Jaki Jean & Jean & Grandma Luna & Burning Books

This evening, as Jean & I watched Charlie Rose interview Marley Davis, the amazing 11 year old who collected over 1,000 books in which black girls were the main characters, I told Jean a story.

I told her how my high school friend Rachel Halperin introduced me to Andres & Amy Dominquez & how Andres introduced me to the writer, Angela Cervantes.

As I told Jean what I knew about Angela’s story, how a young Angela read books under the covers at night using a flashlight, I confessed that I did the same.

After I explained that Angela writes books designed for middle school readers, featuring Latina characters who were so absent from the books available to her in her childhood, I told Jean about “Gaby, Lost & Found,” & Angela’s new book, “Allie, First at Last.”

Jean asked Why didn’t you tell us?  About reading under the blanket?

As I tried to remember why, I faltered.  What did a young Jaki Jean think my parents Jack & Jean were going to do if they caught me?

In retrospect, Jack & Jean never would have caught me reading under the covers with a flashlight.  They never caught me leaving my bedroom at midnight to watch “Dr. Who” & they never caught me leaving the house before daylight, climb the stone fence, cross the desert & climb a hill to watch the sun rise over the mountains.

So I told Jean what I thought a younger Jaki Jean felt.

Because it was after my bedtime.  And there were rules about bedtime.  Because I did not want to stop reading under the covers.  Because I imagined it was forbidden & sometimes the forbidden is enticing. 

Looking back, I understand that a  younger Jaki Jean did not know how to tell Jack & Jean that she required more reading time.

Jean listened & then replied:

My mother once burned a book.

For a moment, I was stunned.  Not the same mother who read Jean “Pollyanna” or took her to the library.  I wondered what triggered this memory.  Had Jean been caught reading under the covers?

Was this memory triggered by watching The Book Thief (a fine book, a poor film adaptation) about a little girl who stole books from the piles burned by the Nazis?

So I asked Jean to tell me the story.

Jean told me that her brother Mansel & his first wife Pearl came to visit from their home in Australia.  Pearl left a book in the house on the farm when she & Mansel departed.

My grandmother Luna Sims burned that book.  Because, Jean tells me, Luna said it was unfit for Jean or anyone to read.

At eighty, Jean no longer remembers the title of the book.

But I went to the school library & checked it out & read it. Without my mother knowing.

Naturally, I asked Jean what she thought Luna found so offensive, and she said:

There were married characters having affairs.  Very mild in comparison to what we read today.

My mother Jean never forbid or burned a book.  She did censor me from watching certain horror movies until she came to realize that what I imagined from listening to my uncensored friends who watched the movies was worse that the reality.

Jean did, however, keep certain books on a high shelf in the bedroom closet she shared with my father Jack.  It was there that I discovered Harold Robbins novels & David R. Reuben M.D.’s “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex: But Were Afraid to Ask.”

I told Jean, after she relayed the story of how she kept reading the book Luna burned from her mother, that it is no wonder I am a bit of a rebel.  

And she smiled.

Which is about as fine as it gets, when your eighty year old mother smiles at the rebel she helped create.