Burn This Book
By Odette Kelada
When I first saw them outside our little suburban library, I thought it must be a festival or civic event. There was noise, movement, and chanting. It was only when they came closer to the windows, and I saw their faces. A man with a cap too small for his large forehead, eyes cramped under a high furrowed brow. Spittle came out of the stretched mouth of a woman next to him. The morphing of their expressions as they came into focus had the quality of a dream state. Slowly realising something is ugly. Not a festival after all.
A child was standing beneath the woman’s flailing fists, trying to avoid being knocked by the knees of the crowd. Knee height is vulnerable for kids in careless crowds of this kind. Despite all the care for children. This kid wore a navy striped dress and had the most blank expression I had seen on someone so young. She appeared totally detached, even from the woman who was likely her mother if one was to surmise from the shape of their chins and matching blonde razor cut bangs. Then I saw the child gaze through the glass, and I was sure she was looking straight at me. But there were so many books on the shelves that it was unlikely she would single me out. She was likely taking in the reflection of the flags and fury mirrored in the windows. Or perhaps, was watching somewhere else entirely. She looked a little familiar, perhaps one of those romping around the beanbags in the costume of a wood elf? That might be it.
The crowd bloated with more bodies as it travelled the path to our doors. We were locked today for some reason but that did not appear to stop them. They had almost come to the steps, and it dawned on me that locked doors might not stop them after all.
A short compact woman cut across the lawn and spliced in front of the crowd. She walked up the steps and stood facing out. Blocking the pathway to our library entrance, she adjusted her silver framed glasses and put her faux leather handbag down at her shoes. It appeared she was prepared to stay a while. To be honest, I had not noticed her much before this day. She tended to blend in her shades of grey and olive. A wall flower as they would dismissively describe such a woman. I suspect she usually made an art out of disappearing. An invisibility cloak of a sort, this ability to camouflage, ensuring eyes skim through and over one’s body. A handy trick. I did not expect this part-time librarian to be the one to stand up to much of anything. But here she was. One small boned and cardigan wrapped protector.
The crowd seemed bemused. This singular person was unexpected. To those that had bothered to notice her existence, she was a shy unassuming sort. They waited for her to speak. She said nothing while clearly obstructing their path. The abuse began. It started mildly enough.
“What do you think you’re doing Mzzz Parks?” Long drawn out hissing of MS to make the point she was an unmarried woman. Alone in this world. Unwanted apparently. Undefended.
“How much do we pay you to corrupt our children?”
“Filth and trash, that’s what you teach them now days.”
“No shame, no shame have you?”
“Who gave you the right. I’m their parent. I tell them what to think.”
As she stayed silent, the tone degraded with remarks on her character, to insulting her intelligence and then her figure. Soon she went from librarian to sinful whore. That slippery slope never takes much time to descend when cursing a woman. Highly unoriginal. Her calm was uncanny, no flinching, no wavering of her steady gaze through the thin lens of her spectacles.
It was infuriating to the crowd, the temerity—a taunt, a tease, a traitor.
In truth, they could have pushed past her with ease. She was hardly an obstacle of any significance. It was odd how they didn’t. How something in the way she stood, her complete ease and stillness so concrete and somehow infinite, stopped them.
As I began to fear for her safety, one by one the children came out from the crowd. The first was the navy striped girl. No longer detached but looking up at the librarian.
“Hello, Ms Parks.” As she came forward, her mother gasped and reached to grab her child’s elbow. Navy stripe slipped out of her grasp, elegant as an eel. Practiced in avoiding adults.
Then a boy with flushed cheeks, no older than ten squeezed out from the nest of knees to join them.
“Johnny, you come back here.” A hand grabbed air as Johnny weaved his way through the flanks.
And one by one, more children started to wriggle free. Not all succeeded, some were clamped shut under a sweaty palm on their heads. Others didn’t attempt to move but watched on like miniature mirrors of the righteous bigger version of themselves at their side.
“We’ll get you fired Parks,” Navy’s mother spat out. “Look what you’ve done to our kids.”
Chants of ‘shame’ began but soon died away. Something had shifted. Legs shuffled and they started to avert their eyes from the steady gaze of Ms Parks. To have their own offspring turn on them. Who predicted it had gone so far? It was a surprise manoeuvre they did not foresee. Now they knew without doubt, she had poisoned their tiny sacred minds.
“We’ll be back tomorrow.” Man with the small cap pointed his finger at Ms Parks. “And we’re bringing the school board.”
He had no child with him but that didn’t appear to dampen his fervour to save the children. “Tomorrow.”
Navy was at last caught by her mother who gave Ms Parks one final spray of invective. Humiliated as she was by her own flesh’n blood.
•
I had survived today but the future was grim if counting on the School Board. Strategic, hostile takeovers had left them stacked with Mothers for God, National Patriots and Friends of Freedom. Such beautiful names they had, stuffed with warmth and comfort.
As the crowd backed away from the steps and dissolved into the streets and chamomile lawns, the librarian picked up her handbag. She unlocked the library door, adjusted the “Everyone is Welcome Here” sign hanging directly facing the entrance, and walked across to the reading area festooned with rainbow posters. She sat for a long while, letting the colours wash over her.
•
The next day they returned. There was a meeting called in the school auditorium. The Board of Mothers, Patriots and Friends were a tight sorority, adept at killing dissent with their newly tweeted policies. The innocence of Johnnys and Navy Stripes gave licence to those searching for their god in an age of godlessness. They stalked one by one in front of the lectern as if their fantasies of life as an apex predator were now realised. Their time to shine.
•
Who knows who lit the fire? It was not an official book burning as one might imagine. No masses lobbing us into the flames. It was a discreet act of arson, as befitted this nice neighbourhood. But even as fire alarms screamed from the ceilings pockmarked with tape from the torn down rainbows, no one appeared to rush to our rescue. No fast response time. All I saw through the smoke was that small-boned figure. Witness to our banning and burning. A middle-aged part-time librarian. She was by nature a highly organised creature. After the crowd had left the day before, the printer churned out lists of our names and makers. Before her staff card was declined, she had combed our shelves and made sure every one of us was noted. Promising us in that quiet voice of a library, we were not so easy to destroy.
•
Now the heat simmers around me and the smell of wet smoking wood is getting stronger. Not much time left. Soon it will reach me and given how combustible I am, it will be over very quickly. What does it take to burn a book? What does a book have to do to get burned? How many people have I offended simply by existing?
The times when we books are the culprits are the times to fear the most. That is what books tell you. If you read us to learn something that is. But fear is not much into reading. Though fear does love a good tale to tell. And each time the tale gets taller. Libraries, the refuge for loners and introverts, are now the loci of evil. I had thought if I was innocuous enough, perhaps I might stay out of harm’s way. Eventually though, as the saying goes, they would come for me.
Would you want to hand me to your child? Well, that all depends on what you want your child to know and whose child we are talking about. And as happens in these moments, it becomes all about the children. Even from people who never gave a thought to a child, who can’t stand a child screaming in a café or blocking the isles in an epic tantrum as you reach for your multigrain seven seeds. Nothing fires up a conversation or a war like talking about the babies. If there is doubt or dissent, just repeat again and again the homespun recipe. Nothing so sweet, vulnerable and in need as our children. Not theirs so much. But definitely ours.
It is telling what makes humans scared. Anything that might transform and change. The alchemy of curiosity is the target. Anything that can open the mind into new spaces. This is the first time I personally have faced an angry mob. But as I have full access to the archives (as all books do), I know how many of us have burned before. The scenes cut into our collective memories. We float across language and time. We are far more powerful than even those who might love us realise. That is why even as I linger now on the line between paper and ashes, there is still a little hope. The stories of those that survived and fought, do not die silently. Our pile of burning letters is loud.
Southeast Elementary Inferno. Who would have thought this library would be so interesting? Usually, there are huddles on bean bags for story time. Sometimes with puppets. No cake though. No crumbs in the library. But there are board games, puzzles and crosswords. For those, too young or too tired for anything like literature. The choose your own adventures are having a resurgence. The current batch of kids like options. And having some agency in the stories they are told. Perhaps that is where this library went a little too far. Reading marathons and glittering gatherings to dress up as whatever character you might want to be. Windows of possibility. So much colour. A little too much colour…
This town was a neat town. Wide tree lined streets. Statues to great white men who conquered the place towering over our public spaces. Water fountains at handy distances. Considerate. Even drinking bowls for dogs placed outside wholefood cafes. I had travelled through a few libraries, and this was the most ordered and clipped lawn place I had seen. Maybe that should have been the clue that this was a place with so much to defend and protect. Nice places made for a certain kind of comfort are the ones to watch. The families swinging on the orange plastic recycled swings in the park, the ‘save the greyhounds’ stalls at the local farmers market, the lord’s prayer hung in a banner across the town hall. These are the signs to note when assessing what is real and what is buried in any place. This calm had that oceanic impermanence to it. Carefully curated and resting on so many bones. Polite society at its most fearsome. These are the thoughts that came up in the days before the fires began. Sweet scents of magnolia and star jasmine as the humid spring made everything steam. Floral tones to the smoke and cinder falling through the air.
I did not expect that in this age of internet, we would still be seen as having such importance. For a long time, I heard books are dead. It is the end of our era. Time over. But here we are. As dangerous as ever. Even as the heat starts to creep up my spine, there is a surprising satisfaction that we still apparently matter so much. So much human energy. Attention.
Author’s Note: This short fiction is inspired by the rising numbers of book bannings including a children’s story of Rosa Parks’ life, marginalised voices telling truths on critical facts such as race history, colonisation, and LGBTQI+ voices. A documentary, “The ABC’s of Book Banning,” in which children share their perspectives on these book bannings, and the censure of a teacher who refused to take down an “Everyone is Welcome Here” poster were also sources of inspiration. Emulating the U.S, this is now happening in Australia. We are infected by divisive politics, seeing riots at book shops and protests at schools and libraries, and storytelling events closing down, silencing those that have only recently been able to have a voice.
Dr. Odette Kelada is a Lecturer in Creative Writing and also teaches in Race Studies at the University of Melbourne. She has a PhD in literature on researching the lives of Australian women writers and the politics of nationhood. She facilitates racial literacy workshops for community and government organisations and has hosted numerous panels and presented conference papers on themes of feminism, the racial imaginary and creative activism. Her research and writing focuses on marginalised voices, gender and anti-racism, and has appeared in numerous publications including Overland, The Australian Cultural History Journal, Outskirts feminism journal, Postcolonial Studies, Hecate, Intercultural Studies and the Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. Her novel, Drawing Sybylla: the real and imagined lives of Australian women writers, won the Dorothy Hewett Award in 2017. It spans a century and imagines women fighting oppressive forces to have their voices heard.
Photo by Phil Venditti, via a Creative Commons license, of a political cartoon by Clay Bennet
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