Call Me

Abstract

Call Me Terri Nowak (bio) Air conditioning blasted inside the library. Though it was late September, a heat wave had struck. I shivered and shelved books. The liveliest day of the year was here, the Friday of Banned Books Week, and the library was electric. This year, I dreaded going alone to the employee party in the evening. Everyone dressed up and brought their plus ones to Sjonan, a restaurant awash in natural light, with timbered beams and Scandinavian decor and complicated food. Last year, my boyfriend at the time, Steven, went with me, and after each introduction, he would take me aside and whisper things like, “What happened to her face?” or, “Didn’t anyone tell him the dress code?” He chatted up the blonde server with a high ponytail. This was the same Steven, a photographer for the Duluth News Tribune, who would later break up with me because he wanted to date someone more interesting. At 5:25, another librarian, Laura, approached through the aisle of books, lit from within. “Ellen, remember to bring your banned book for the exchange tonight.” She sang the last words like a show tune. I liked Laura. We bonded the day I caught her in the break room plucking an empty Diet Coke can from the garbage and dropping it into the recycle bin with an expression of disgust. She was unusually interested in my love life, which I didn’t think was that interesting. Maybe after being married to an insurance adjuster for 24 years and raising two children, anyone single seemed exotic. Maybe she thought of me the way a zookeeper thinks of the fennec fox, a rare canine with a tiny body and huge ears. It’s hard to look away from something like that. I tugged on my left braid and nodded. I was excited to bring my banned book, The Graveyard by Marek Hłasko, a cautionary tale about the realities of life for the average comrade under Poland’s communist regime. I hadn’t been too interested in my Polish ancestry until a few years ago, when a visiting author commented on my last name. I began to pull fragmented memories from childhood, how my father called me his myszka, little mouse, and told vignettes of hardship from the old country, though he was born in Minnesota and had never been to Poland. “It might be too soon to ask,” Laura said. She put her hand on my shoulder. “Are you bringing a date?” [End Page 93] I hoped I didn’t look pathetic. “No date.” I smoothed the crop of stray hairs that formed at my crown. “I’ll probably have more fun than last year. Steven was so rude.” Laura’s mouth tensed. I knew she couldn’t agree with me. Steven had charmed her. “At any rate, I’m glad you’re coming,” she said. I wasn’t sure. Going to a social event without a date was the Olympics of single womanhood. Laura gave me a double thumbs-up with a grim smile and buzzed away. The shelving of books relaxed me. Genre, fiction. Author, Austen Jane. Title, Pride and Prejudice. I used my fingers to make a space between Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility and slid the trade paperback into place. ________ After work I meandered home and thought up wild excuses for missing the party. I stopped short when I saw an old payphone kiosk, a concrete post with rusty holes where the phone had been. Across the top was the cornflower blue and white graphic of a phone and circled bell. I could almost see my father reach for the receiver in a flash of aviator sunglasses and lip-dangled cigarette, a pause from so many life imperatives to call his daughter. In his head were promises he wanted to keep. He would be home in time for my birthday. He would take me to Poland to meet distant cousins after my high school graduation. He loved me. The last time I heard from him, his parting words imprinted on my ten-year-old self, “I’ll call again soon, myszka.” I circled the relic and ran...