Women’s issues

The bookshop was enormous. She had been down so many aisles, she wondered if she was in one of those mazes that people get lost in for days and days, until they are eventually found, thin and wan and babbling hysterically.

She found a man lying across the aisle in the cooking section, an empty Hot Chips cup beside him. He was asleep. Rachel had to step over him, faintly wondering if he might suddenly put his hand out and grab her by the ankle. He started to snort instead.

The travel section had no people in it, because the shelf had collapsed. She stood in front of the large, chaotic pile of atlases, guides and narratives, and listened for any signs of life underneath, any soft breathing sounds, or slight movements. When she was satisfied there was no one underneath the avalanche, she turned and went down another aisle, heading further into the bowels of the building.

Right at the back, after Psychology, Psychiatry, Transexualism and Gardening, she found it. The ‘Women’s Issues’ section. Rachel let out a little squeal of delight.

She had been there four minutes and twenty-six seconds, when a man turned the corner at gardening. She was aware of him out of the corner of her eye. He stopped, she noticed, and soon she felt self-conscious. A slight turn of her head and she could see that he was staring at her. She was wearing shorts and a baggy t-shirt. There was nothing suggestive about her dress, she thought. But he was a man. She looked down at her chest, and realised her breasts, minding their own business but lifting her t-shirt in those two points, were enough.

Rachel had spotted a book she had been looking for, and turned to pick up the footstool and move it closer. As she did so, the man moved closer too and thrust a book towards her.

“Good book, eh?” he said.

“Is it?” she smiled at him, wondering why his words came out like cotton wool balls, then noticing his facial palsy.

She looked at the book, which was about palmistry, smiled again, then went on with what she was doing. She felt a hand on her leg.

“Remove your hand, please,” she said, as she swiped at him with a book she had picked from the shelf.

Rachel got down from the footstool. He moved closer, and showed her another page of palm-reading. Then he took her right hand, and examined her palm according to the diagram. While she raised the book in her left hand to clout him, he asked her in his muffled voice, “What does it show? Am I going to live a long life?”

“Not if you keep touching me.” And the book came down on his head.

“Umph,” he exhaled.

But he persisted. She felt him rub his arm against her breast. She moved away, raised the book yet again. He moved towards her, put his arm around her waist, tried to kiss her cheek, tried to feel between her legs. It happened so quickly, and he knocked the book out of her hand.

Rachel stepped right away from him, and shook her head. Oh Christ, she thought, how am I going to get away from this one? I’m at the very back of a cavernous shop, where no one knows where I am, no one else can see me, and they probably couldn’t hear me if I screamed. Great. And in the ‘Women’s Issues’ section too. I’m getting thoroughly groped in front of Greer, French, Spender, Wollstonecraft, and Woolf.

Before she realised what she was saying, the words came out, “‘Why are women… so much more interesting to men than men are to women?’ Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own.”

The man sidling towards her stopped, looked puzzled. Rachel continued.

“‘Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size’. Woolf again.”

He frowned. She fixed her eyes on him. There was silence for some moments. She started to sweat, hoping another voice would come down and rescue her.

“‘It is better to be looked over than overlooked’. Mae West,” she quoted.

He smiled, lopsidely, and she could see he had nicotine-stained teeth. He confidently stepped forward and reached out his hands. She folded her arms, and said firmly, “‘Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving’. Elizabeth Cady Stanton.”

He wasn’t wearing any glasses, but he raised his outstretched hands to his face anyway, and rubbed his eyes. She decided to make a run for it, and dashed away down the aisle, hopping over piles of books and magazines, records with quaint, faded sleeves, and the occasional wooden footstool. She could hear him panting after her.

Rachel came to the end of the aisle, and turned the corner of the long bookcase, only to find a cul-de-sac, and because she was running she hurtled into a floor-to-ceiling stack of books. Tomes went everywhere, striking her to the ground, where she crouched with her hands over her head, eyes closed, waiting to be buried and suffocated and eventually mummified.

The man came scooting around the corner too, and he threw himself towards the pile, which was on top of her. But he misjudged, and knocked into a tottering shelf, causing another downpour.

“‘Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflicts’. Mother Jones,” she squeaks. “Are you interested in books, or do you only come here to grope women?” she added.

He looked dazed, and shook his head, as volumes overwhelmed him.

Rachel sighed. She slowly and painfully excavated herself from the avalanche, slim paperbacks and fat paperbacks and in-between paperbacks slipping off her limbs and torso.

The man struggled to get up, but a large volume of the collected poetry of Emily Dickinson was sitting comfortably on his chest.

“‘Between My Country – and… Yours -/ There is a Sea – / But… Books – negotiate between us – /As Ministry’. Poem 905, a little altered for our circumstances.” As she said this, a smile bloomed on her face.

He moved his lips, but there was no sound.

Rachel heard footsteps behind her.

“What’s happening?” It was a young man, one of the bookshop workers. Two other faces peeped over his shoulder, one with a fringe, one with a wide expanse of forehead.

She brushed the dust off her t-shirt as best she could, then edged her way past them,

“Are you okay?” the young man asked, looking alarmed.

“‘If anyone asks you who helped her, you had better answer, “I don’t know” – for it may very well be that she did it all herself.’ Friederika Karoline Neuber, a playwright. Thank you, we’re fine.”

And she continued on her way.

© Sue Bond 2008