Free Love at the Speed of Email by Lisa McKay Page A

 
    So I read instead. I read desperately.
    I read pretty much anything I could get my hands on. One of
the few good things I could see about living in the states was the ready
availability of books. Some weekends Mum and Dad would take us to the local
library’s used-book sale. Books were a quarter each. I had a cardboard box and
carte blanche. On those Saturday mornings I was in heaven.
    Like many kids, I suspect, I was drawn to stories of
outsiders or children persevering against all odds in the face of hardship. I
devoured all of C.S. Lewis’ stories of Narnia and adored the novels of Frances
Hodgson Burnett, especially the ones featuring little girls who were raised in
India before being exiled to face great hardship in Britain. But I also strayed
into more adult territory. I trolled our bookshelves and the bookshelves of
family friends, and those bookshelves were gold mines for stories about
everything from religious persecution to murder, rape, civil war, child brides,
and honor killing.
    “It would be nice,” my father commented dryly upon reading
the first draft of this chapter, “if you could manage not to make it sound like our personal library was stocked exclusively
with troubling filth.”
    “Dad,” I explained, “that’s why I used the gold-mine
analogy. You don’t just stumble across gold; you have to dig for it. I worked
really hard to find that stuff in amongst all the boring family-friendly fare
you were prone to buying.”
    Mum and Dad didn’t know everything I got into, of course.
After they caught me reading a tale set largely in a brothel in South Africa
and confiscated it, I got stealthier with censorable material. I also found
their hiding place – behind the pile of sweaters on the top shelf of the
wardrobe – and read the rest of that particular book in chunks during times
when they were both out of the house.
    In retrospect, even at eleven I wasn’t reading largely for
pleasant diversion, for fun, for the literary equivalent of eating ice cream in
the middle of the day. I was extreme-reading – pushing boundaries – looking to
be shocked, scared, thrilled, and taught. I was reading to try to figure out
how to make sense of pain.
    It is entirely possible that had we remained in Australia
throughout my childhood, I would still have spent the majority of these preteen
years feeling isolated and misunderstood. After all, in the midst of our
mobility I never doubted my parents’ love for me or for each other, but this
did not forestall an essential loneliness that was very deeply felt. I suspect
that I would still have grown into someone who feels compelled to explore the
juxtaposition of shadow and light, someone who is drawn to discover what lies
in the dark of life and of ourselves . But I also
suspect that the shocking extremes presented by life in Bangladesh and America
propelled me down this path earlier, and farther, than I may naturally have
ventured.
    It was largely books that were my early companions on this
journey. They were stories of poverty and struggle, injustice and abuse,
violence and debauchery, yes. But they were also threaded through with honor
and courage, sacrifice and discipline, character and hope.
    Many people seem to view “real life” as the gold standard by
which to interpret stories, but I don’t think that does novels justice. For me,
at least, the relationship between the real and fictional worlds was
reciprocal. These books named emotions, pointed to virtue and vice, and led me
into a deeper understanding of things I had already witnessed and experienced
myself. They also let me try on, like a child playing dress-up, experiences and
notions new to me. They acted as maps, mirrors, and magnifying glasses.
    In those lonely childhood years, books also provided refuge.
They were havens and sanctums.
    Did that make them home?  
    When the writing exercise ended after half an hour and we
were invited to share, I’d come up with only two ideas.
    Set the scene