by, then stepped into a vast, almost church-like space with old wood floors and a breezy high-beamed ceiling. Light streamed into the space from the huge windows on either end, illuminating the dust in the air. Towering shelves divided the room, all painted different colors. Books poured from every box, every shelf, every basket, and every drawer. To my left was a large desk with books and cards spread over the top, an ashtray filled with half-smoked cigarettes. People milled around with books in their arms, but quietly, as if afraid of making a sound. I could have sworn I heard the sound of rain, but when I glanced out one of the long windows on the far wall, the sun was flaring and the sky bright blue. The whole place smelled like smoke tinged with spices and must.
I realized I was standing there with my mouth open, so I snapped it shut and forced myself toward the shelves. I picked an aisle without even looking and began wandering through it, running my fingers along the spines of the books. I stopped and plucked one off the shelf, stared at the black markings inside until I grew dizzy. I heard a sound then and looked up to see a couple standing at the end of the aisle, kissing. When a man turned in and started toward me, I nearly fell over with fear—until I realized he wasn’t paying me any mind at all, but was staring intently at something through a gap on one of the higher shelves.
Suddenly I heard the faint sound of sobbing. I looked around, startled, then tiptoed over, as far away from the man as possible, to peer through one of the openings myself.
I saw a woman with a scarf pulled over her face, sitting at the table and crying. Mary Finn sat across from her. I heard the shush of whispers but could not make out what they were saying. The two women were almost opposites: the one hunched over and covered from head to toe, the other awash in color, her black hair coiling down her bare arms, her tanned, freckled shoulders glimmering as if with oil. Mary’s eyes were intent on the woman across from her, and she reached out her hand to the woman, patted her arm. I moved closer, out of one row and into another, and another, where I could hear. It was one advantage of my size: I could move quietly, as if I were not there at all. By the time I was able to see again, Mary had set out a deck of cards—tarot cards, I would learn later—and was explaining them to the woman. Then, for a moment, the woman’s scarf slipped and I saw her face in profile, only for a split second before she quickly covered herself again. It was Mrs. Adams from down the road, I realized, shocked. But she was different now, rubbed raw and bare. I could see her sadness, slipping off her body like smoke.
“But how can I make him stay faithful?” I heard her whisper, her voice all twisted up from any way I’d ever heard it.
“I have no mind for vision or prophecies,” Mary whispered then. “I just know what the cards say. But if I were you I would wear a yellow skirt and toss yarrow root in his tea before bed. It will keep him close to home when he wants to wander.” She reached down and held up a handful of something green and glittering, then quickly wrapped it in a kerchief and slid it to Mrs. Adams.
“Thank you,” the woman whispered, wiping her face. Mary looked up then, straight at me, through the books. Her eyes like cat’s eyes, blue as sapphires. I ducked. A moment later I heard Mrs. Adams shuffling away, and prayed Mary was following her.
My heart pounded.
“What are you doing, little girl?” I heard Mary’s smoky, low voice over me and looked up. The scent of gingerbread wafted down the aisle.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, but she just smiled and beckoned for me to come toward her.
“Have you come to visit me?” she asked. “These women, they always want my advice. They think I’m some kind of witch.” She made a spooky face and I laughed without thinking. “Then they ignore me on the streets, pretend they haven’t come by to tell me their heartbreaks and woes. They’re embarrassed that they have hearts at all, I think.”
I smiled. “I sneaked out of my house. I’ve never been here before.”
“Come,” she said. “There’s probably a line out the door by now.”
I began following her through the stacks to the front of the library, staring at her multicolored swirling skirt.
“Have you come for some books, too?” she asked, looking back.
I blushed. “I can’t read,” I said.
She looked at me with surprise just as we came to her desk, where three people stood waiting for her return. All old farmers, I realized, with their hands full of books. I expected them to be angry, having been made to wait like that, but they all lit up and practically shone as Mary came near them.
“Well, we’ll have to fix that,” she said, winking at me, before taking her seat behind the desk. “Why don’t you sit next to me while I help these gentlemen?” She smiled up at the first man in line as I sat on a stool nearby.
“Shakespeare, I see,” Mary said to the man. “The sonnets. They’ll make a romantic of you yet, Joe.”
I swear that old farmer blushed all the way down to his collarbone. “I liked Troilus and Cressida,” he said. “You were right about that’un.”
Mary smiled, then picked up another book and put it in with the one he was holding. “You’ll like this even better.”
I watched Mary check out books for at least half an hour before the library began emptying out. I stared at her mass of hair, so black it seemed to glint blue in parts, and her brown shoulders. My sister had brought home a movie magazine once and I had felt the same way then, looking at the women with pale hair and dark lips, their eyebrows like swooping lines across their foreheads. I touched my hair with my hands, imagined my body stretching up and filling out, covered with swishing fabrics like the ones Mary wore. This is what it means to be a woman, I thought. She picked up each book and thumbed to the cards in the back, and I watched her strong, sure hands.
I sat on the stool, praying she wouldn’t tell me to leave.
After a while, when the library had cleared out, Mary turned to me. “It’s busiest in the mornings and evenings,” she said. “Mostly I have the afternoons to myself.” She smiled. “So tell me, why don’t you know how to read? Aren’t you in school?”
“No,” I said softly. “My folks don’t believe in schooling. I’m supposed to work in the fields with the rest of them, but they don’t want me on account of my smallness.” I could feel my face growing red and lifted up my hands to cover it.
“Don’t believe in schooling?” she said. “What do they have you do all day, then?”
I looked up at her, nervous, but saw she wasn’t laughing. “I used to have to do chores but my house is so big, I couldn’t do much. I can’t do anything right is what my mama says. Sometimes I sneak out and hide in the fields or come to town to watch people. My mama wants me to eat potatoes and stretch my body in the window so I’ll get bigger. Then I can make my contributions, she says.”
“Well, you should have visited me sooner because that doesn’t sound like much fun at all.” She laughed. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard, in fact.”
I took my hands slowly from my face and rested them in my lap. I looked up at her and smiled.
“You know,” she said, leaning in closer, “I didn’t get along with my family either.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” she said. “My father was not a nice man. I left home as soon as I was able.”
“Oh, one day I would like to do that.” All of a sudden it seemed possible that I could leave Oakley some day, just like that.
“You will,” she said. “There’s a big place for you in the world, no matter what you think now. You’re like I was when I was your age, back when I thought I had no place at all.”
I just looked to the floor, my heart beating wildly.
“What do you love to do, Tessa?”
I looked up