The Hate of Marigold Moore

Hey, Julian, did Sarah email you yet? You know, about her “sighting” of Dreary Maggie? I swear, that’s her entire personality. Chris used to complain about it all the time when we were in school. Their dad was gone - good riddance! - and his little sister wouldn’t stop making it all about herself.

You know, I once told her we should bring down Foggs’ statue and she almost had a fit. I might as well be taking history books out of the library and burning them in the park.

“You’re not even from here! You can’t pretend she didn’t make this town what it is today!”

It seemed to go over her head that that was exactly my point, but you couldn’t discuss these things with Sarah Walker.

Anyway, I was only replying to your message to catch up and see how you and your son are doing, but I might have a story for you. I don’t think it’s quite what you’re looking for. I don’t have proof of it and I still have my doubts whether I was seeing things or not. I was thirteen then and you know how kids are. Besides, it’s not really an urban legend or local mythology. It’s more of a… spooky occurrence, I guess. Though I suppose you’re just looking for some cool stories to put in your book. Maybe this will fit in just fine.

You know Ms. Moore is a racist piece of shit, right? I don’t have to convince you of it. Every time I walked into the library, she kept an eye on me wherever I went and I can’t imagine she was any different with you, no matter who your grandfather was. She liked books more than people, and I have my doubts she even considered us people. That woman must be as old as the building itself now and I'm sure her politics are still stuck somewhere in the 1800s.

Sometime around 1995, she caught me “breaking the rules”. What was my crime? Eating in the library. It was all bullshit, but I guess she’d always wanted an excuse to berate the brown kid who dared come near her precious tomes. In her mind, I was probably up to something.

All I did was take a piece of chocolate cake out of my bag to get my schoolbooks. It was still wrapped in plastic, the way they served it in the cafeteria, and it was going back in my backpack once the books were out, but she wouldn’t hear of it.

“I don’t know how you do things in India, but in this country, we respect books and education.”

The way she spoke, that slow, venomous tone that got through the thickest skin. She had a way to get to you, didn’t she? Probably still does. I put up with a lot of shit, even in Toronto, but that woman… just thinking of the way her voice cornered me, made me think that I was somehow in the wrong for just daring to exist in the same space as her… my blood still boils when I think about it.

All I managed to say was, “Sri Lanka.”

“Excuse me?”

That was the closest she ever got to shouting, and even then only barely.

I must have looked like a deer in headlights, but I still said, “We’re from Mannar. That’s not in-“

I didn’t even get to the end of that sentence. She grabbed my bag in one hand, the cake in another, and ordered me to come with her. She didn’t even check to see if I was following; she just assumed that I would. And I did. Fuck, I hate that I did.

She put me in this oppressive, little room behind the front desk that had once been an office. There was a desk and a chair, cleaning supplies piled up in a corner, and a box marked “lost objects” on an old bookshelf that she warned me not to touch. The round, barred window faced east, and since we were nearing the end of a winter afternoon, no sunlight came through.

I was terrified. Mom had told me horror stories about growing up Muslim in Mannar. Her brother was shot by the police in '76 - her family was already in Canada by then. A figure of authority taking me to a back room only fed into the fears my parents had passed on to me.

Don’t call attention to yourself.

Don’t cause trouble.

Don’t give them a reason.

I sat there, counting to ten and taking deep breaths to fight off a panic attack. I have no idea what Moore had planned for me and it couldn’t be good. I was close to tears now and I wanted to apologize and go home.

She opened her mouth-

The library door slammed open.

The relief I felt. At least now someone else would be the focus of her anger.

I saw Harold Rogers come to the front desk and I remember thinking, “oh no, not him!” My least favorite person in town and Ms. Moore. He’d never stopped throwing our family dirty looks when we came into his store. As far as either of them was concerned, we didn’t belong.

Without even looking at me, she left the room and closed the door behind her.

I stood there, unsure of what to do, hoping neither of them would turn their anger and their hate on me.

However, I soon realized they didn’t care about me anymore. Rogers was mad at her. I couldn’t tell what they were saying on the other side of the door, but the anger in his voice was palpable. Finally, after some muttered back and forth, Rogers shouted, “I don’t care what I said! You lied to me!”

Shit.

Nobody ever shouted in her library. Every time someone opened the front door, she’d immediately glare at them until all the joy was sucked out of the room. I thought Ms. Moore was going to grab him by the ear and put him in the room with me. Ridiculous, isn’t it? A grown man in his 40s being forced to sit in that little desk, knees to his chest, writing, over and over, “I will not shout in the library.”

But what followed his outburst was only the longest, most tense stretch of silence I’d ever heard. So I did what every teenage boy would do: I looked through the keyhole.

All I could see was Moore’s hand, tapping her fingers on the desk like the ticking sound of a bomb about to go off.

Calmly, she extended a hand and Rogers handed her something that she dropped in a drawer.

She said, “Come with me,” and his heavy steps and her hurried, sensible shoes walked away from me.

I opened the door and looked for them. They were still talking in hushed tones somewhere to my left, shielded by rows of bookshelves. I gripped the shoulder strap of my backpack, my eyes going to the front door, then being immediately drawn back to the drawer. Leaving would have been the clever thing to do now that she was distracted, but how could I not look inside? Would you have walked away without ever knowing, Julian?

Being as quiet as I could, I opened the drawer just a little. Just to take a peek. It was enough. I immediately knew what I was looking for: a little green pebble, the color and texture of a jade stone, like the ones on my mother’s necklaces.

My fingers itched to touch it, but I made a fist not to give in to temptation. If I was already in trouble, she’d surely call the police if she caught me rummaging through her drawer. I just couldn’t stop staring. That was what they were fighting about? I wasn’t a very imaginative kid, but suddenly I wanted to laugh. The self-righteous town librarian ran a ring of jewel thieves. That was quite a story.

There was a face in the jade. Not carved into it. It was sort of floating inside, like a bubblegram but… more detailed. Like an oil painting. Their eyes were green. I remember that because I thought it was funny how the pebble was green, but their eyes were still brighter, yet melancholy. It made me sad to stare at it.

And then the face blinked at me.

It wasn’t a trick of the light, before you say it. It wasn’t a flicker. Their eyelids lowered slowly, like they were stuck in time and fighting to go back to reality.

That’s what happens to misbehaving children, I thought. The library witch will turn you into a magical jade and give you to Harry Rogers so he can stare at you with his big, angry face for all eternity.

Ludicrous.

But I believed it.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

I snapped my head up and saw Moore staring at me, Rogers right behind her. I can’t tell who looked angrier.

Fuck them. Fuck her rules. Fuck everything. I ran. I wasn’t about to let that woman curse me and keep me in her drawer as some sort of sick pet.

What happened next, I was too overwhelmed to remember. I think I came home crying and told my mother something about Moore being a witch, that she wanted to trap me or hurt me. And then I broke down crying, sobbing like the kid I was on my mother's shoulder, vowing to never step foot in the library again.

~~~~~~

I think you’ll be amused to know my mother stormed into the library demanding an explanation on why her son had come home crying, but you won’t be surprised to learn that nothing was done. The whole thing was brushed aside as an unruly boy causing trouble in the library and Ms. Moore being “perhaps a little too tough on him”.

“She should have been fired,” mom told me. “The way you came home… I’d never seen you so scared. That’s no way to treat a child!”

I never told her about what happened and she never pressed. As long as I stayed away from the library, she was satisfied.

Eleanor actually offered to take books out for me, I don’t know if I ever told you this. She’d always been a good person. The best in town.

As for the face in the jade stone… I can’t say. It has to have been a trick of the light, that makes the most sense, but I can’t shake the feeling that I saw something bad, you know what I mean?

In my most fanciful thoughts, I pretend the old hag is a real witch, trapping children into jewels that she wears around her neck, but I don’t have to tell you that’s not true. Even if she did have magic powers, children don’t go missing in Dreary Foggs. I think the last person to vanish was Sarah’s dad, and everyone knows how that ended.

Anyway, that’s what happened, but I don’t think it’s much of a local legend, is it? I just thought it was a cool story.

Also, I’m just glad to get it out of my chest.

Do try to get rid of Marigold Moore now that you’re mayor, Julian. I doubt she’s changed at all in 25 years and people like her are dangerous in small towns, magic or not.

Take care,

Aadhi