Audrey Hepburn's Pearls: Part I

Chapter 69.1: 1995, Georgina

Chapter 69.1: 1995, Georgina

My finger was ticking along the highest point of the bookshelf that I could reach.

"Will you be okay here? You won't leave? I made a sandwich for you. Its ham and mustard, in the refridgerator. Please don't cook. Promise me you won't cook? You promise?" The worry in Cha Cha's voice had been palpable. She'd had to go to work, teach a class, "just one". It would take an hour and a half, two hours with the traffic. I'd assured her over and over that I wouldn't harm myself when she was gone. I wouldn't wander into the street, wouldn't burn the apartment down. I knew she had more faith in me than this, but she was worried. I understood that. 

So I told her I would read a book until she came back, eat the sandwich. I liked ham. I'd be fine. Still, she'd left miserably, not wanting to leave me alone. But she knew I wouldn't go to the dance studio with her. Just the thought of it, all of those unfamiliar people. Those unfamiliar faces that might be familiar faces. And that was what I was worried about. 

I jumped as my fluffy friend bumped into my shins. Baby Doll. What was she doing?

"Hey," I said, not looking down at her. She bumped into me again. My fingers ticked along an interesting section. Large, thick paperbacks. Their spines told me they were well thumbed. "Goo...Guerra y Paz...Paz..." I rolled over in my mouth, reading the title of one of them. My eyes went down with the letters on one of the thick spines. "Leon Tolstoi...Tol...Tolstoy?!" Shock fell over my body. My finger ticked to the top of the next book, my eyes read. "Los...Hermanos...Kara- Karama... Baby Doll, help me, what is that word? You know Spanish?" Baby Doll just bumped my leg again. Despite not being able to read that word, my eyes traveled down the spine feeling a little guilty for not being able to complete it. A little ashamed. "Fiodor...what is that? Fiodor.. Dos... toi... evski... Dostoevsky?!" 

Sasha. Sasha loved Dostoevsky.

My breath wouldn't complete. My finger ticked to the next one. But mercifully...

"Hey, Baby Doll. Look, its in English now. The Brothers Karamazov?" My eyes returned to the book with the word I couldn't read. Clarity dawned on me. "Karamazof? Karamazov? Hey Baby Doll, do you think that's the same word?" No bump this time. Maybe I bored her. I stared at the spines, so close together, one in Spanish and one in English. 

Suddenly the memory of Christmas bled into my vision. 

"Sasha taught me." Cha Cha's Spanish voice.

Sasha. These books. Sasha loved these books, Dostoevsky. Tolstoy. Sasha... I started to breathe hard. Did Sasha show Cha Cha these books? I couldn't think. My eyes swam over the bookshelf. 

A leather spine. More leather spines. On the top shelf. These were marked with numbers. With my brain swimming, I stared at them and felt my body falling away.

My eyes squinted, feeling like I was in a memory, not in reality at all too suddenly.

"Baby Doll," I said, not being able to comprehend what I beheld.

Above my head was a full shelf of books I half recognized, but how...why? My eyes widened, trying to read the numbers on their spines.

1953-1959, 1960-1968, 1969-1974, 1975-1981, 1982-1987, 1988-1991

The numbers were written in a metallic highlighter. But the forms of the numbers.

It took me a few minutes, but then. Oh...

I found myself in the kitchen before I knew it. Much faster than I thought my legs could take me now. It was progress, or it was a freak of nature because those numbers... I was trying to yank a kitchen chair to myself, but it seemed to be glued to the floor. Everything in the apartment seemed to be glued to the floor. Why was that?