She didn’t know it yet, but the moment her parents uneasily uttered ‘Geraldine’ before hastily scribbling on the birth register form, her life was changed forever. Her unwitting guardians had high hopes for Geraldine with her father seeking a doctor and mother certain she would become a child rearing housewife of dynamic and dignified repute. Sadly for them, this would never be the case for by choking out those three naïve syllables they had consigned their beautiful little bundle of promise to one of the last enduring caste systems in her world…
The first signs of the prophecy coming true were evident as early as her third birthday. Her father had gone to Woolworths and purchased the most beautiful and striking doll. It was one of those psychopathic ‘keep me in the box or I’ll eat your hearts’ lifelike numbers, and Geraldine was furious. Her father for his part had been oblivious at the time. He merely found it queer that Geraldine calmed down the instant he agreed to her request to write Great Expectations on the doll’s dress and place an imaginary barcode under her dress.
The more concessions they made to her whims, the further Geraldine pushed her parents. Geraldine logged everything, even how many logs they used. For their part, her parents tolerated it. At times it was pretty helpful for them as they were able to superimpose their emerging contempt for one another onto their dry distaste for their daughter’s lunatical tendencies.
So often, Geraldine’s father had watched those wildlife documentaries where the cautious water buffalo waited… waited… waited… until it was too late and a pack of lions were gagging on her pancreas. And now, after so many years burdened by her oddities, he saw what was going on with his child and he knew it was too late to save her. He was wracked with guilt, as he squirmed in terror at the realisation of his last breaths his most dominant though remained; why did we give her that name?
From that moment on, Geraldine’s father was known in the house as Ian the Bastard. Geraldine’s mother was frequently overheard muttering about being left to deal with it or her own or to lament that even his urn had a ‘fucking barcode’ on it. Her mother rarely spoke from then on other than to curse his name but Geraldine remained oblivious…
In her 18th year, Geraldine waved off the few friends she’d made from within a contentious swarm of bullies and deviants at school as they headed for University and all its sordid associations. Geraldine had been pressed to join them from more than one angle, but as much as she tried to fill out the form she could not. Every time she tried to write down her particulars, all that would appear on the page were titles. Her personal profile amounted to nothing more than a whodunit of Penguin Paperback Classics.
Every potential employer looked at Geraldine in amusement and bemusement. They could see something in the girl for sure, but not in their line of work. One person was kind enough to promote Geraldine to an old friend of hers, a senior librarian in the district library. Geraldine was hired the second she entered the building, there wasn’t even any need for an interview…
The senior couldn’t believe her luck! A ‘G-CLASS’ handed to her on a plate and at such a young age. It was hard to find a real one in this day and age. Geraldine for her part slotted in amazingly well in her new role. Somehow, the filing systems made such easy sense to her. As years turned into months, Geraldine honed her near instinctive ability to hold the elderly in contemptuous regard and to be nothing but suspicious of the young lenders who needed to do little or nothing to merit expulsion from the building. Geraldine quickly became merciless. For Geraldine, a late book was nothing but a raging haemorrhoid on a silken rectum of perfection. There could be no excuses for late returns; fines were enforced with scant regard for the ability to pay them.
Geraldine died last week. As with any member of her caste she produced at best weak children or maybe even none at all. Her children were the many books and publications which she kept so ordered and predictable in her literary paradise. Word has it that she hung on until a suitable replacement had been found; a natural caste librarian such as a Maureen or a Lorraine. In the end, she saw off fourteen Sarahs and Jennys before an Audrey walked through the doors and began hollering incandescently at a group of subdued adolescents with the audacity to be studying for their A-levels. Audrey didn't need to be told she had the job, it was given to her seventeen years previously by her parents. Geraldine slipped out of the world as she had entered it... a librarian.
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