Bookcase Envy

Vodka Yonic features a rotating cast of female writers from around the world sharing stories that are alternately humorous, sobering, intellectual, erotic, religious or painfully personal. You never know what you’ll find here each week, but we hope this potent mix of stories encourages conversation.

My mom loves to tell a story about the time my preschool teacher, Miss Carol, called her to talk about something I’d done in class.

I’m not a parent, but I’m guessing that any time a teacher calls, you immediately assume the worst. Something is wrong, or — when you’re dealing with 4-year-olds — there was some kind of bathroom accident. But on this particular day in early 1983, Miss Carol was calling my mother to tell her I knew how to read.

My mom laughed and responded that I must have memorized all of my favorite books because she read them to me so much. But Miss Carol insisted, and explained that she gave me a book I said I’d never seen before — A Pocket for Corduroy, about the little teddy bear who got stuck in a laundry basket and lost at a laundromat — and that I read the entire thing aloud. The only word I didn’t know was “laundromat.”

My mom told Miss Carol that I did not have that book, and that clearly I was a genius.

She started taking me to the library frequently, where I’d check out the maximum-allowed amount of books. I’d finish them long before their due dates, and beg her to take me again. I never owned many books beyond my older sister’s hand-me-downs, so books were a luxury. I read everything I could, often reading material that was far beyond my level of comprehension. My mom told me to be patient, and that someday I would understand it, which only made me more impatient, and more determined to understand it now.

Any kid who reads that many books is bound to try writing one, and I wrote a bunch. In first grade, I wrote a book about an ugly doll called Hannah, which was mostly drawings of a ragdoll with a sloppily assembled storyline inspired by my favorite book du jour, Little House on the Prairie. In second grade, I presented my young fresh-out-of-college teacher a book called Beauty Tips: How to Catch Guys — I was worried because she wasn’t married yet and thought she could use some help. I was first accused of plagiarism in third grade. By my own sister, no less. (She was totally right — I had essentially copied not only the plot, but actual sentences from a Babysitter’s Club book.) By fourth and fifth grade, I discovered adolescent sci-fi books like A Wrinkle in Time and coming-of-age novels à la Judy Blume, which heavily influenced my novel (and my daily diary entries). By junior high, I discovered boys, which also heavily influenced my fiction and nonfiction writing.

I thought I would grow up to be one of those people with a bunch of built-in bookcases. You know, to showcase incredible collections of books that supremely intelligent grown-ups are supposed to read. Even if I wasn’t one of those people in the artsy black-and-white photographs you see on a book jacket, I would certainly be someone who owns a ton of books. Someone who is taken seriously. I mean, I was a kid genius … right, Mom?

I moved to Nashville immediately after graduating from college in 2001, years after I figured out that I was not a kid genius, or any kind of genius at all. I remember visiting my new grown-up friends’ houses. Some of them had those built-in bookcases I once dreamed of. I felt envy. I wished I had that many books, and those grown-up bookcases to put them in. Isn’t that the most grown-up thing to aspire to? A well-stocked bookcase to show everything you’ve learned, and the things you intend to keep learning?

The bookcase in my bedroom, present day — which I assembled before calling my friend Tabitha to help me push it through the doorway — showcases some of my favorite writers, like Joan Didion, Dorothy Parker and Alice Munro. It also showcases what few books survived the move from Illinois to Tennessee 15 years ago, and the many other moves around town and in life since. Tattered copies of all eight books of the Anne of Green Gables series (yes, there are eight, and you should read all of them, no matter how old you are). Several Beatles books my dad gave me, because music was something we could always talk about, even when we couldn’t talk about other things. A bunch of chick-lit bestsellers my mother passed along to me, which I will never hide in the back of the bookshelf, because I don’t believe Sex and the City is less culturally relevant than Little House on the Prairie. Each of those books was written by a woman, doing what every writer is advised to do: Write what you know. That’s all I ever tried to do when I called myself a writer.

I’m still trying to figure out how to be a writer, or if I even am one. I’m still impatient, and I still hope people will take me seriously, even if I couldn’t even get through the first chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses. I still keep my copy of it — it’s heavy and it keeps my other books from falling over. Also, part of me thinks that someday I will understand it. I just have to be patient.

Email arts@nashvillescene.com