THE BED, THE BOOK & THE MONEY

Anna lived in her own little world, unbothered by the tests of life’s theories on survival. She was a gentle sixteen, a blithe blossom that was doted upon by her mother, Phillis Paige, and her grandmother, Janny Wilkinson. These women were inventive, leaders of themselves despite hardships in life. Neither of them finished high school. Their underprivileged, religious upbringing, shaded by domestic abuse, helped in shaping their motives to consciously fostered the insulated environment that Anna had become used to. Together, they created a successful cleaning business, Wilkinson & Paige. They were the ones to call when you moved, or someone died, and you needed the place cleared and cleaned. For them, the job was exciting and rewarding, even though it had its challenges. They never knew what to expect from each client. Sometimes they would hire extra help to get the work done, and as an unwritten rule, they got to keep whatever was left behind and made extra money by selling items that were in good condition. The most rewarding part of the job for them was being able to work together for themselves. Phillis and Janny were like best friends. Anna admired their loving relationship and was proud to be raised by such strong, caring women. Phillis and Janny considered all the time and money spent on academic tutors, piano and ballet lessons and other frills in life, a worthwhile investment in making sure that Annabelle Janny Paige symbolized what they couldn’t be.

Anna used the regulated knowledge of her family’s history to spur emotional growth in herself. She was told that her father was a young Italian gentleman whose company her mother had briefly entertained while visiting a friend in New-York. Her grandpa Wilkinson died of a heart attack when she was only three. And they were estranged from the rest of their family members because they were bad people who didn’t know how to appreciate good people. She accepted everything they told her like a cup of tea and felt grateful to be treasured. She never had a male figure in her life, except her best friend Aali Dean Berrada, who was also known as Aaliyah when it suited him. They’d been best friends since grade four, attended dances together and even shared crushes on some of the same guys between middle school and high school. Aali secretly appreciated the fact that Anna didn’t have a man in her home to undermine their friendship. He harboured slight anxiety about straight men because he found them to be more judgmental despite their tolerance of him. He didn’t know his father, except that he was Moroccan, a Muslim, good-looking, and he abandoned him and his mother for another woman when he was four. The only established connection he had with his father was the consistent child support payments. Inherently, Aali and Anna had a lot in common besides their dark hair and olive skin tone. They were connected through circumstances that neither of them could have altered.

Arthritis had claimed Janny’s both knees at a mere twenty-two years older than her daughter Phillis, forcing her to retire early. That’s when Phillis started hiring consistent help if the job required more than her capability; that’s when she considered hiring Anna and her best friend to help on the weekends. Annabelle was excited, Aali was intrigued. Unlike Anna, he was an experienced employee, he’d had jobs before. He knew as much as Anna, that she had always desired to do more than scheduled curricular and extracurricular activities. Anna chimed enthusiastically at the prospect of showing off her competence in other ways. She wanted to prove that she was just as capable as her mother and grandmother.

The hard-working hands that once held her close to warm breast for milk and comfort were now upon her shoulders, nogging her in the direction of responsibility and maturity. Even grandma Wilkinson crawled out of her lair for Anna’s first day on a job. After a concise description of their assignments, it was time to climb the staircase that led to apartment 201. The day before, Phillis and one of her hires had cleared all the deceased personal belongings. A few pieces of quaint furniture had to be organized for a furniture donation bank and the rooms needed to be cleaned. Aali felt lucky and told Anna that he was certain that they would discover something valuable that was left behind. He said, “people always miss something, hidden or undiscovered.” Anna’s excitement settled like dust to an inexplicable reverence, as though the deceased was seated in his chair by the window adjacent to the entry, conveniently watching them invade his solitude, waiting for them to leave. While detective Aali diligently made his way to inspect the kitchen cupboards, Anna drifted, almost compulsorily to the bedroom. Greeted by the warm rays of natural light, she fixed her eyes on a single bed against a grey-blue wall. She could hear the low tones of her mother and grandmother's voices in the living room, and above theirs, Aali’s failing attempts at entertaining the world.

Her mother and grandmother had begun organizing a few paintings and smaller items. Aali and Anna were tasked with disassembling the bed and taking all the dismantled furniture down to the service door at the side of the building. Anna was able to take the mattress down on her own, while Aali dismantled the bed frame. The box spring was set aside by the large naked windows that stripped the room of darkness and gloom. Sunlight kept pouring in, as though convened by Anna’s melancholy aura to restore her mindset. As they worked together in sync to tie each limb together, they paid homage to Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D minor on Aali’s phone. Their fondness for classical music was just another one of the many strings that tied them together. While Aali took the bed frame down, Anna went for the box spring. She tried to get a grip, but her left hand came upon an odd structure, so she quickly changed direction to probe. Leaning the frame against her, she bent over slightly to uncover the pleasantly odd surprise. It was a wind-up music box, in the shape of a bed, made from some type of blond wood and professionally carved with authentic potential. The small headboard was painted in acrylic red and green with a gold star in the centre. The bed had gold trimmings all around the edges, and in place of a mattress, a professional drawing of a young woman with the inscription AB. Aali was right about them finding a treasure left behind, he always seemed to have good intuition, and he walked in just in time.

“You have to help me get this out,” she said.

“What’d you do?”

“Nothing silly but check this out.”

“What da what?” “That is freaking awesome!”

The miniature bed was lodged into the box spring and held in place by a small screw. Anna held onto it as Aali used a small star point screwdriver to release it from its hold. “That’s Moroccan, I can tell by the colours and design,” he told Anna. “It’s solid,” she answered, surprised by the weight of its beauty. “Looks like someone crafted a music-box into a cool little bed,” she thought. Just then, Anna’s mother and grandmother came into the room. “Can I keep this?” Anna turned and asked directly. “Does it have anything written on it? asked her mother. “Just AB,” said Anna. “Strange, but so beautifully crafted,” she continued. “Who was this guy, do you know?” Anna asked. “It’s yours,” said her grandmother in an unusually dry voice. Anna and Aali were then privy to her mother’s reaction, the amazement that faded into dissatisfaction. It was a curious experience of minor confusion that left them captivated, but Aali managed to break the ice with one of his random renditions of Happy Birthday. It was his favourite song to sing at the most inappropriate times, and it worked. Everyone went back to doing whatever they were doing before, except Anna was still mesmerized by her find. Aali took the box spring down. Phillis and Janny went back to whispering, but now in the kitchen, as though they were there illegally. The two friends were both mystified by the way in which the object was hidden, but neither of them mentioned anything to Anna's mother and grandmother, especially after that peculiar moment.

Later that evening, they discovered that the music box didn’t work, but they both agreed that it was still an exceptionally beautiful sculpture. Anna and her best friend spoke on the phone and lent all types of creative anecdotes to the day’s discoveries, especially the mysterious upset between her mother and grandmother, who were acting weirdly more suspicious than their cagey routine. “Let’s talk tomorrow,” was the last thing Anna said to Aali before her world would break into the events that followed thereafter. It was late, her eyes were starting to get tired and she was almost falling asleep to her night light. Sprawled across her bed, her thoughts swirling in and out of the day’s event, her newfound treasure posed eagerly, displayed like a piece of art in a teenaged museum on the nightstand where she charged her phone. Her voyage to slumber was gradual until rudely interrupted by her buzzing phone, dancing to its own rhythm, irritating harmony. Anna reached out blindly, and the unavoidable accident accelerated by her urgency, brought everything down. The lamp fell over, the phone slid across the floor, and her music-box snapped wide open and ejected its paradoxes. She sighed loudly, then scampered to turn on the lights. When she’d turned around to face the mess, her knees buckled, and she fell forward, almost launching towards the exposed contents. Her jaw dropped, her eyes fixed, she could feel her heart beating as she reached out with trembling hands.

Anna stood up slowly and sat on her bed. In her right hand, she held a small black notebook and in the other, two stacks of cash banded together labelled $20,000. Just then, as though unconsciously roused by her bizarre discoveries, her grandma was walking towards her room. She was moving a little faster than usual, but the imperfect wooden floors always gave away her weight and manner. Impulsively, Anna chucked the book under her pillow and stood up as a short knock followed the door open. That night, Anna tried to reason for answers from the two women, but neither of them was prepared to speculate or discuss the matter further and promised to figure it out in the morning. They also wanted to know if there was anything else in the box, and Anna said no, she felt justified in concealing the book.

When the lights turned off and the house got quiet, she could hear the faint sounds of intense murmuring as her interest collected elsewhere. She pulled out the small black notebook and clicked on her penlight. Nervousness gripped her hands as she flipped open the first page. Impressed by the beautiful penmanship, she thought the author was a woman until she read the first page. “The money is for your mother, to help with some of the expenses that she has incurred throughout the years. The book is for you to know your story. Love, Alif Berrada.” Anna’s mind started racing immediately. The author had Aali’s father’s name. Suspense compelled, she flipped through what seemed like a million pages forward to read the first few words at the top left corner of a page, which said, “Janny was the beautiful one.” Anna’s body froze, as her exhausted mind raced through questions about the bed, the book, and the money. “Is Aali’s father the dead man?” “Why is my grandmother’s name in this book?” Tears of fear seized her. “Breathe, breathe!” Anna thought, her hands still trembling. She was still too fragile.