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.