Elli Adams lived as if she were always leaving, and people who are leaving are always different from those who aren’t, and so different from virtually everyone else.  It wasn’t that Elli Adams wanted to leave, or had to leave, or even that she knew she was leaving. No, it was simply that she felt she was going to be leaving – whether she wanted to or not, and she didn’t know why.   Maybe that was why she was so different from the other children – and why they knew she was different. Or maybe it was simply the ‘separation’ issues that attend many children who, like Elli, are adopted.

But, actually, Elli did have to leave — she needed to be at the library – there was a book she wanted to read, and she was hoping they might have it.   It was a book of poetry. Elli loved poetry. None of the other kids in school did. And those few who knew she liked poetry would tease her about it.  But, then, most kids teased her anyway – if you could call it teasing. It wasn’t funny – at least, not to her. And it wasn’t actually funny to them either, even though they laughed. It simply gave them pleasure to say unkind things to her.  But to her, it was like having Hyenas gnawing at her back. Wherever she went it seemed there were boys and girls waiting to say unkind words to her as she walked by.

It was certain to happen again as she made her way to the library today.  It was Saturday, and there would be lots of kids from School hanging out on the sidewalks.  But she was willing to pay the price for another book of poetry. She loved poetry – and she loved poetry because of what it did to her small and confining world in Millerton; poetry took the small, ordinary parts of her every day life and transformed them into something extraordinary – not just seemingly extraordinary, but truly extraordinary.  Because poetry took the individual, specific aspects of her ordinary, mundane world and made them into something that was true for the whole world: poetry about a brook, for example, that transformed it – and so the tiny river in town – into the journey that is all of life – transforming the particularly small into the universally large. Perhaps it was, as her adoptive mother alleged, with a tone of disapproval, a form of escape.  But if it was a kind of escape, it was only because it allowed her to leave a small world for a much larger one.

Elli walked around the corner toward the library that was three blocks away.  She was relieved to see there were no kids on the street. But she had walked only half a block when five or six kids appeared quite suddenly from a doorway across the street – and crossed the street behind her and began to taunt her. “Hey moon-face! Any astronauts land by mistake? Or just asteroids?” And then they laughed. The kids called her moon-face because of the pockmarks or “craters” that a serious bout of the Chicken Pox had left behind. She didn’t say anything. It only made them tease her more.  So, with tears welling, but Elli not daring to let them fall, she continued her journey to the library. It was about the time when she could no longer hear what the kids were saying that she at last reached the large, double bronze doors of the old stone building.

Under vaulted ceilings with low-hanging florescent lights, Elli ran a fast check with the computer catalogue and then walked with confidence toward the circulation desk, as if she and the floor beneath her were bosom buddies.   She was only 14 years old, but she had had her own library card for nearly 8 years, and she and the librarian, Ms. Simonson, had become good friends. Indeed, there was no place she liked to be more than at the library, and especially when Ms. Simonson and she would sit at the reference desk during slow periods on Saturday afternoons and talk about poetry and literature.  She thought it odd that Ms. Simonson was not at the reference desk – and surprised to see a new face at the circulation desk.

“Yes, dear?” the desk clerk inquired.

“I’m looking for a certain book of poetry,” she replied.

“Have you checked the computer catalogue to see if we have it?”

“Umm…Yes, I did. But that’s the thing.  It said you have the book, and that it’s not checked out, but I couldn’t find it on the shelves.  In fact, I didn’t see any poetry on the shelves at all.”

“Oh, that’s right.  The new Library Board instructed us to put all of the poetry downstairs to make more room for the expanding technology section.  It seems no one checks out the poetry any more.”

“But I do, and I would very much like to check out this particular book.  Could someone please find it for me?” Elli asked, as she laid a tiny scrap of paper with scribbling on it in front of the woman.

“I’m afraid I’m the only one at the circulation desk today — perhaps if you came back on Monday some one could help you then.”

“Oh, but I so very much would like to have it today.  Will Ms. Simonson be here in a bit? I think she would be willing to help me.”

“I’m afraid Ms. Simonson is no longer with us; the Board ordered staffing cuts this past week – and I was hired just two days ago to manage the library on Saturdays.  I’ve never worked in a library before young lady, and I’m still trying to learn the procedures. Again, I’m sure someone will be able to help you on Monday.”

Elli heard nothing of what the woman said beyond her saying that Ms. Simonson was gone. Forgetting about the book momentarily, she asked, “How soon will there be a replacement for her?”

“My understanding is there will be no replacement, and that they plan to hire out the management of the library to an operations management company.”  She added, as if she were signaling sudden expertise in the area of concern, “There is really very little need for librarians any longer, now that we have the Internet.”

Elli had no idea what the woman could possibly have meant by the remark, and considered it useless to carry the conversation any further.  “Would it be possible for me to go downstairs and find it myself? I could spot it easily, I know, and it would only…”

“Young lady,” the woman interrupted, seeing that a small line had now formed behind Elli, “I can’t be of any help to you today.  You will simply have to return on Monday when someone else besides me will be here. Now,” she added quickly, looking at the man who was behind Elli, “may I help you?”

The man actually reached over Elli’s head and put his books on the desk in front or her.  Elli slipped aside to let the man get to the counter. She simply stood there and wondered:  why couldn’t she herself go to the basement? That was what she was trying to ask the woman at the desk, but she was never given the chance.   She thought to herself, “No one told me I couldn’t go to the basement!”

Elli glanced about the large reading room and noticed to her delight that what appeared to be the door to the basement was not only not behind the circulation desk, but was also open – as if it had been opened just for her, she pretended.  Actually, the dark, oak paneled door, just around the corner behind the drop-off counter, wasn’t open very far – just an inch or so, as if someone had intended to close it, but had forgotten to make sure it was closed tightly – or had shut it, but, like many older doors, it just opened by itself.  The bright light from the reading room poked through the partially opened door, allowing Elli to see that just to the other side was a flight of stairs – going down.

That had to be it, she thought.  But maybe she’d better try to ask permission again before going any further.   Elli moved a little closer to the front of the line where she had just surrendered her position to the man whom the woman was now helping.  The woman’s eyes caught Elli’s and, sensing that Elli was not going to give up her quest just yet, she glared at Elli with a look that said, “I am not going to talk about this anymore.”  And with that, as if sensing Elli’s thoughts, the woman, while walking past the basement door with a stack of return books, pushed hard on the door to make it shut, as if by the slam she was announcing both her authority and a final decision.  She followed this with a dismissive look that was enough to persuade Elli to try to find the book on her own. When the woman returned to the circulation desk, Elli caught her eyes, stepped out of line and then headed straight for the bronze doors through which she had entered the building only minutes earlier, hoping the woman would think she was leaving.

When Elli was about four feet from the exit, however, she began to turn ever so slightly to her left – while looking back and giving a furtive glance toward the woman at the desk.  When Elli saw that the woman was fully occupied with another young girl, she turned and headed back into the library around the many tall shelves of books, as if she had been the hand of a clock that had moved suddenly counter-clockwise from 12 o’clock to 9 o’clock, and then to 5 o’clock, where she located the basement door just twenty feet ahead of her.  She could see, peeping above a row of books from the end of a shelf, that the woman at the desk was still occupied. But it was also apparent that Elli would be in her peripheral line of vision were she to make a dash for the door. Elli waited for just the right moment. The woman turned, as if suddenly ordered to do so by a commanding officer in an army, and began walking quickly in the direction of Elli, causing Elli to wonder if she had been discovered.  But then, as if suddenly remembering she had forgotten something, the woman turned abruptly on one heel back toward the desk. Elli realized instantly that this was her best and perhaps only opportunity, and made a quiet dash for the door.

Elli tried the knob and found the door locked.  She looked for a key and found a rather large and old one on a nail next to the door.  She grabbed the chain holding the black skeleton key, unlocked the door and then slipped inside, shutting the door ever so gently behind her.

The head of the stairs she had noticed earlier through the slightly opened door was no longer in sight, and she was standing in pitch-black darkness.

Elli stood still in the small space, not wanting to fall down the stairs, and groped the three close walls enveloping her for a light switch.  Like a blind woman trying to ‘see’ another’s face with her hands, Elli let her probing fingers dance lightly over the surfaces of the cracked plaster walls, not wanting to miss the one spot where the switch was located.
She found nothing. Perhaps it was a bulb with a switch or pull-chain hanging from the ceiling. Elli stood on her toes and waved an arm throughout the impenetrable darkness while she leaned against one wall and then another to keep from falling.  Still nothing.

All of a sudden, Elli heard the sound of the heels worn by the acting librarian. They were getting louder – and closer.  Elli had to decide either to open the door and disclose her presence or, still in the dark, to lock the door and go quickly down the stairs.  With little time for consideration, Elli locked the deadbolt and then groped for the handrail she had discovered in her search for a light. She found it and began an initially swift, but careful, descent.   Elli descended no more than a few steps when she heard the knob jiggle, indicating, apparently to the woman’s satisfaction, that the door was locked as she had intended it to be. Elli then heard the heels walk away, as if in victory.

Elli assumed that the bottom of the stairs must be near, and that surely there she would discover a light switch.  However, the handrail suddenly disappeared and the steps turned abruptly into stairs of stone that spread themselves like an unfolding fan into an ever-widening spiral.  It was, she felt, as if she were a young woman in a wide skirted gown slowly descending the staircase of an elegant mansion to join her waiting escort.

Elli continued her descent on the stairs that, to her astonishment, seemed to have no end, and on a spiral that seemed ever to widen, as if the spiral staircase never intended to reach any sort of ground or pavement whatsoever, but simply existed for its own sake.  She balanced herself against the stone wall as she stepped, careful with each footfall to make certain there was always another step or, better, a landing. To be sure to not lose the key, Elli placed the chain about her neck, tucking the key inside her shirt.

“Surely,” thought Elli, “I must have made a mistake – this couldn’t possibly be the stairs to the basement!”