The World’s Strongest Librarian

  I flopped into my bed. There were too many sirens in the city. Even with the blinds pulled the room was too bright. I stood and looked out the window. When I noticed that I couldn’t see the stars, I thought of the many nights I’d spent sleeping on the trampoline back home with my siblings, endless galaxies spiraling away into nothingness over our heads.

  I missed my family.

  It had been a hard day of toil and rejection. We’d probably talked with three or four hundred people—an average day—without success. I was getting used to having doors slammed in my face. Of having girls wink at me and not being able to offer anything but salvation in return. Of being stood up for five appointments in one day and wondering how to fill the time.

  Elder Wrigley, a district leader, came to check on our group. He was a giant, an inch taller than me. He sent his own companion with Santiago and worked with me that day. At the first door he knocked on, he said, “Have you ever wondered why Hispanic people are more likely to let us in?” I didn’t have time to answer. The door was opened by a small woman from El Salvador. She spoke no English. But she insisted that we come in. Pasale, pasale. And suddenly I was teaching my first full discussion. She listened while Elder Wrigley and I spoke and gave us some water to drink. She declined to be visited again, which confused me since she had ushered us in with such gusto.

  Outside, Wrigley said, “A lot of these people think we’re from immigration. They’ve just arrived from Nicaragua or El Salvador or wherever and suddenly there are two white people wearing ties at their door, looking serious.”

  “So that’s why she didn’t ask us to come back?”

  “Yeah. I’m sure she would have kicked us out sooner if she could have figured out how to do it nicely. Their culture’s a lot more polite than ours.”

  This was true. The Hispanic community certainly had its share of people who couldn’t stand us, but most were willing to talk, even if just to heckle us. In my experience, black people would usually hear us out and invite us in. We knocked on a door once and a small black guy with a huge smile opened the door. He invited us inside and asked, “Can I look at those books?” He ignored us while we tried to teach the first discussion. He flipped through the Book of Mormon and stopped on each of the inset pictures. “So what’s happening here?” The picture showed a fat man in a purple robe—a bad king named King Noah—condemning one of God’s prophets to be burned at the stake. I related this story and he slammed the book down and yelled, “Motherfucker.” He sat back and shook his head, staring at something over my shoulder. “You telling me this fat fuck burned up a man of God? Goddamn.” These sorts of interactions weren’t all that productive, but they were lively. And way better than slammed doors and rolled eyes.

  By the six-month mark I had helped baptize two people. The average for our mission was seven baptisms over two years. This was pretty standard for stateside missions. Compared with places like Santiago, Chile, where a missionary might teach and baptize ten people in a day, our success felt paltry.

  Our success stories were two teenage boys who let us in when we knocked on their door. Elder Santiago and I were there to follow up with their mother, a contact made on the street. She had urged us to visit and then didn’t show. The boys were obviously bored by everything we said about the church, so we started talking about sports. We went to the park and played two on two for a while. When the game ended, Elder Santiago said, “Have you guys considered getting baptized?”

  They shrugged and said, “Sure, we’ll do it.” We taught them the rest of the lessons, baptized them, and managed to be surprised when they never came to church and stopped taking our calls.

  But we’d done it. We gotten two baptisms, and I hoped that this success would sustain me and drive me to work even harder.

  It did, but then everything changed.

  Eight months out, I was out on the street on a sunny day when I suddenly punched myself in the face. Boom!

  It hurt.

  I looked at my bloody hand. What the hell? People gawked at me, but they weren’t nearly as surprised as I was.

  Everything looked the same. The sky was still blue and the clouds were still white. I still had my Book of Mormon in my unbloodied hand and I was still sweating like a tall, skinny faucet in the August heat. My feet still ached and I still had a terrible haircut. Elder Miller—the best friend I would make in the mission—gaped at me. “Are you all right?”

  Before I could answer, it happened again. Wham! “Let’s go home,” I said. I managed to get on my bike and pedal. I didn’t hit myself while on the bike, but I did scream a couple of times. We rode for thirty minutes and I collapsed onto our couch and sat on my hands.

  “What can I do?” Elder Miller asked.

  “I don’t know.” Wham! My right hand had sneaked out from beneath me. I wanted to call my mom. But I couldn’t. We were allowed to call our families on Mother’s Day, long past, and on Christmas, which felt like it was a century into the future. For the rest of the afternoon I yelled, hit, and scratched myself raw.

  It was too much. The next day I called the mission president and asked if I could call my parents. When my mom answered the phone, I blurted out what had happened to me and waited for her reaction.

  “I’ve never heard of Tourette’s doing this,” she said.

  “What should I do?”

  “See a doctor. Do what he says. Let us know how it goes. We love you, honey, hang in there.”

  Elder Wrigley drove me to a neurologist in Bethesda. President Graff came as well. The doctor outlined the profiles for various pills and asked which I felt most comfortable trying.

  I agreed to take the drug Klonopin. After a week I’d report back to President Graff. There wasn’t much to report:

  “It’s making me really sleepy, but it’s not helping with anything.”

  “Can you continue to work?”

  “Yes. We’re going out tonight.”

  “Please let me know if I can help. Go out if you can. Someone might need to meet you today.”

  The tics weren’t as bad after that first horrible, violent day. They hurt and they made it hard to go outside, but I was doing all right. After about a month, the worst of the injurious tics—hitting and scratching myself—stabilized and I was merely walking around screaming, “Huh huh huh!” at the top of my lungs, like a quarterback calling for the huddle.

  I continued to work and it paid off. Elder Miller and I met the person that missionaries dream of—the one who’d been prepared for us. We knocked on Sonia’s door and the first thing she said was, “I knew someone would come. I’ve been praying for someone to come talk to me about God.” She accepted everything. Instantly. The most fascinating thing was that she’d met with missionaries before, in her home in Bolivia. She’d even taken a couple of the discussions. But as she put it, “It was never you two.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You know how there are so many self-improvement books in the bookstore? They all say the same thing. So why do people keep reading them? They basically all say ‘You can do it!’”

  I laughed.

  “Well, Elders, you do not know this, but you are the same as all the other elders, and you are different. You are not them, even if you tell me all the same things. I feel things when it is the two of you that I do not feel with others, even if the words do not change so much.”

  I was unprepared for this eagerness and openness after the months of fruitless toil. We baptized Sonia a month later. It was a small ceremony at our ward building. She wore a blue dress with a white collar to the church and changed into a one-piece white jumpsuit for the ceremony. The bishop gave a brief talk in the chapel, then the handful of us in attendance guided Sonia into a room with a baptismal font. Elder Miller stood next to Sonia and intoned, “Sonia, having authority given me of Jesus Christ, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.” He guided her under the water, supporting the small of her back, then pulle
d her up. I was one of the two required witnesses who made sure it was done properly, “just like Jesus,” according to the Book of Mormon. Sonia’s husband wept. He hadn’t attended the discussions, although he supported Sonia’s decision. “This felt very important,” he told me. “I think I’m ready to start learning.”

  When Sonia emerged from the dressing room later, she hugged us with tears in her eyes. “Thank you thank you thank you. I feel…new.”

  Feeling is not knowing. I’d been hearing this unwelcome echo since the day I’d hit myself.

  When we got home, Elder Miller said, “Elder, that was a good baptism. That’s why we’re here.” After dinner we studied until he fell asleep. I looked at the clock and listened to my body groan as it tensed and shook, twitched and rigidified. Twitch. Twitch. Twitch. Slap slap slap. Suddenly all the food in my stomach was rebelling. This was a recent development. I was now contorting so badly, so frequently, that food wasn’t settling in my stomach very often. The more this happened, the more my body thought that was how it should deal with food: by rejecting it.

  I walked into the backyard, looking for stars. There were none, although there was a perfect October Halloween moon, the kind of moon that exists for bats and witches to fly across in silhouette. The house next door had an eerie decoration—a rubber gorilla head on a pole. When the wind blew, which it did often, the gorilla’s mouth moved and fluttered. Tonight it was saying: Feeling is not knowing. Why didn’t you tell Sonia that you haven’t prayed in a month?

  How could I? How could I tell Sonia that I was furious at God? The worst part of Tourette’s wasn’t the bodily harm or even my inability to go outside sometimes. It wasn’t that I was being driven toward increasing isolation. It was the uncertainty. It felt like driving at night, with headlights coming toward me, and every car seemed to be in my lane. I no longer had a destination. I only knew that everything coming toward me had the potential to wreck me, to derail any plan I could make.

  I’d heard the saying, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” I didn’t want to talk about anything with Him, let alone my plans. I didn’t care that Christ, when he took the sins of the world on Himself, felt every pain that anyone would ever endure, including what was happening to me. I didn’t care that there was a world full of people who needed to hear our message. I didn’t care about any of it. I just wanted to sit still. I wanted to be able to think again. To focus. I wanted to stop losing weight from my already whittled frame. How could I tell Sonia that I, an ordained missionary, resented her relationship with God? That she was much closer to Him than I was capable of? That I was disgusted by the whining in my head and tormented by my own questions?

  “How?” The gorilla head said nothing. The wind had died.

  The next two months were worse every day. The tics were constant and brutal. The weight loss scared me. I’d lost control of my body, my faith, and had nothing that resembled a fighting spirit. My birthday was on December 1. Our district went bowling. In the bowling alley I bit the insides of my cheeks until blood was leaking out the corners of my mouth. I managed to hide it before anyone saw. That night I called Elder Wrigley and asked him to set up a meeting with President Graff and me.

  The next day my mission president and I sat across from each other at a desk in a church office in Bethesda. “The medication isn’t helping, is it?” he said. He had the kindest eyes.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Elder, do you know how much you weigh? Right now?”

  “No, but I’m having a hard time eating.”

  “Do you feel like you can still do the work?”

  “I want to. I want to be able to do it. I—” Good grief, crying again. I’d probably cried more in the last two months than in my entire life. “I think I want to go home. But what if I’m just giving up? How do I know if I’ve done enough?”

  President Graff reached across the table and grabbed my hand. “Oh, Josh. You’ve done enough. You served with honor and if you choose to leave now, you need to know that you served your entire mission. You did all you could and you did all that was asked of you. The families you reached would agree with me, whether you know it or not.”

  I’m not sure if I let him convince me, or if I’d already made up my mind, but it was enough. I nodded. “Okay. What happens next?”

  When I stepped off the airplane in Elko, Nevada, my family was waiting for me. My mom hugged my emaciated frame and cried while my dad and my siblings watched. Then they all hugged me, and believe me, you’ve never heard such sniffling. But it felt good. It felt right. It felt like home.

  “Son,” my dad said as we headed home, “we talked to President Graff. He said to make sure to tell you that you did enough. We’re going to get you some help.”

  “From who?” I asked.

  “We’ll get you help,” said my mom. “We’ll try everything, but you have to keep trying too. You don’t get to give up.”

  I’d awoken that morning as a missionary, Elder Hanagarne, on the other side of the country. Tonight I was just Josh, a kid unpacking his bag in the bedroom he’d left a year earlier. I spent most of that night in my bed with a reading light and Catch-22, trying to find the things that used to make me laugh.

  They weren’t there anymore.

  CHAPTER 6

  364.163—Fraud

  613.71—Bodybuilding

  808.5—Voice—Social Aspects

  646.726 Botulinum Toxin—Therapeutic Use

  There are always two LICs on duty at my library. Librarians in Charge. This title makes you the first responder to events weird enough to merit a first responder.

  When I’m LIC, I walk the building and ask at each desk, “I’m the LIC, do you guys need me to do anything? Anything you’ve been putting off?” They usually say, “Well, how nice!” as if it’s the most surprising thing they’ve ever heard. I don’t do it out of altruism, misguided or otherwise. I do it because I have this nagging memory that there’s a spreadsheet of rules and procedures out there somewhere that says I’m supposed to do this.

  Admin takes library process seriously. “Crucial,” I’ve heard it described.

  It’s not crucial.

  As I descend the spiral staircase between floors I hear: “Oh, he can help you! There’s Josh! Josh can help you! Hey, Josh!” The employee—let’s call him Jim—waves me over. Standing before Jim is a person in a pink sweat suit, with long gray hair and a gray goatee.

  “Hi, can I help you?”

  “Yes!” booms a sonorous baritone. “This…person”—pointing at Jim—“won’t stop calling me sir and I’m a legal female!”

  I am so proud of my straight face. Librarians in Charge don’t surprise.

  “Is this true, Jim?” Jim has pulled his feet up into the tall chair he sits in. He covers his face with his hands, then looks at me through spread fingers. “I have no idea what’s happening here.”

  “Oh yes, you do!” A driver’s license appears under my nose. The person’s thumbnail points at what looks like the letter F under Gender. The card vanishes before I see a name or photo.

  “See! See!”

  “I’ve worked with Jim for a long time,” I say. “If he’d really seen what you thought you were showing him, I don’t think he would’ve been antagonizing you on purpose.”

  “Oh, so you’re taking his side? You’re going to lie too?”

  “It’s got nothing to do with sides. I’m just giving my opinion.”

  “Well, you don’t get to say you’re something you’re not, and he doesn’t get to say I’m something that I’m not! I use the ladies’ restroom!”

  “I agree. I just think it’s a misunderstanding.”

  “You probably just think I’m off my meds.”

  “Look, is there anything I can do to help?” I say. “I don’t want you to leave angry, but we’re not getting anywhere.”

  “Okay, okay, look. I’m putting my hands in my pockets to show you that I’m not a thre
at to you. Okay?”

  It’s true. “Okay, you’re not a threat to me,” I say. “We agree.”

  The hands are back! Fists under my nose! “If I wasn’t a lady!”

  I’m in danger of laughing and never being able to retrace the steps to equilibrium. “Can I do anything else for you? Did we get this figured out?”

  Not quite, because the guy points into the lower Urban room, to a display about the benefits of voting. “That sign out there says the vote is the great equalizer. Take it down.”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’ve studied a lot and I’m going to tell you something. Something that you might not like. Are you ready to hear it?”

  “Probably not.”

  “You probably think we’re hard enough on the Japs, but you’re wrong. We can’t let everyone forget what they did. We can’t.” I shake his hand and he leaves.

  I walk behind the reference desk where Jim stares into his computer. “Are we done?” He looks up. “Oh good, he’s gone! Now what in the world was he saying about his ID? I had no idea why he started yelling.”

  “Go,” said my mom.

  I looked around. I could have gone into another building and started gambling, or taken a prostitute for a spin, or purchased a shiny new saddle. I could have—

  “Go,” she said. “We’ve got to try this.”

  “This is stupid. I don’t think I can.”

  “We’re here. We’re going to try it. Gail said he really helped her once.”

  “He gave Gail a lemon potion so that—”

  “It wasn’t a potion.”

  “—so that her knee would feel better.”

  “It wasn’t a potion.”

  “But how’s her knee?”

  “It’s still bad, but she didn’t go for her knee, so you don’t know what you’re talking about. Please. Just go.” She shoved me in the chest.

  “Hey!”