The Book of Needs

Mary understood secrets. Good secrets, bad secrets, and those shaded in gray tones of ambiguity. So when the small package arrived with a post office box number but no name on the return address she instinctively knew she was holding a secret. Its mystery was held in a plain cardboard box with her name and address printed on a white label, and she was a little afraid to open it. Secrets have a way of bursting out of their careful packaging and upending your life.

She recognized the magnitude of the secret when the first thing she saw upon opening the box was a white index card with just her first name, hand written in careful black ink letters. Her secret name. The name she was born with and never used. There was no sinister reason for adopting the name of Mary and tucking her real name into the folds of her heart to keep it safe. It was just that no one could pronounce what seemed to her to be a simple thing, and her soul winced every time someone said Mary-ko or MarEEko. It’s not like she spoke with an accent. So there it was, staring back up at her. Mariko.

Listen carefully, for I will tell you how to use The Book of Needs. It is fickle and judgmental and your tears will not sway it. Its spine does not bend, but it is also soft and generous and malleable to your heart. You cannot order it, or beg, or think to trick it into doing your will. Its will is stronger than yours, yet it does not seek to impose it upon you, for it desires balance above all else. You must find the balance between what it thinks is best for you and what you think is best for you. This is not easy.

Because curiosity almost always won out over fear in Mary’s mind, she had burrowed her way through the layers of tissue paper under the index card, until her treasure-seeking fingers found both softness and hard edges. It was a small, plain, black book. A journal, it seemed. It was sleek, elegant and minimalist. Just the kind of notebook Mary would have picked out for herself. It appeared brand new, but when she opened it, words jumped out at her with no warning. No title, no name, no introduction, just straight into the story. After the first paragraph she was fairly certain it was a story. It couldn’t possibly be telling the truth.

You may think me a charlatan, yet I am clearly not in possession of the book and have nothing to gain. It merely fell to my lot to be the one to decipher and translate the book’s purpose. This is the payment that is demanded of me. But do not concern yourself with that. The book does not always demand payment for granting needs.

Several pages into the little book and the spark of a suspicion in Mary’s mind grew to the size of a bonfire. This could all be real. According to the book’s seemingly antiquated author, the purpose of the book was to provide things that the reader needed. It most emphatically did not grant wishes, and don’t even think about asking, or treating it like some sort of genie in a bottle. The author became gently hysterical upon that point, and Mary closed the book and her eyes, and got to thinking.

She had some rather urgent needs, but no wish to offend the book, if indeed the book was aware of her. She tried to mentally sort her needs into frivolous wishes and genuine necessities but the neurons in her brain became a little frenzied and she gave up.

Every couple of pages in the book were blank and the author hinted that this could be where you told the book what you needed. But first, you had to tell the book who you were. The vagueness of the instructions was self-doubt inducing, and Mary struggled to even pick up a pen. But once again, curiosity trumped every other emotion.

“You’re very clever,” her mother told her on many occasions as she was growing up. This sounded like a compliment to outsiders, but it was a euphemism for “Figure it out yourself. Go away. Don’t bother me.”

Well, she actually was clever, and she could figure this out. Hoping that the book wasn’t really like Tom Riddle’s diary, she wrote Mariko on the first blank page, shut the book, and went to bed.

The next morning at her usual coffeeshop, the barista she saw every weekday once again asked for her name with her order. Since they had encountered each other hundreds of times over the years, Mary had never decided if the barista had the worst memory in the world or if she, herself, was totally forgettable. Shikata ga nai, her mother would have said. Nothing you can do about it.

On this morning, Mary replied, “Mariko.” To her astonishment her name was correctly pronounced when someone shouted it as her drink was finished, and it was spelled correctly in bold, black letters on her paper cup.

The rest of the day passed in a bewildered blur. The receptionist at her office called her “Mariko” and the nameplate on her desk did the same. In fact, everyone who spoke to her that day never seemed to realize that just the day before she had been the “Mary” they had always known. She pried her driver’s license out of her wallet and the new name stared at her. All of her documents, some so old and folded it was a wonder they held together, spelled out her real name. The name she had never used since she was old enough to legally change it to something more ordinary. It was The Book of Needs, she knew, but she didn’t know how or why.

That night she opened the book to the next blank page. She’d spent all day trying to work out what to write next. The needs were many. But when it came time, she merely wrote, Thank You. Not everything has to be said all at once, she reasoned.

Put thought and care into all that you write. Understand the difference between desire and necessity. I do not say to be humble and modest because these things are often cloaks for unbridled vanity. Be wary. The Book of Needs will never give you what you think you deserve.

So if you think you deserve something you won’t get it, mused Mariko, but what if you think you don’t deserve anything? She was sure she shouldn’t write that in the book, but she wondered all the same. The real problem she was mulling over was whether to be specific or vague. Nowhere in the book did the mysterious author say what methods worked best. I need a million dollars seemed hyperbolic. I need help seemed far too open-ended, and the author said that there should be balance, so she couldn’t just leave things up to the book. She’d almost written, Do what you think is best for me, before she remembered that.

“You’re very clever,” she told herself out loud, willing the words to be true and not a euphemism. And then she wrote in the book, I need to let go of my mother.

She woke up early the next morning. The pale gray sky hinted at a sunrise as she walked to the cemetery her mother was buried in. The gravesite was tidy – her mother would not have approved of anything less and had made that a condition of Mariko buying the plot for her long before she needed it. Mariko had not brought flowers or any idea of what she would say when she got there. Kneeling in the grass, she reached into her purse and pulled out the little black book and a pen. She tore a blank page out of the book, hoping it would not be offended. I forgive you, she wrote, and then folded the page into a crane and placed it on the headstone.

You may not keep The Book of Needs longer than is necessary. If you have understood its workings and used it judiciously you will discern when the time comes to pass it along. If the book remains a mystery to you, it will free itself from your possession. It has its ways.

When Mariko went to deposit her paycheck at the bank during her lunchtime that day, she blinked hard and stared at the receipt the teller handed her. She almost crumpled it out of shock, but muscle memory took over and she folded it neatly before putting it into her purse. She walked to a nearby park, where daffodils and tulips heralded the arrival of spring, and found an empty bench. She reached into her purse, pulled out the receipt, unfolded it, and verified that her first stunned impression was correct. The balance was $20,000 higher than it should be, and she always knew her balance to the penny. She didn’t think to question it.

The cherry blossoms will be blooming soon in Japan, she thought. She had never seen Japan and didn’t speak the language, but she needed to see the land her ancestors left to help understand who and where she was now. She didn’t think it would lead to any great insight into her mother, but once you have forgiven someone for all the big and little wrongs, such things didn’t seem to matter as much. Shikata ga nai. She would pay off the credit cards that had supported her mother for so long, move into a decent apartment, and buy a plane ticket to Japan. It was enough.

She stood, leaving the little black book on the bench, and walked away into her new life, never looking back.