Thumbing through the white pages
Rug burn today is
a strange little problem
the clerk
clucked her tongue
and put me on hold
I sat in that
elevator
for 3 quarters
of an hour
reading Smith
in various
incarnations
in yellowing books
till she returned
to ask
would I rather
my appointment
be virtual ?
07.30.2024
Yellowing pages and rug burn challenge @AJAY9979
Frances Hodgson Burnett
One summer, the kind where the air is so hot and sticky, you lay on the tile floor just to get some relief, we piled into the van, all five of us. I was stuck in the back as the only kid without a carseat, so sweaty I was slipping against the fake leather seats. The air conditioner worked, but it only cooled the front half of the van. They couldn't turn it up too high or my sister would whine about the cold. We were going to Nana's.
I loved Nana's apartment. She had all the junk food that mom would never buy like Oreo cookies, Smartfood popcorn, and rotisserie chicken. It made Nana happy that we liked those snacks, so she'd always buy extra, even when dad told her not to. He used to slip twenty- or fifty-dollar bills under a magnet on her fridge. I didn't know until I was older that she could barely afford electricity, let alone gobs of junk food and the hundreds of DVDs and CDs stacked along the walls or in boxes.
She had the ugliest golden rug on her floor, but I liked the shag fabric, at least in her apartment. It was so small that one window unit left it cold as an icebox. I loved to lay on the carpet while we watched Hell Boy or Star Trek: Generations. Mostly movies that we couldn't watch at home. But Nana was hard of hearing, and she lived alone so my parents let her do whatever she wanted.
I was seven, though I could’ve been eight, when her TV set broke. Dad drove to Best Buy to get her another one. She's the kind of person who needs the TV on at all times, even though she can't hear a word anyone says. She made dad scale up the captions so big that they took up the bottom third of the screen, but she refuses to get glasses.
While dad was at Best Buy, my mom took Nana and all of us kids grocery shopping. That was when there were only three of us. We meandered through the store, whining about how cold the refrigerator aisle was, and complaining about the heat as we entered the bottle return to collect nickels for cans.
Nana insisted we stop at Savers. Some big consignment chain that I've only ever seen in Rhode Island. My mom's the frugal type and shopping with Nana stressed her out a lot. Nana didn't understand unit pricing or buying off-brand. At Savers Nana bought mugs she wasn't able to fit into the cupboard when we got back and a pair of fuzzy clogs that had the old Tweety Bird on them.
We passed by a huge shelf of books, and she said that she wanted to pick one book for each of her grandchildren. Nat was still a baby, so she got a board book about colors. My brother was handed an abridged version of James Fenimore Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans." He never read it. Nana perused the shelves a few more minutes. I could hear mom sighing impatiently behind her as she calculated how much all of Nana's trinkets would cost from the pink candlesticks to the fake-smelling incense sticks. Nana picked up and old faded book, then a second one. Two 99 cent books with cracked covers, loosely attached binding, and yellowed pages. Frances Hodgson Burnett's books "A Secret Garden" and "A Little Princess."
We checked out and Nana didn’t see mom put the incense behind a bag of popcorn before we reached the cashier. Mom’s mouth was set into a firm line as she pulled out her wallet to pay.
Dad still hadn't come back with Nana's TV set, and we'd already had lunch. So, without the TV to entertain, and not wanting to learn how to crochet, I laid on the rug and opened "A Little Princess," careful not to rip the fragile pages from the spine. My elbows dug into the gold carpet and my feet swung loosely through the air. I was transported to a wintry London. I felt like I was breathing in the yellow fog.
I hardly noticed when Dad came back in with the TV and mom allowed Nana to put on Shrek. I was entranced by Miss Minchin's schoolroom and Sara Crewe's perfect French. I wanted to learn French and wear pretty frocks. I even grew to like Ermengarde and Lottie.
I didn't mind when I was squished in the back of the car for an hour-long ride in the hot backseat. I had Sara for company. When I got home, mom wanted us all to rotate in the showers before dinner.
"What happened to your arms?" She asked me, pointedly grabbing my forearm so that she could see my elbow. Rug burn from Nana's apartment. I hadn't even noticed.
Mom chided me for trying to read while she put antibiotics on the burns. I couldn't put the book down. I read the book until I was taping the pages together and gluing the cover back on before Dad bought me another copy.
I never got rid of the copy with the fragile binding and the faded pink cover. It still sits on my shelf. A reminder of the afternoon of yellowing pages, rug burns, and a selfless little heroine.
Small Town Bookstore
The musty smell of old books mixes with fresh rain and a pot of coffee. The door creaks as I push my way inside, enveloped by the scents. A familiar wrinkly face smiles and nods as I shake off the raindrops that saturate my hair and shoulders. "Morning" I nod in return before walking to the coat rack that sits to the right. I carefully layout my jacket on one of the old hooks that holds a hat and two other wet raincoats. It drips to the floor as I walk towards the counter. The old wood floor pops and cracks beneath each step. A red rug worn out and faded covers old stains and deterioration from the years of feet coming to and from. There are even old singe marks from the days where smoking inside was still allowed.
Her warm eyes and gray hair make me feel like a child again. Her eyes full of wisdom and kindness meet mine from behind her glasses "The usual?" she asks as she grabs a mug from behind the counter. "Yes, please." I say with excitement in my voice. A cup of black coffee from an old bookstore beats anything Starbucks can produce. It takes her a little while to get it poured but I am in no rush. Time disappears here, and that is exactly why I have come. To get lost in the yellow old pages that transport me to far away places where time is irrelevant.
I let my eyes wander, scanning the shelves and exploring cover by cover, title by title. "Here you go dear." She brings me the steaming mug as I search the shelves like a child looking under the tree on Christmas morning. "Thank you SO much." I carefully take the cup and breathe in the bitter aroma that stimulates all my senses. The first sip burns the tip of my tongue but I am far from disappointed. There is nowhere else I would rather spend my rainy morning than with yellowing books and rug burns.
Spitting Image
“Charles, get your butt over here!” Linda Mason yelled from the gazebo in her backyard. The gazebo was hanging on by nothing more than a prayer, but Linda still sat inside of it every afternoon. In front of her was a worn out copy of V. C. Andrews Flowers in the Attic, which she’d read a dozen times. The pages had yellowed from coffee stains and smudged cigarette ash, which made sense because Linda Mason never walked into the gazebo without a coffee and a pack of Lucky’s.
Charles was her son. A 12-year-old boy who was autistic and mute. He hadn’t said a word since his fifth birthday, when he asked, “Where is daddy?” And Linda Mason promptly replied, “Hopefully halfway to hell by now.”
The truth was that Charlie Sr. had died in 1974 in Vietnam. The soldiers that came knocking on the screen door of their small trailer in Knoxville told them he’d died protecting Saigon. Linda had scoffed as Charlie stared at the man intently. “Protecting some slant eyes who don’t give a flying shit about us. What a waste of a goddamn life.” She said and tousled Charlie’s hair. “Listen Charlie, you’re gonna stay here with momma for as long as momma needs you, alright?” Charlie nodded his head, and she told the men in green to get off her property. She was done with men. She was done with the army.
And although Linda Mason never loved Charlie Sr, she’d be a liar if she said she didn’t miss the old dangling appendage between his legs. Boy, could that man get her going, and keep her coming. He was like a bull. There were some nights she remembered having sex until the sun came up and still wanting for more. But Charlie Sr worked down at the textile plant and always had early shifts.
Then she got pregnant and old Charlie Sr. didn’t care much for the baby bump, nor the morning sickness, or vicious mood swings. He spent most of his time at work, then the bar, and often in the beds of women which he paid for. Spending money that was desperately needed at home.
When Linda was about at her wits end, (one evening she stood over the bed with a kitchen knife, staring at him for an hour), she saw a letter from the U.S Army, old Charlie Sr had been drafted when the war was at its least popular, and Linda laughed. She held that letter, smoking cigarettes and reading in the gazebo, that Charlie swore he’d fix, and she laughed.
During his two tours, he wrote occasionally. But never asked about Charlie much, because he didn’t care. Whether he lived or died, Linda made peace with the fact that he wasn’t returning to their little shithole in Knoxville. He was never coming back.
And as Charlie got older, she started to notice things that were off about him. Blank stares to nowhere, and often she’d catch him watching her change or get out of the shower. “Charlie, you goddamn pervert, stop looking at me.”
But as the years went on, he grew tall for his age. Almost as tall as his father, and Linda noticed she didn’t care as much about the staring. In fact, her body tingled when he did.
“Boy, did I ever tell you how much you look like your father?” She said, and Charlie just stared. “Boy, you’re a spitting image.” And she’d smile. And slowly wrap the towel around her breasts and tie it in the front.
Eventually, the staring lost its excitement and Linda wanted more. She hadn’t been with a man since Charlie Sr, and though she tried it with a woman one night outside of a downtown pub against a brick wall, it hadn’t been the same. She just didn’t swing that way, she supposed. Although she wanted to, because like she said, she had no use for men. Except for one.
One evening, Linda drifted off to sleep with a book in one hand and a glass of red wine in the other, which spilled on the carpet next to bed. She woke to a scratching noise. The room was black and her head was spinning.
She said, “Who’s there, Charlie? Is that you?”
The scratching continued. So Linda turned on the light next to bed and saw Charlie down on all fours, trying to clean the wine out of the carpet.
“Charlie, what in God’s name are you doing?” She said, but of course there was no answer.
As Linda stared intently at her boy, who looked much like her old husband, she noticed that the stain on the carpet wasn’t being cleaned. In fact, it looked like the opposite. Blood was forming on the carpet, and she went down and grabbed Charlie’s hands.
They were rug burnt, the worse she’d ever seen. His hands were peeling and bleeding. She held his hands in hers and cried. “Charlie, why would you do this? What are you doing? What is wrong with you?”
Again, he stared.
“Charlie, do you understand me? I know you won’t talk, but do you understand me? Can you nod your head if you do, baby? Please? For mommy?”
Nothing.
“I’m sorry about what I said about your daddy, Charlie. Momma’s sorry.”
Nothing.
“I shouldn’t have said those things about your daddy. He died in a war, baby. He died a long time ago. He wasn’t no great man, but I shouldn’t have said bad things about him, baby, I’m sorry. Let me go grab some ice for your hands. Wait here, alright?”
Linda placed him on the bed, then she took off his shirt, which was covered in blood, and went to the freezer where she grabbed some ice cubes and wrapped them in a cloth. She brought them back to the bedroom. “Here, hold on to these baby, okay?”
She leaned over him, wrapping her arm around his shoulder as he massaged the ice cubes. Linda told herself to stop, but she felt warm. Charlie’s back looked like his father’s. She rubbed down his spine and then made the T and thought about the stations of the cross. Specifically, the fifth station where Simon helps Jesus carry the cross, and hoped that she was helping her son carry his own cross.
Charlie even had the same succession of birthmarks that crawled perpendicular down his back. She traced her fingers in them like a connect the dots and kissed his neck. “It’s okay, hunny. Remember when I told you that you need to take care of your momma? This is how you need to take care of momma and how momma needs to take care of you, alright? Just lay down. Momma will take care of you.”
And that evening, Linda Mason decided that she could have the best of both worlds. A man to make love to and a son to raise. As Charlie slept that evening, Linda smoked cigarettes and stared at the ceiling. Smiling.
———————————
“Get your butt over here, right now, Charles!” Linda called as she put down Flowers in the Attic, and ashed out her cigarette.
Charlie came over, dragging his feet, and she grabbed him by the ear. “Charlie, what did I say about staring at that little slut next door, eh? What did I say?”
The little stretch of land that Linda Mason owned on Cinnamon Lane had been deserted for a little while, leaving Linda and Charlie alone, which suited Linda just fine. Right before Charlie Sr. had gone away, there was another trailer along a thin stretch of dirt road, where Remus lived before he died.
Remus was an old man who was a cook during the second world war. Came home, got diabetes and lost his right leg up to his knee. He’d sit outside in the wheelchair, drinking brown liquor and singing old cowboy tunes.
She missed the old fella, but had enjoyed the solitude. But a few weeks ago, a single mother and her fifteen-year-old daughter had come barreling down that road like every State Trooper in Tennessee was hot on their tails, and moved right into Remus’s trailer.
Linda had let it go for a few days, but noticed that Charlie wasn’t around as much. She caught him wandering up the dirt road frequently, yelling for him to get his ass back to the trailer.
Then Charlie got caught, staring at Julie Thorne through her bedroom window as she got dressed in the morning.
Julie’s mother’s name was Verna, and Verna walked over one Sunday morning with Julie and knocked lightly on Linda Mason’s door. Linda answered, knowing full well why they were here.
“How can I help you?”
“Uh, hi ma’am, my daughter here says that your boy was peeking through her window as she was getting changed earlier, and he just gave her a spook is all.”
Linda laughed, “Oh Charlie, don’t mean nothing by it, miss uh?
“Verna Thorne, and this is my daughter Julie.”
“Well Miss Thorne, my boy here is a few cards short of a full deck, if you know what I mean? He wanders, but he don’t know any better. He’s a sweet kid.”
“He’s a fucking pervert” Julie said, and then widened her eyes, shocked at her own outburst.
“Julie Anne Thorne. I did not raise you to use that kind of language.”
“It’s okay, miss Thorne. She ain’t the first to say that about old Charlie. Hell, I’ve said it myself on occasion.
Linda Mason told the Thorne girls that she’d watch Charlie and put him on a leash if she had to. They smiled awkwardly and went on down the road. Linda saw Verne slap her daughter upside the head for her cursing earlier, and Linda laughed.
A few days later, as Linda read V. C. Andrews again, she thought she’d bake one of her famous rhubarb pies and bring it down the road to the Thorne girls. She wanted to dislike them because she enjoyed being alone, and she’d enjoyed Remus’s company before he died. But she knew what it was like to raise a kid alone in this Godforsaken land, and thought having someone to talk about V. C. Andrews with and have a drink with might be fun, might be liberating. Of course, she wouldn’t tell her the entire story that she’d take to the grave.
When Verna heard a knock on the door, she was washing dishes and told Jules to go to her room and hide under the bed. That maybe daddy found them.
But it was just Linda still wearing her apron with a big cheshire cat smile, holding a freshly baked pie. “Rhubarb pie, fresh out of the oven.”
“Why thank you!” Verna said, taking the pie from Linda. “Come on in. Would you like a glass of lemonade?”
“If it won’t put you out, I’d surely like some.”
That afternoon they drank lemonade, smoked cigarettes and laughed about stories of how stupid men were. Linda told Verna about Charlie Sr, and his propensity for gambling, and call girls. How if it weren’t for his king sized cobra, she’d have no use for him at all.
Verna laughed so hard, lemonade came out of her nose. And continued to laugh after that.
Linda was curious about Verne’s man troubles and tried not to pry, so she loosened her up with stories of her own troubles and hoped that would guide her into telling Linda about her man. Which eventually it did, once the lemonade turned into cocktails.
“I was a bartender down at the Dixieland,” Verna said. “You had all sorts of assholes coming in, so it wasn’t a matter of finding a nice guy, it was just finding a smaller piece of shit.”
Linda laughed at this, knowing all too well that reality.
“I had this guy used to come in and just stare at me. Just blindly stare and smile. Used to give me the creeps. Anyway, one night another stranger named Dixon is sitting by himself humming along to the jukebox, and drinking whiskey when he sees me looking uncomfortable. He says, what’s wrong, miss? You look like you’ve seen a ghost?” And I tell em it’s nothing, just some creep staring at me and smiling. And so he says, that guy over there? And points to where he’s sitting and I nod my head. He says, well why didn’t you just say so, ma’am? And just like that, he walks over and gives him the worst beating I’d ever seen in my life.”
“And you just dropped your panties, didn’t you?” Linda asked.
“Pretty much” And they laughed again. It was a perfect afternoon until Verna looked up at the window behind Linda and screamed. Linda jumped at the sheer terror of Verne’s scream and looked behind her to see Charlie standing there, both arms covered in blood. Just staring.
Linda ran outside, scanning her boy’s arms. “What in God’s name did you do, Charlie?”
He walked back down the road, and Linda followed closely behind. They went inside the trailer, and Linda saw it was the wine stain on the carpet again. His arms had rug burns all over them.
“Oh Charlie, leave the stain you foolish, foolish boy. Leave the stain would you?
Like she’d done before, Linda went to the freezer to grab some ice cubes, wrapped them up and told Charlie to hold them as she grabbed a wet cloth and cleaned his arms.
Did you do this because you want to take care of momma?” Linda asked. “Is that why?”
“Take care,” Charlie mumbled, and Linda couldn’t believe it. “Did you just talk? Charlie, did you just talk?”
———————————-
Jules came to the kitchen not long after hearing her mother scream. She was reading a book when she heard the commotion, and when she came out she saw Linda talking to her creepy pervert son in front of the house.
“There is something deeply troubling about that boy,” Verna said, and Jules, of course, agreed. “He was covered in blood and just staring. Goodness, sending shivers up my spine.”
“Linda seems like a nice lady. Honey, get the First Aid Kit in the spare room, would you? I’ll bring it over and see if they need any help.”
Verna walked down the road and knocked on the screen door of Linda Mason’s home. Nobody answered. So she let herself in. And when she reached the bedroom, she screamed and ran out.
“Goddamnit, Charlie. Lock the damn door, would ya?” Linda said, climbing off of him. She reached under the bed, grabbed Charlie Sr’s old hunting rifle. “Here, go take care of it, baby.”
Charlie walked down the dirt road as Linda watched.
“Goddamnit, Charlie. I was beginning to like those folks."
THEWEIRDSCENTOFYELLOWINGBOOKS AND TH E SMOKY VISAGE OF RUG BURNS.
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