Bumblebee Books

by Sherry Asbury

Summer was the best time in the world. It was time I lived at Grammy’s house. My parents wanted a boy. Grammy did not care a whit. She told me I was her darling and she would love me always.

I drove Daddy crazy. Looking back, I realize I was a hyperactive child, something that was not identified in the early 1950’s, not among poor, simple folk who had barely enough to feed and tend their families. Daddy said I was dumb. I was in first grade and Teacher said I read at high school level. The governor of Oregon State was touring schools and I was called out to read to him.

Daddy said I was a show-off, but Grammy liked my show-offs. She would play the piano while I pretended to be a sparkly lounge singer. This would cause the dogs to bark, the cats to hide and the caged birds to join in raucously. When I made up words of my own for the songs, Grammy would hug me fiercely and call me her little prodigy. I had no idea what a prodigy was, but if it came from Grammy, it had to be a nice thing.

Grandpa was my hero, a quiet, gentle man who hummed along to our songs, around a crusty briar pipe he kept clenched between huge yellow teeth. When people called us poor white trash, he would lift me to his knee and tell me not to listen to that kind of ignorance. I guess the ignorant folk labeled us because we still had an outhouse and a root cellar. Electricity had not reached the seven miles out of town to our place. Anyway, Grammy cursed the electric - called it "Satan’s seed," and no business in a "Saved by Jesus" home. The faithful old cook stove was good enough for her.

Every summer, late in June, big rumbling yellow trucks crawled down from the hot-tar county road. Each was slow and dignified, as if they understood what important cargo they carried. Each one had "Kalispell Public Schools" written on the side in big black letters. They would stop at Grammy's and unload the broken books.

My daddy would drop me off there, and warn me not to get above myself, and let my Grammy fill my head with useless nonsense — and behave! I never had to be told to behave at Grammy’s house. Grammy and I worked together openly on those books all day. Every book was a magic-carpet ride that would take me to wondrous places. Grammy taught me to be sure each book was looked at page by page.

We had fat little glue-pots with tongue depressors sticking out of their necks. We had the amber bottles that, when put on paper, would spit glue through rubbery lips. There was transparent tape for rips and tears. There were gobby pink-erasers, and hard, white cubes for erasing ink. We had scissors and a clamp with a jaw.

This clamp was for books with spine problems. Grammy would say in her most serious voice, "Sherry, Darling, this book needs a spinal tap." Then she would laugh at her joke. She did not know then that spinal taps would become very common. She meant tap, as in how she took a rubber hammer and knocked all the pages straight. We would laugh and giggle until Grandpa came in to see what the 'tarnation was going on.

It was my job to erase pen and pencil marks. Sometimes I would point to an unmentionable word and a erase the mark and give it no more thought. We mend because a book is the best treasure in the world.

Each summer I longed for the days when we would repair the geography books. I was fascinated with maps. Grammy pointed out Teasdale on Tyne, after coming from Cork in Ireland, where she had been born. She showed me She showed me London, where she saw a werewolf on the White Chapel Road. Next would be Canada, where she emigrated with her brothers and sisters - Rose, Pearl, Pansy, Edgar and Walter. She, Flora, made six.

Afternoons were solid, heavy things. Sun shone through the windows in fat, yellow stripes, and you could see the dust motes hanging in the air. I asked Grammy if there would be books in heaven. "All the books you would ever want to read," she replied. Grammy was an educated woman. Daddy said her people were hoity-toits, whatever that was.

Daddy and Mama did not like books, and as I grew older, I realized they could not read well. Daddy said I was not to get ideas above myself, but I hung on to every word from my Grammy’s lips.

Grammy wrote poetry. She would read me satin words that flowed with magic. She read Emily Dickinson, Keats, Jonson and Shakespeare until I was dizzy with delight.

On days hazy with heat we had to watch out for fat bumblebees that squeezed through holes in the screens. They loved our glue-pots and would hover like hummingbirds, waiting to poke their noses into the nectar. Grandpa would bring the flyswatter and peck at them, but we never got stung.

The books were all repaired by August 20th. Extra bits of time were for fun. One day Grammy coated my hand with Elmer’s glue. When it was dry, she peeled it of in long, gauzy strips. Two small tears fell from her earnest blue eyes "Sherry, darling, if only I could peel away your sorrows and hurts this easily."

It was dry and dusty the day they came to pick up the books. Our neighbor Shandry followed in her old Model A, jumping down from the car with a thunderous thud. She was a big woman, and the men driving the trucks were scared of her.

Grammy waited until Shandry stood in front of us and gave her a quizzical look. Shandry grinned and pulled a velvet-covered book from her overalls. Grammy took it and turned to me, "Sherry, darling, you have been given a gift of words. You must cherish this gift and share it with the world." It was said like a funeral dirge, but it stuck fast to my heart. On the front it said, Emily Dickinson.

There was a place in the piano where we hid the book, and we would take it out in the afternoons and read in the meadow.

Grammy died some years later. Mama found the book in the piano and was looking at the cover. Daddy reached out and snatched it from her, throwing it on the burning pile, where it shed its skin gracefully.

Those sad curls of onionskin became smoke and ashes, but the words stayed curled about my soul. I did not need a book to recall all the wondrous magic of Emily’s writing.

Grammy was right. I grew up and became a poet/writer. I cherish books and rescue the old and battered volumes that, I'm sure, have come to me from my Grammy.

My children started reading early, probably from hearing the stories over and over. We would go to the local library every week for story time, and spend hours looking at books and talking about them. They learned to treat books with respect and their first library cards were their greatest joy. Reading to Morgan and Molly was a secret garden for me, a place of peace and wonder.

Molly writes, too. Morgan is a great reader, reading everything that has words. The content is not always the most important thing. There is the joy of the written word, the ability to share with someone else your feelings and emotions. Books are a key to infinity; they educate and let us dream. It would be an empty world without books.

As I sit here at my computer my minds drifts to those hours with Grammy. One day I will be a Grammy, giving her grandchildren a legacy of what my Grammy taught me on those warm, bumblebee afternoons, when the smell of books imprinted itself on my soul.

Copyright by
Sherry Asbury