On Literacy

·Slick, black olives eaten straight from the can—above the golden armor of a breeched hub, her faceglimmered—the lid tilted toward one side & untorn.

She was in first grade & learningwhat letters nestled against one another could do. She didn'tunderstand every word in the pocket-sized primer her teacher

gave her to take home, but she was excited about soundingout, uttering the short, declaratory sentences betweenslurping meat-like flesh. She didn't know olives

were for salads or pizzas. Tapenade was a word to be devouredin her adult years. What olives & uttering had to do with one anothershe did not know. The words                  made her believe she could

dive deeply into the hollows of a fruit & hide. She could slipinto the bedarkenedness & imagine herself tiny, glidingupon a perishable slide or tilt-a-whirl of rubber tire–like shadows.                  Who pitted that melanonic flesh?

·What she read, she could become.

·Her world was quiet. Her world was awayfrom her mother who minded her younger sister& patched worn jeans at the kneecaps & contemplatedthe next hurried meal. She was learning what it meantto retreat with an uncustomary snack in a far corner reading a book.

·She was learning ritual.

·She didn't miss the school building with its communal sinks & sharedwater fountains & teacher-appointed line leaders & returned homea little more resilient than when she'd left that morning.

·She was learning solitude.

·Do you know the lure of being read to? Mrs. Moore, the librarian, read toeach class that visited the school library. The children tried hard not tofidget as they sat in the orange-carpeted kiva, fashioned after thedwellings of the Pueblan people, though the children were in southernOhio & not the American Southwest. At the end of storytime thechildren raced to the display table hoping to check out one of the books.

·If you want to enter the tunnel, turn to page seven. If you want to go backto the river, turn to page thirteen. Those trendy Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books faded. She grew older, hungrier. She couldn't helppeeking ahead. & anyway, the boys were always first to grab those books& get to the front of the check-out line.

·But there were other boys. Cassie Logan's brothers, Stacey & Little Man.& James & the Giant Peach.

·Before the girl's neighborhood was developed with new houses, it was adairy farm. She once caught tadpoles & toads near the creek & dodgedgarter snakes in the short grasses. Every summer, hot air balloonsflooded the sky in a great race. Once, the girl & her friends ran beneath aballoon until its wide-bottomed basket of two passengers hit the dust ofa dry, empty lot. The heavy, hissing of hot air was like a kind of breathing.No gigantic insects arguing in the basket, though.

·The thickest books were the best because reading them made the girl feel older.She could eat an entire bag of potato chips while reading. Whowouldn't fall for a giant peach? Could she take a bite when she felthungry? If the bite were too big, would the peach sink to the ground?

·Her parents didn't buy her many books. They were often adding &subtracting. Subtracting again. The girl's mother took her to the library afew times.

·Memory was not judgment. She was never good at math.

·A library on wheels? The plastic book protectors crackling in her arms?The public library's Book Mobile parked at the school's curb.

·Mrs. Tipper distributed the flimsy, Scholastic newsprint sheets to theclass. The girl's mother gave her daughter two dollars to spend, whichmeant the girl could afford one or two books. She skimmed the catalog'sbook cover images and read the book descriptions. The tally sheet wasfilled with erasures—one selection swapped for another & then another.Add & subtract. Add & subtract. The girl finally settled on one, & hermother gave her the money to take back to school. When the thinpaperback arrived in a few weeks...