Sourland by Joyce Carol Oates

Tiptree books on our shelves & can discuss Tiptree’s stories with him as I check out other patrons at the circulation desk.
    In the Barnegat Public Library where I’ve worked—in Circulation , in Reference , in Children & Young Adults —for the past two years, since graduating from library school, it’s common that visitors pause to speak with me like this; it’s common that they hope to establish some sort of bond with me, which I find repellent. With what absurd sobriety do people regard Jane Erdley —with what respect they speak to her—as if the youngest librarian on the Barnegat staff were composed of the most delicate crystal & not flesh, blood & bones, or afflicted by some hideous disease which causes the victim to waste away before your eyes & wasn’t a reasonably attractive & healthy young woman of twenty-six with long curly rust-colored hair, hazel-green eyes and skin flawed only by tiny tear-sized scars at my hairline—ninety-seven pounds, five-foot-three—small hard biceps & sculpted shoulder muscles just visible through my muslin blouses, silk shirts open at the throat & loose-crocheted tops. You might expect me to wear trousers like the other female librarians but I prefer skirts; from vintage clothing stores I’ve assembled a small but striking wardrobe of velvet, satin, lace dresses & shawls & in winter I am sure to wear stylish leather shoe-boots. In warm weather, quite short skirts: & why not?
    Deliberately I’m not looking at the man in the frayed herringbonecoat leaning his elbows on the counter as we speak together of the mysterious & entertaining fiction of James Tiptree, Jr. I’ve become so accustomed to checking out books—a mindless task like most of my librarian duties & therefore pleasant & soothing—that I can manage a conversation with one library patron while serving another—though sensing how this man is staring at me, turning a small object in his fingers—car keys?—compulsively, like dice; I can sense his unease, that my attention is divided—I’m withholding from him my fullest attention—when he has surprised himself with his boldness in speaking to me, at last. Clearly this is a reserved man—not shy perhaps but secretive, wary—the kind of person of whom it’s said he is a very private person —& now he’s feeling both reckless & helpless—resentful of the other library patrons who are taking up my time.
    That sick-drowning look in the man’s eyes—it would be embarrassing of me to acknowledge.
    This is one who wants me. Badly.
    When he walks away I don’t glance after him—I am very busy checking out books. I assume that he has exited the library but no—there he is in the front lobby a few minutes later, peering into glass display cases at papier-mâché dinosaurs made by grade school children, best-selling gardening books & romance novels.
    How strange! Or maybe not so strange.
    He isn’t looking back at me. He’s determined not to look. But finally he weakens, he can’t resist, a sidelong glance which I give no indication of having seen.
    Don’t look at me. Try not to look at me.
    Go away. Go home. You disgust me!
    Â 
    Much disgusts me. For a long time I was encouraged to count myself blessed , for of course it could have been much worse , but in recent years, no.
    Since graduating from library school at Rutgers. Since having to surrender my life as a student, a privileged sort of person in a university setting in which, though never numerous, others like myself were notuncommon; that large & varied sub-species of the disabled of which I am but a single specimen & by no means the most extreme.
    Wanting to say to the somber faces & staring eyes Save your God damned pity for the truly piteous. Not me.
    This I resent: though I could be trained to drive a motor vehicle—with mechanical adjustments for my disability, of