Free Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness by Jennifer Tseng Page A

with anyone. I glanced back at Nella who was making a flyer for the Saturday craft. I tried in vain to read her face. It was inscrutable. Her left hand delved noisily into the cavernous bag of puffs while her right hand clicked the mouse. She might have continued these actions for the duration of our encounter, absorbed by her task, or she might have used them as a cover while listening intently. I was no stranger to such tricks of the librarian’s trade.
    Of course it mattered little whether Nella had heard me or not. Nella, with her ever scanning yet half-mast eyes, her perpetually cocked ears and her silence, her insistence on a slow pulse, a flat heart rate, her refusal to fret over any library matter, should have been the least of my worries. What my lobe-less brain failed to compute that afternoon (paradox being an inaccessible concept to one as denuded of reason as I had become) was that by reaching out to the young man, I had made myself an island. With each passing minute I drifted further from the main, further from the familiar shore upon which Nella’s hand was partaking once more of the flame-colored pile as she contemplated clip art and fonts for her flyer, upon which Siobhan in the next room, with her long, graceful fingers and their fine, tapered nails, was gently setting still more green cards into the wooden tray in service of those whose desires required additional research, upon which our director, in the basement below me, her energy unflagging as that of a hired horse, stayed late most nights, cataloging new acquisitions, writing grants, making phone calls, paying bills, reassessing the budget, signing off every two weeks on the time sheets that would pay me my due. The shore upon which I too had once occupied myself with the tools of my trade—bone folder, X-Acto knife, scissors, book tape, scotch tape, paper cutter, paper shredder, countless rolls of stickers, and plastic laminate—was swiftly disappearing. I had crossed one chasm only to discover another. Between the receding shore of my former existence and the tiny green earth of my new life rose a dark, watery gulf. But I had yet to discover it. I was stranded in my joy.
     
    When at last my shift was over, I ran to the apartment brimming with happiness. As nonsensical as it may sound, I couldn’t wait to see Maria.
    She was in the garden. As soon as I saw her red coat I ran toward it. “Ave Maria!” I cried out.
    “Mama!” she shouted. I knelt down and held her. She wriggled away. “Mama! Did you bring me something?” It was my daily habit to bring her a book. In my trembling, lobotomized state, I had forgotten.
    “Oh no! I’m sorry, love, I didn’t have time.” My first lie. (I didn’t count the lie I had invented in order to procure an extra fifteen minutes for myself each morning. That was an innocent lie, invented for innocent purposes.) I don’t know why I didn’t simply tell the truth and confess that I’d forgotten. It was the beginning of my use of treachery to establish the appearance of truth.
    “But you’re supposed to bring me something!” she whined.
    “I know, I know,” I said quickly, too happy to get bogged down. “I’ll bring you two things tomorrow, I promise!” Though as yet I had committed no wrong, my guilt had already ignited in me a need to make reparations.
    I wanted to tell her. I wanted her to know why I was happy. It was a stupid and dangerous desire to be sure. I quelled it.
    “Will you put me in the tree?” she asked, sensing that I would do virtually anything for her.
    “Yes!” I ran with her to the other side of the garden and lifted her onto the lowest branch of her favorite oak tree. A translucent net of fog passed over us, barely visible against the silver sky. “It’s such a lovely afternoon,” I said, squinting up at her. She growled at me, the way she did whenever I spoke to her directly while in fact preoccupied with other thoughts. I growled back and held her ankles.