about asbestos or the library. And yet I decide—standing in the parking lot—to show all these sons of bitches that asbestos is dangerous—even if I have to snort it.
I call Don Hatcher, the Rome bureau chief of 11-Alive News, WXIA-TV in Atlanta. “There’s a cover up in the library,” I say.
He asks if he can interview me at 6:30.
He films me checking books in and out. I stand behind the circulation desk and tell him the story. “This isn’t a safe building for patrons,” I say. “Especially children. But no one in authority wants to post warnings or let the public know.”
None of the “real” librarians who work upstairs happen to come downstairs while Don is filming.
In the movie version, the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, NBC, and CBS dispatch reporters and film crews to the library. I stand on the top step of the entrance, microphones crowded before my face. What did Abigail know and when did she know it, I insist.
The following afternoon, I find an “Employee Warning Record” tacked to my mail slot at the library: “This employee has taken it upon herself to circumvent management in her zealous pursuit of her cause. She has taken it upon herself to contact the investigating agencies, thus bypassing authority. When warned in person by the director, she was flippant to the point of insubordination. If she continues to cause trouble, or does not stop the agitation and get on with her work, or refuses to do the work, she will be dismissed.”
I make copies of the “Employee Warning Record” for Kim Leighton and Don Hatcher.
STAFF MEETING MONDAY, 4:00 p.m.
BOARD MEETING REPORT: Health insurance says that you have to work 30 hrs. per week to be eligible. If working less than 30 hrs. will continue to be covered but possibility that may be challenged. THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO ANYONE AT CIRC. DESK.
NATIONAL LIBRARY WEEK: Savannah Smiles to be shown 4/20, 10 a.m.
I hear a rumor that Hollywood plans to film The Dead Poet’s Society on the Berry College campus, reportedly starring Harrison Ford. I stalk the main campus looking for movie stars: lights, cameras, action! I abandon jeans and a t-shirt for a flowery skirt, a crisp blouse. Lip gloss. Eyeliner. I visit my husband in the English Department, a pretense for wandering around looking for Harrison Ford. My husband’s in class. On his desk is Paul de Man’s article “The Epistemology of Metaphor.” But no Harrison sighting, metaphoric or otherwise. I continue to scout corridors before heading outside, past the science building, the gym.
I stroll through fields with windrows of hay, past stands of magnolia, pine. In the movie version of the movie, I glimpse Harrison Ford just beyond that next tree wearing his Raiders of the Lost Ark hat. I sit, shaded beneath an oak, crimson blossoms pinned behind my ear. He kneels beside me, glowing, the camera lens in soft focus. . . .
The next morning, still hoping to be discovered, I stake out the Henry Ford complex on campus, built in English Gothic style, with money from Henry Ford himself. Today, however, the grounds appear different. The grass is painted. I’ve missed something important. I rush over to the English Department. The secretary tells me that the movie people experimented to see if they could make the grass appear . . . grassier. But no Harrison Ford. “They’re looking for extras, though,” she says. “Probably Yankees. Like you. It’s supposedly set in New England.” She tells me to go to Hermann Hall and fill out a form. “You’ll need a photograph of yourself,” she adds.
I slam back in my car and race home. I yank out photograph albums. I find one that’s not too bad. If they’re looking for Yankees, surely I’m qualified. I’ll tell the casting director I went to college in Boston.
I wait for the phone to ring.
Instead, a film crew from Italy arrives on campus to film a “spaghetti” version of Gone with the Wind. Italian look-alikes of Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh, dressed in Confederate finery, pose on the steps of the Hoge Building, the oldest structure on campus, more or less (less) resembling Tara. Student extras stroll in hoop skirts and gray uniforms. I’m too demoralized to try out as an extra. But I skulk around, trying to avoid bayonets.
I wonder how they’ll re-create the burning of Atlanta. Set fire to Broad Street? Only the Sara Hightower Regional Library will remain.
Later, as it turns out, The Dead Poet’s Society is filmed elsewhere and stars Robin Williams.
Pat Boone Fan Club Page 12
