Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: BOOK(S) - Begins January 4 / Ends January 11 (01/04/18)
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TITLE: Brightly Shining Comfort | Previous Challenge Entry
By Ann Stocking
01/11/18 -
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Wrapping her arms around her knees, Libby sang. Softly, so she wouldn’t bother Mom. Mom’d snapped off the radio before slamming her bedroom door, complaining of a headache made worse, she said, by ridiculous pa-rum-pum-pum-ing and jingling bells.
Soon, forgetting the words to Silent Night, Libby tiptoed to the kitchen. There was nothing in the refrigerator but mustard, a hardened nodule glued to the side of the bottle, a withered carrot, half a jar of discoloured pickles. In the cupboard, Libby found saltine crackers, the cellophane bag spilling crumbs.
Beneath the scrawny tree, Libby nibbled the stale crackers, and then, belly still grumbling, she riffled through her gifts. A puzzle, a pink scarf, a book. A lady in a uniform had brought the gaily wrapped packages, saying she was from the army, a special army, and Libby could even read “Army” on the badge on the lady’s suit jacket. Daddy had shouted angrily when he saw the presents, but Mom told him, shrugging, never mind, there’s nothing else anyway.
Libby’d opened the gifts alone, after Mom’s bedroom door’d banged shut. Daddy had left before Libby got up, or maybe he hadn’t come home at all the night before; Libby didn’t know. Sometimes he has business, Mom said, that keeps him away all night.
Libby wrapped the scarf around her neck and looked at the puzzle box. Three ponies gamboled across a flower-sprinkled field. Ages 9+, the box said. Libby was six. She pushed aside the puzzle and picked up the book.
The Big Surprise, rainbow colours announce. A boy and girl stand by a pond, two grownups standing behind them. Bright smiles show gleaming teeth; arms curve around shoulders. Libby turned to the first page.
“Finish your breakfast, children.”
Libby stared at the pancakes, the bowl of blueberries, snowy napkins, yellow butter. No mosaic of coffee stains, cigarette scorches, or dried ketchup decorates the table. Libby flipped the page.
“Get your jackets. Let’s go!”
The spotless jackets have all their buttons and hang tidily by the door. By the fourth page, the family is riding in a sparkling car, singing merrily about sunbeams and bunnies, a picnic basket tucked into the backseat between the children. Butterflies pirouette, a winged kaleidoscope in a cerulean sky.
Libby slapped the book shut, and, without thinking, without planning, hurled it. It skidded across the linoleum and slid under Daddy’s chair, the pockmarked, greasy, frayed chair that was only for Daddy. Then ashamed, remembering the Army lady’s kind smile, Libby dragged the book out, along with clots of dust and hair, spent matches, and curls of petrified orange peel.
But page after page, the insistent perfections continue, and a swell of yearning, of hopelessness, of resignation, rose in Libby. A tingling, then a molten rush surged from deep inside her, flowing to her toes, to her fingers, and before she could stop herself, she tore a page from the book, then the next and another, feeling oddly soothed as grinning faces were separated from mannerly hair, neatly cut sandwiches from clean pink fingers, the romping puppy ripped from the too-orderly grass. Satisfaction, a cooling wave, washed over Libby.
“What are you doing?”
Mom leaned in the bedroom doorway, pushing her stringy hair away from her face. Libby jumped, dropping the empty book cover.
“What is wrong with you, Libby?”
Squeezing her eyes shut against the bite of tears, Libby stilled herself, made herself small.
“Good thing Santa didn’t bother coming. You wreck everything.” Mom’s words were like bullets, colliding with Libby, and then the door banged shut, leaving Libby alone with the ruined book, the happy family and the picnic lunch and the new puppy. Libby gathered the torn pages and shoved them under the plastic tree skirt. Gone.
Hunched beneath the tree, Libby tentatively, curiously, touched a light, a blue one, with her finger. The warmth astonished her. Resolutely, she chose an orange bulb and touched her wrist to its fiery glow, surrendering her tender skin to the searing heat. For a fleeting, scorching moment, the ache inside eased.
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Well written story of a girl whose life pales in comparison to a book she's given at Christmas by a Salvation Army official, and her ability to cope by ripping its pages out one by one.
Brilliantly done.