What We Write Within

Mira was snoring softly. She was huddled down on a folding chair, her legs tucked up under her oversized jacket, the tips of her shoes poking out. The pile of snoring 15 year old earned several amused glances before her grandfather nudged her awake.

“Hey, Mira.” Her grandfather pulled a twenty from the cash box and held it towards the snoring mound. “Go get something to drink, yeah?”

Skinny arms and legs unfolded from the jacket. Mira popped her head up and yawned as she stretched for the money. “Sure, Grandpa.”

“I’ll keep an eye on your book, ok?” He gestured at the slender book sitting on the table. It was bound in stitched black leather; a bright red card stuck out of the bottom like a tongue, the number “53” on it in bold type. “But don’t take too long, yeah? The judges like to talk to the creator.”

She glanced at the book before leaving the booth.

That book brought Mira here to the bookbinding convention. In return for access to teaching, tools, and materials, Mira had promised to help her grandfather with his booth, selling hand-made journals, day planners, and other blank books of all sorts.

Crafting the book had taken Mira nearly six months. Her grandfather wouldn’t fix her problems for her, instead guiding her and letting her learn from her mistakes, of which there were many. She practiced by working on scraps of leather and remnants of abandoned projects. In the beginning, she went to bed sore, her back aching from hunching over bits of paper, leather, and fabric; her fingers throbbing from repeated needle pokes and stinging paper cuts.

It had been boredom that drove Mira to venture out to her grandfather’s workshop. Since she’d been “long-term suspended” from her school for fighting, it was tough for her to stay busy. Her grandmother worked for a local catering company, and if there was a green thumb for baking, then Mira’s grandmother had it. Mira tried to help, but she had the opposite of baker’s thumb; burnt thumb, she guessed.

Her grandmother should have been retired, baking for love instead of money, but after Mira’s parents died in a car crash last year her grandparents took her in.

Her grandfather would never retire. He loved binding books. He traveled sometimes to art festivals, craft shows, and bookbinding events. Mira, desperate for mental stimulation, had wandered into his workshop one day and sat, riveted, as her grandfather bound a book. Entranced with the process, she spent hours just watching her grandfather work.

Then, one night after she finished washing the dishes, she headed out to his shop and blurted, “I need to make a book.”

Pausing the knife he was working along a piece of leather, her grandfather peered at her over the tops of his glasses.

“Please?”

He smiled. “Tomorrow.”

Early the following morning, as he cleared off a table for Mira to use, he set three rules: before beginning on a book, Mira would show basic competency in skills like working leather, stacking and stitching signatures, and a few others; he would not “do” for her; and Mira would help him at an upcoming event.

Mira thought about it for a few moments. “Ok...”

“But...?”

“How will I know if what I’m making is any good?”

Holding a box of various tools and materials, he thought about it while he set different knives and punches on the worn tabletop. “There are always bookbinding contests, judged by binders, industry reps, and convention organizers. If it’s good enough, you can enter your book.”

“Are there trophies?”

“Better,” he chuckled. “Money.”

Six months later and Mira felt good about her book. She’d sliced, stitched, and punched more leather than a heavyweight boxer. The paper cuts were innumerable, but every time she had sanitized her hands, she felt every one of them. Her grandfather had even insisted Mira learn how to make her own paper; she could still feel the gooey pulp she scooped from her grandmother’s second best blender.

After her drink, Mira hit the bathroom and headed back towards the booth. She hadn’t made it very far when something caught her eye.

It was a book that sat in a plastic display atop a square white pillar. There were several others in the area, but this was the one that caught Mira’s eye, as she recognized the book immediately. It was a hardcover copy of the first Harry Potter. It had been one of the first books that she had really read with her mom. It was propped open wide to reveal a scene from the book carved into the pages.

Simple in its composition, the scene was that of Harry’s basket waiting at the Dursley’s front door. Somehow, the artist had managed to capture not only the loneliness of the moment, but also the hope; Mira thought it was something in the way the shadows fell.

And just like that, she was hooked.

For hours she wandered the convention. While it was a bookbinding convention, there were all sorts of book and paper related booths to see. Some booths were like her grandfather’s; others were for bibliophiles, and some sold bookbinding supplies. Stacks of paper in every color, quality, and design; Mira bought a pack of paper depicting various beautiful nebulae. It was a peaceful riot of color, and Mira felt lighter just looking at it.

Not all the booths sold interesting things; some were for artists, like the book sculpture display she’d first come across; and a few booths sold uninteresting things. One particular booth left Mira feeling sour, selling those cheapie composition books that teachers always wanted their students to fill with deep thoughts and poems and facts about history.

Mira’s therapist had given her a composition book after her parents died. He told her it was for her thoughts and feelings.

She’d chucked it in the trash.

Following her suspension, he’d given her another one.

Mira didn’t keep that one either. She didn’t think he was a very good therapist. He’d spent half of their first meeting calling her “Nina”. She was supposed to meet with him next week; one of the many hoops to jump through and have her suspension lifted.

The specter of her impending therapy session now haunting her, she quickly headed back to the booth, eager for somewhere safe. Her grandfather gave her a relieved smile that didn’t quite reach his worried eyes. “Sorry I took so long,” she said, sinking into the chair.

“That’s ok, Mira.” He patted her shoulder. “What did you find?”

She showed him the nebulae papers and told him about the amazingly carved books. “Did I miss anything?”

“Judges came by. I told them what I could, yeah?”

She nodded, collapsing into her jacket. A moment later, a stylish woman with a clipboard walked up to the booth. Her gold name tag identified her as Helen Markum, a judge of the bookbinding competition. Mira straightened, on high alert, nervous about being judged.

Once she asked some basic questions - Mira’s name, experience, materials - Helen picked up Mira’s book and inspected it.

“You stitched the leather yourself?” Mira could see the woman tracing the intricate pattern she’d stitched into the cover. Mira watched her nod in appreciation.

“Yes, ma’am,” Mira said quietly, but wanted to say more. She wanted to tell this woman that every time she struck the awl with the mallet, she heard her parent’s car door thunk closed for the last time. Stretches of holes were punched half blind through a veil of tears.

The judge opened the book and stroked the light gray paper. “Is this paper commercially produced?”

Mira shook her head. “No ma’am”.

Tears welled up in her eyes as she remembered that she’d torn pages from her mom’s favorite books and blended them into the pulp: Frodo running off on an adventure; Katniss volunteering to save Prim; Hazel joining the Owsla of El-Ahrairah. She’d bleached the paper, but a pale muddled gray was the best result.

“What difficulties did you encounter in stitching these signatures?” She peered deeply into the book’s gutter.

Could Mira tell her how she jabbed herself with the needle, just to feel something for a moment? How with each stitch a pinprick of her pain seeped into the binding? Mira stared at the book, trying to see deep into the spine of the thing.

Not hearing a response, Helen looked up from the book and was momentarily stunned by the anguished intensity on Mira’s face; tears flowing down her cheeks unchecked.

Mira thought she saw a momentary recognition flash in the judge’s eyes. Could this woman see the days that Mira wanted to stay hidden in her bed; or worse, to follow her parents? Could she see the willpower it took to work leather for even fifteen minutes, or stitch together just one signature?

Shaken, the woman set the book down, took one of her grandfather’s cards, glanced at it, and snapped it to her clipboard.

Helen looked back at the business card. “Mr. Owsinski?”

“Yes?” he said, shocked at the correct pronunciation. “Nobody gets that right the first time,” he said with amused respect.

“I used to know an Eliana Owsinski.”

He mostly restrained a grimace. “Ellie was my daughter.”

Helen looked from his sad eyes to Mira’s teary face. “My condolences,” she said awkwardly. She paused a moment, as if to say something more, then abruptly turned and slipped away.

Mira’s grandfather knelt down in front of her. “Let’s pack up early, yeah?” He wiped one of Mira’s cheeks. “We’re almost out of inventory anyway.”

“What about the contest?” Mira managed to ask.

“They’ll post results online.”

That night after dinner in her bed, Mira held her book tightly and cried. She thought about the woman who’d judged her. Couldn’t she see what was written within, inked with blood and tears? How could she not see?

“Because you didn’t actually write anything,” she said to herself, understanding blossoming across her face. She sat up, found a pen on her nightstand, and wrote furiously late into the night.

Mira slept late, coming downstairs after lunch. Her grandfather sat at the kitchen table, his battered tablet in front of him. “The results.”

Mira sat and looked at the page.

59th out of 62 entries.

A stagnant silence tried to form, but it was disrupted by her grandfather’s phone chirping. He answered, listened briefly, then handed it to Mira. “It’s for you.”

Mira, confused, took the phone. “Hello?” Mira listened for several minutes, occasionally volunteering a “Yes, ma’am,” or an “I understand”. After the call ended, she covered her eyes, tears sneaking though her fingers.

“Who was that?” Mira’s grandfather stood up, concerned.

Mira uncovered her eyes. “It was the judge from yesterday. She knew mom at school.” Mira explained how Helen had been a freshman, sobbing in a school bathroom, thinking about killing herself that night, when senior Eliana Owsinski heard her crying and sat with her until she promised she wouldn’t do it. Eliana made sure to join Helen for lunch that day - and for every day after that. They’d been friends for barely a year, but that time changed her life, Helen told Mira.

“In college she studied business and literature. She recently started her own publishing company, and has a son about my age.” Mira handed the phone to her grandfather. “She wants to pay it back.”

“What? How?”

Mira smiled through her tears.

“A scholarship for $20,000.”

“What?!”

“I have to keep entering the bookbinding competition. Also, I have to graduate with at least a 3.0, and the scholarship will be waiting for me.”

Her grandparents sandwiched her in a warm embrace. “Well,” her grandfather said happily after he let her go, “what do we need to do first?”

Mira thought about the upcoming session she had with the therapist she didn’t like, and the composition book she didn’t have.

“I need to make a book.”