Lost and Found

by Sue Lile Inman

            Now before you jump to conclusions, let me say that I’m not a cleptomaniac by nature, or by compulsion.  I can control this behavior whenever I wish.  However, I, Evelyn Early Seamore, am plagued by various phobias and as a step in my therapy, Dr. Madeline Crispin assigned me to volunteer at Goodwin High in the Lost and Found and School Supply Store.  She assured me, it is a windowless interior room that would feel as cozy as my bedroom closet where I’ve been spending most of my twenty-fifth year, yet it would get me out of the house at least once a week. 

            No students can enter and browse.  A heavy Dutch door, split in half about waist high with a shelf on it, the top half open during store hours, keeps me protected at all times while I’m there.  My mother drops me off on her way to work, and Mrs. Mozelle Blakely, assistant to the principal, meets me at the car, and we walk in a side door beside her office during second period. Then she leads me by the arm to the Lost and Found and Supplies room.  Mrs. Blakely wears huge glasses that magnify her green, slightly bulging eyes to an alarming frog-like intensity, but she’s kind.

            My first day on duty, my rage for order took over.  The place was such an abysmal mess, all my fears were displaced by the challenge presented.  I worked overtime to deal with the random piles of new notebooks, loose leaf reams, boxes of pens, pencils, markers, erasers, ink cartridges all buried under sundry lost and found items—cell phones (pink, iridescent, purple, and plain), raincoats, book bags (leather, canvas, monogrammed and plain), all with paraphernalia dangling messily.  Mrs. Blakely sold supplies when the bell rang between periods and during lunch breaks while I sorted and arranged the items alphabetically, and then by size and color within each category.

            A surprising number of shirts and sweaters turned up as spring approached.  I found that it helped me deal with these and other personal items to wear disposable gloves like my mother wears when she’s cleaning house for her rich but messy clients.  The odors rising from some of the garments bothered me quite a bit until I began wearing a small mask.  I could tell Mrs. Blakely approved by the way she smiled on one side of her rather large mouth, blinked her magnified eyes, and gave a curt nod of her head, then went about her business.

            I might digress for a moment to enumerate the odors.  Basically, they fall into three categories, with some troubling overlaps: First, food odors—primarily of lingering grease such as one acquires from working over french-fries in McDonald’s or Burger King; furthermore, the ethnic spices of Mexican, Italian, or Asian varieties, and to a lesser degree curry from India Palace.  Secondly, earth odors of grasses—fresh, acrid, or decayed; dirt—sandy, clay, or mixed. And thirdly, body odors, principally though not exclusively, sweat, male and peppery; or female, sour and bitter, laden with stale perfumes.

            Within a month I felt a deeply satisfying sense of accomplishment.  All the school supplies now hold their places in colorful plastic bins on the shelves, clearly visible to any student at the door.  Mrs. Blakely seems relieved and pleased.  Around the corner out of sight are my lost and found items, carefully arranged. Each Monday and Wednesday (yes, I increased my volunteer hours) I check the items, adding the newly forgotten that the janitor, Milton Jackson, has dropped in the receiving box over the weekend.  The shirts, sweaters, pants, coats, jackets, each by kind and color, hang neatly on matching coat hangers from a rod Milton installed at my request.

            As the semester has gone along, more and more books have appeared in Milton’s box.  At first I simply arranged them by kind and color as with the clothing, but by mid-April I began to look them over—classics (illustrated and plain), textbooks by subject, paperbacks—mysteries, romances, westerns, comics; and such.  The more books discarded, the more often I began to develop terrible headaches.  A pressure begins in my shoulders and neck, and pretty soon my sight grows wavery like heat rising from hot asphalt.  My head’s caught in a vise of pain.  Throbbing, insistent pain, different in every respect from panic attacks which sent me to Dr. Crispin in the first place.  Those affected my heartbeats and breathing mostly.  I call these headaches Head Fury.

Why are students forgetting their books, and never coming to look for them?  What are they doing that could be more important than reading?  Even though I’m not highly educated, I know for sure that reading books is what matters in school.

So two Mondays ago, I summoned my courage and peeked out the door.  What a sight. A boy with jeans puddling over his sneakers walking beside a girl in a tight tee, long earrings, a butterfly tattoo on her midriff, their hands in each other’s back pockets.  Close behind was, I swear, a furry, horned creature, standing on his hind legs, a cell phone at his ear, who turned and winked at me.  I ran back into the protection of Lost and Found, my head pounding.

            The only relief for the Head Fury came last Wednesday afternoon.  I was dusting the shelf of books, now numbering 145, when one particular book, a thin hardback in a black cover with worn gold letters felt at home in my hand.  Utterly at home.  It was called The Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot.  I expected it to contain musical scores.  But no, there were long poems inside.  As I read them the peculiar music sang itself to me.  I couldn’t understand much, but the book had to be mine and I took it.  And that is how I have come to collect every poetry book that appears in the Lost and Found box at Goodwin High.  No one comes to ask for these, but if a student should do so, I would, of course, return them.