|
|
|
|
|
My Secret Hero
by Ann Packer
I dont know my heros name. Heroine? The author of a book called Nobodys Girl, which I read at age ten. I was primed, already, by A Little Princess, the classic Frances Hodgson Burnett tale of a girl lost and then found. And I was primed by my life, the combination of personality and circumstance that had led me by age ten to feel very much like nobodys girl, including my own.
What I remember of reading it is my bed, and the pendant lamp that hung over my pillow, and the guilty feeling I had as I lay on my stomach turning the pages. Was it past my bedtime? I think not. I think what prompted the guilt was a feeling of discovery, of a path leading away from where I was (in a family, in a San Francisco suburb, with friends nearby, and a neighborhood, and the trappings of belonging). This path led somewhere else, but where?
The book was about a lost, impoverished little girl. Was she abandoned by her parents? Or did they die? In any case, she suffered horribly, through a series of terrible tribulations, until at last she found a home, with a wealthy old man, a blind man with a gentle heart. And did he regain his sight by the end of the book? He did. And did he immediately recognize her as his long-lost granddaughter? Of course he did. She was Nobodys Girl no longer. And reading this last part of the book, I wept. It was the first time Id cried in response to a story, to any art form. What had happened? This, I think: I had found a way to deeply feel my feelings for the first time, safely, without having to know they were mine.
The rest of reading, in the works of heroes and heroines whose names are permanently inscribed in my mind, has been a slow elaboration, a bringing together of consciousness and the words to describe it.
Ann Packer is the author of Mendocino and Other Stories and the recent novel The Dive from Clausens Pier. She lives in Northern California with her husband and their two children.
page 1
|
|
|
