Dickens & Friends

 

When I was growing up, books by Dickens and his crowd were kept in the bookcase in the living room. You’d have been hard pressed not to notice the gold lettering and the imitation leather bindings, proudly provided by my mother’s Book of the Month club. The books she actually read – paperbacks all, with lurid covers and big text – were kept cleverly buried in a bureau drawer in her bedroom, stashed beneath mounds of moth eaten and neglected underwear. I remember two titles most vividly – “Peyton Place”, a scandalous novel of life in a small town by Grace Metalious and “Mandingo”, a racist tale of slavery and black on white sexual assault, if the cover was any indication, by an author I’ve forgotten. Both were clearly well read and dog eared, their covers faded and torn, their pages stained in some places. I imagined my mother reading these forbidden books late at night after everyone was asleep and felt more than slightly sickened but also burning with curiosity. What I was not, was the least bit surprised at her literary taste. I’d long suspected that the living room bookcase was not a place she visited except to add the latest book club selection once it arrived. Unless my daddy were to pull one down (he favored Mark Twain), the books were unopened and intact and soon dusty with neglect. To my mother, the bookcase was full of strangers, the underwear drawer, old friends.

By current standards, these ragtag paperbacks weren’t much. It was the idea that my mother hid them that was so intriguing. She would routinely pitch a fit if she caught me with one of the popular romance magazines – harmless (if trashy) badly written stories of good girls gone bad and first love – to her, they were borderline obscene, promoting the idea of promiscuity and the downfall of virtue. I was just old enough to understand and recognize hypocrisy but worse, I knew a weapon when I saw one and the smutty secrets of the underwear drawer were definitely on my side. I actually hoped for a chance to use them, now and again would even think about intentionally provoking her to bring on a confrontation. I’m not entirely sure why I never did. Perhaps I knew the risk of my daddy taking her side. Alliances in a family like ours tended to change with the prevailing winds and it wouldn’t have been the first time.

My mother tended to win her battles by whatever means necessary. She would use threats, blackmail, tearful tantrums, guilt or manipulation without a qualm. Well armed or not, taking her on was a risky piece of business and caution and courage (most folks, myself included, were long on the first but lacking in the second) were required. As my daddy already knew, sometimes being right isn’t as important as being at peace and the sad fact was that enabling was always easier than standing your ground. So I never mentioned the underwear drawer books. Just knowing they existed was enough.