The Beginnings of a Bibliophile

During school holidays, while other children had their fists in boxes of warm popcorn and their faces lit by cinema screens, I was in the Early Childhood Education corner of the Murdoch University library, reading ‘Dot and the Kangaroo’ to my sister.  

We weren’t there because our migrant parents hoped to raise prodigies.  We were waiting for our mum to hurry back, clutching her Chinese-English dictionary and notebook scrawled with the words she could snatch out of the tangled vowels that unfurled from the lecturer.  

I spent most of my childhood in libraries because my parents couldn’t afford day care. 

On weekends, when our sighs of boredom began to exasperate our mother, she would comb my sister’s hair, tuck our faded t-shirts in, hoick our tracksuit pants high above our waists, and march us to the local library.  I liked to run my fingers across a row of spines – ‘MAR’ to ‘MET’; ‘SHI’ to ‘TRE’ – while my little heart quickened at the delicious promise of worlds amongst the sagging shelves, waiting to be imagined into existence. 

Every nook of the library was my own wardrobe to Narnia.  Books comforted, transported, enchanted and terrified me.  I learned about things my mum never discussed, like divorce (The Babysitters’ Club) and tampons (thanks to Judy Bloom) and how to induce vomiting after ingesting a poison (‘The Home Medical Handbook’). I cried when Jo March sold her hair and wept again when Beth died.  I scared myself silly reading ‘Skeleton on the Dunny’ and asked my sister to wait by the door while I went to the toilet.  

My parents never patted ducklings with me at the Royal Show or drove us to a holiday house by the ocean. My dad worked – scrubbing dishes, dying dried wildflowers, mopping restaurant floors – while my mum stayed up, long after she put us to bed, and studied for exams in an unfamiliar language, in a bewildering country.  I didn’t realise we were poor because I was lost in the richness of my imagination.  Holey socks, margarine and sugar sandwiches in my lunchbox, and shabby shirts from the school’s second-hand store didn’t bother me.  Happiness was snuggling into the faded floral sofa in our lounge room with a tattered novel from the library.