When I was twelve, I finally risked my mother’s wrath as I sneaked into her bedroom to read books she had forbidden me to touch.
Up until then my grandmother had lived with us. With my grandmother in the house, it was very difficult to get some alone time. She was always bustling about and would open any closed door with just a brief one-rap knock before entering.
Also, I was old enough that my mother trusted me to be alone in the house while she ran errands. This gave me a reasonable length of time to read. I would be able to hear her unlocking the door on her return and have plenty of time to put the book back and get out of her room.
The books had always been there, sitting on a small three-shelf bookcase in the alcove at the far end of the bedroom. I remember being told, “Don’t touch” before I was even able to read. At first when I did not read, they were only a curiosity and not particularly interesting. But as I learned, I wondered why I could not t read those books in my mother’s room.
If I had been a different sort of child, I might have risked exploration earlier. However, I really did not want to face my mother’s anger. It is not as though I would have been spanked, although there were a few times when that did happened. It was her words. She could make you feel just awful, almost like you had a bad case of the flu. My stomach would get all twisted and it was like I’d swallowed something indigestible. Hard and heavy, it sat in my stomach for the longest time.
So, the books had been safe for ten years. When, at last I dared to touch them, I first washed my hands thoroughly. I did not want to leave any tell-tale marks. Near the bookcase was a small stool with tip-out steps that changed it into a stepladder. I used the second step as my reading seat.
I scanned the shelves and found two books I recognized. They were books of poetry from which my mother had read to me at bedtime when I was little, An Anthology of World Poetry and Poet’s Gold.
That was kind of disappointing. Why would those be forbidden? Maybe she just did not have anywhere else to put them. I looked further.
One book was really old, so old that the writing on the cover was hard to read. I pulled it from the shelf. It wasn’t stiff like most books. It spilled from my hand like bread dough. I laid it on my lap and carefully opened it. The pages were tissue thin, very easy to tear. There were two columns of print. It was a book of plays. I carefully turned to the title page: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.
Hmm. Odd that my mother would forbid this, too, unless Shakespeare really was something I should not be reading yet. We had watched a Shakespeare play on television. Maybe it was just the delicate pages that made her hide this book away. I decided she was wise about that. I probably would tear them, even if it was only by accident
What was next? Another old book. It, too, had a soft cover, but the writing was clear. Stories by Guy de Maupassant. Who? The pages of this book were sturdier, though still rather thin. Inside were several stories. This was good. I could probably get a whole story read while my mother was at the grocery store.
I put it back to look at the next on the shelf: The Plays of Henrik Ibsen. This was a fat book with stiff covers and good, strong paper. I might start with this one.
But first I checked out the rest of the treasures. World Book of Knowledge (several volumes), Book of Wisdom, Light of Asia, Rubyat of Omar Khahyam, The Humor of Robert Benchley, and so on till I got to the bottom shelf where I found Colliers Encyclopedia. Huh. I checked it out. Tissue paper pages, again. Must be why she hid it here.
After my first exploration, I returned again and again, always in secret. Eventually I was caught.
I had been careless. A small peanut butter finger smudge smeared itself onto a page of Ibsen.
“Have you been reading this book?” my mother asked as she held out the collection of Ibsen’s plays.
At first, I was going to deny it.
“There’s a grease mark on this page.” She pointed to it. “It looks like peanut butter. Did you do this?”
What would happen if I admitted my guilt? I was reading the forbidden books. If that was not bad enough, I had damaged one.
“It’s all right to read the book, although I think you are a little young for some of this. But if you are going to read it, you need to treat the book with respect. It isn’t like some throw-away comic book. This was an expensive book. All the books in my room were expensive and they are all important to me. I want them to be kept clean and handled carefully. The next time you want to read from my library, ask me. Is that clear?”
I answered “Yes” and she returned the book to her room.
What a surprise. I thought I’d be in a lot more trouble. The books were not forbidden after all. There was one play of Ibsen’s my mother wanted me to skip (Ghosts), but I had already read it. After that, I read anything I wanted.
But I still cherish the memory and thrill of crouching in secret beside that small bookcase, ears straining to hear any sound, as I read those wonderfully strong stories and plays in the days before the ban was lifted.
#Books #PersonalLibraries #ForbiddenBooks #ReadingandDiscovery
