If I Had a Hammer by Teresa Trent

Author:Teresa Trent [Teresa Trent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Level Best Books
Published: 2023-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

The worst had happened. The root of this feeling of failure sank deep into my soul. I had tried to believe in myself, my abilities, my future, even when others didn’t. Today I had lost even my own internal voice. I needed my mother. Just like scraping my knee as a kid, I needed a maternal Band-aid. I made my way to the library.

“I never liked that man,” my mother said as she shelved a book. “He’s never checked a book out here. Did you know that? He reads the paper because it’s free. Who knows what he’s been reading, or if he’s reading at all?”

“So, this is how you evaluate people?” I laughed. “By their book checkouts?”

“You can tell a lot about a person by what they’re reading. I know who likes mysteries, who reads romances, and who has a nasty little medical problem they’re not telling other people about. It’s all there in black and white.”

I shuddered to think someone could know all about you, just by knowing what materials you were searching out and reading. Thank goodness librarians generally kept that information to themselves. It wouldn’t be good if somebody got to the drugstore and was suddenly redirected to hemorrhoid creams. What would the world be like if anyone could find out your business? Business. Just the word reminded me of the predicament I was in, now unemployed. “What am I going to do now? I’ve just started paying my own rent, and if Ellie goes off to join the Peace Corps, I’ll have to find another roommate.”

My mother shelved the last book from the tan metal rolling cart and made a quick pivot toward me. “You’ll find another job.” She said it as though finding a new job were as easy as picking up an ice cream sundae at a soda fountain.

“But I got fired from my first job.”

“Did you ever question Jimmy about the last secretary he hired?”

“No.” I hadn’t been told anything about the person I replaced. I had been so happy to get the job, I didn’t question why there was an opening. Now that I thought about it, it was strange that no one had been there to train me. Jimmy plunked me down behind the desk and expected me to know everything on my first day. That was when I made friends with Milton. He was the only one who took time to show me where things were.

“See. I’ll bet with his attitude he goes through a secretarial school graduate every month. No one wants to work for a man with a temper.” I followed her as she pushed the cart back to the checkout desk. “You got off lucky getting out of that place, especially with everything going on over there.”

She returned to her place behind the desk. I leaned my elbows on the counter, a stance I had taken since I was tall enough to do it. “You’re saying don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry about what?” Ben loped forward from

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