Dreaming in Libro (1 of 2 free samples)

---

COPYRIGHT
Dreaming in Libro by Louise Bernikow. Copyright 2007 by Louise Bernikow.
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

---

Next

DREAMING IN LIBRO
How a Good Dog Tamed a Bad Woman

Louise Bernikow

For the next one


PROLOGUE

My mother always told me I would grow into my feet and my nose. Either she was mistaken or she downright lied because here I am grown up, all five feet three inches of me and when I ask for size nine shoes, salespeople gape. But the shoes do fit. My nose is as prominent as it was when my mother said those dastardly or reassuring things to me and I doubt that my face is so much larger now. It's a prominent nose, the kind that they kindly say gives "character" to my face.

She also said I was allergic to dogs, which made sense at the time. Every whiff of dust or bit of goldenrod floating on a breeze sent me into paroxysms of sneezes, and a multitude of other things, from air pollution to anger, caused attacks of asthma. I was indeed a sensitive child, but my mother lied and she did so, I believe, for her own purposes. She didn't like animals--not that she had met many on the streets of suburban Queens--and she equated them with mess. With work, too, I suppose, since mess means work, as in cleaning up, to most people. I can't recall an opinion expressed by my hard-working father, so I imagine the issue never went far enough to be put to him. We had no "pets." Most people I knew had no pets either.

I grew up, got educated, and became a writer and a sophisticated urban type, fancying myself on the banquettes of cafes in the great cities of the world, cigarette in my mouth, literature and politics on my mind. I dropped the cigarettes eventually and did get to visit many banquettes in many places; but dogs, cats, chickens, horses, hamsters--the entire animal world--were no more than phantoms to me. I never saw them, never thought about them, never missed them, barely ever read about them. I considered the dogs and cats who lived with some of my friends' pieces of furniture, though they did move about. But what was there to say? When people began advocating for animal rights, I wanted to direct their attention to the suffering human beings I saw every day, sleeping in doorways and begging for food, physically and mentally afflicted, in need of help and having a right to it. When we've taken care of the people, I said, we'll do the animals.

Just when I'd settled into my own skin, thinking I knew who I was, what I believed, cared about and needed, everything went topsy-turvy. On a sunny late May afternoon, three years before the world entered a new millennium, I was jogging in Riverside Park at the edge of the Hudson River. My curiosity led me to stop on the path and elbow my way through a small crowd surrounding a police car. Elbowing my way through a crowd was a skill I had honed over the years, at large public demonstrations I had covered as a journalist or joined as a citizen. Being a small person helped. That afternoon, I wanted to see what the fuss was about. I always want to know what a fuss is about.

As I pressed my nose against the window of the police car, the brown creature curled in a ball on the back seat raised its head and became a dog with mesmerizing eyes. Amber they were, those eyes, not brown and somehow not as young as the rest of him seemed to be. He stood on spindly legs, nose against the glass, a stumpy tail wagging and those old eyes fixed on me.

So I took him home. It was the most daring thing I'd ever done and I was not a cowardly woman. I'd done many things that were, in hindsight, dangerous or foolish, with men I'd never met before or in countries that didn't think women should roam about on their own, or in gambling casinos where conventional wisdom dictated not another chip on the table, not another dollar in the pot. In my Fulbright fellowship year in Spain, I'd preferred flamenco dancing on tabletops in local bars to freezing my toes while doing research in the National Archives and, though it was now many years later, I'd make the same choice at the click of a castanet. Having no regrets made me a free spirit in my book and a "bad woman" in some other books. But taking the creature home was an act more impulsive and irrational than even I thought myself capable of.

Afterward, in the long afterward that became my life with this dog, people would praise my compassion. I had saved him from the killing chambers of the animal control people. I would be welcomed into the animal rescue community as a softhearted sucker or a saint, but I was neither. I don't know what I was, except that I simply wasn't myself.

We left together, with me holding the rope knotted to the beautiful brass-studded brown leather collar around the dog's neck. I was surprised that he followed along. Didn't he know that I carried a nightgown, birth control, and my passport in the trunk when I owned a car, ready to leave for Paris at a moment's notice? Why would a dog want to come home with someone like that? Hadn't anyone told him that I had no experience, zero idea what a dog was, much less how to care for one? Did he know or understand anything at all, or was he too simply not himself?

He was small, with a flat brown coat rippled by black lines, the color of maple fudge. On his chest was a flat white patch in the shape of Superman's insignia. His ears were floppy; his tail cropped or, as I thought of it that day, stumpy. Around his ankles were bands of white, not quite as high as kneesocks. His nose was squished flat on his face and he had those eyes.

I'd said I would "take" him, not keep him, I reminded myself as, tailed by members of the crowd that had been around the police car, our merry band walked south, up a flight of stone steps, across Riverside Drive and onto my street. One member of the accompanying crowd--the dog's fan club--offered to go to the pet store and buy a few provisions.

Being provisional was important. I might feed him or give him water. Maybe he could stay a night or two. I had no idea what I was doing, but the dog seemed to know what he was doing. He climbed the four flights of stairs in my building with a great deal of interest, even determination, though I noticed that one of his hind legs seemed stiff. I opened the apartment door. In the place I use as a writing studio, piles of books and papers were everywhere, including on the floor. While he investigated, I worried.

"Don't touch the books," I said. He kept sniffing.

Given the multiethnic nature of the neighborhood, it occurred to me that the dog might not speak English. The only other language I knew well and, luckily, the most likely alternative was Spanish.

"No toca los libros," I shouted.

He looked at me with comprehension, though comprehension of what I could not tell. It might have been syntax. But he did not touch the books. And now he had a name: "Libro," which means book.

Next