The Little Black Book

The sound of a fist slamming against the kitchen counter made Charlotte wince. She winced again as she heard something shatter. She laid in her bed with blankets covering her face, her blankets a shield from what was just beyond her bedroom door. It was a warm July evening and she could hear the laughter of children from the street, a sweet sound that drowned the noise from the kitchen. The sound comforted her, making her both curious and a little jealous of those children. She had been breathing heavily and the air under the covers was getting hot now. Charlotte slowly lowered the blanket down under her nose and scanned the room, making sure she was safe, a habit. Her book on the dresser caught her eye.

Her grandmother had given it to her. She picked it up from Woolworths, and it was now clutter in a drawer. Charlotte was excited to have it. She put all kinds of stickers on it and wrote her name on the inside. Poems, songs, drawings, and stories of fantastic places filled the pages of the little black book, ones only children could dream of. But many more of the pages were filled with stories of bullying, abuse, and escape plans.

Now laying on the floor, she pondered the next sentence in her story, and how to spell sirvivel. Sorvivil? Survival? Just then, her bedroom door swung open. Startled, she screamed and clutched the book.

“What are you doing, stupid? Writing in your dumb book again?” Her sisters taunted. “No!” She quickly defended. Her sisters didn’t believe her lie and ripped the book from her hands. They laughed as they read and mocked her stories, ripping up some of the pages out of the book.

“Stop! Stop!” she screamed. Footsteps were now pounding down the hall, echoing their commotion.

“I swear to god, I’ve told you girls a thousand times to be quiet! Jesus Christ! And I’ve told you to stop screaming!” now looking at Charlotte. “You’re going to make the neighbors think something is going on!”

Charlotte could feel her face turning red and her eyes burning, about to betray her, while her sisters smirked at her. “But they took my book,” an insistent and indignant Charlotte rebuked.

“Give her the book now!” Exasperated from her own battle, her mother turned around and stumbled back down the hall.

“Here, you little brat,” they said as they threw it at her, hitting her in the face. “This is why everyone hates you.”

These moments in varying degrees were something of a daily ritual for Charlotte. She sat on her bed and cried, then climbed in her closet to hide, in case anything else happened. The night was still early but at least she had her little black book.

It was another warm July evening, but much time had passed now. Charlotte was laying in her bed when her iPhone began to buzz. It was her father. “I need you to pick up the boxes as soon as you can or I’m just going to throw them away.” Charlotte sharply protested, and then agreed to come pick them up. The boxes he was referring to were her childhood things, and some of her mother’s stuff. Charlotte’s mother had passed away a few months earlier and her father needed to sell the house. Even now as an adult, she still feared and dreaded the house, and her family. Time, and the death of her mother, had done nothing to change them. Still cruel, still nasty, still abusive.

Charlotte got into her car the next morning to drive to her father’s. She turned on her favorite playlist, but that only served to be futile because of the endless rumination in her head. Thoughts, memories, and hypotheticals all swirling around, on loop in her head as she drove.

She managed to get to her fathers, pick up the boxes and return to her quiet apartment unscathed. She didn’t even bother to go through the boxes. She immediately began loading them into her storage closet, most on the highest shelf so to be out of sight.

As she hauled the last box up on the shelf, it slipped. The entire contents of the box fell like an avalanche onto the floor. She begrudgingly climbed down the ladder and began to pick everything up, just throwing everything back into the box as fast as possible, and back up the ladder she climbed. Just as hoisted the box up, something glittering caught her eye. Too curious to ignore, she lowered the box down and peered. It was the remaining glitter of a decades old unicorn sticker, dirty and barely still sticking to the cover a little black book. She picked the book up, examined it, and then quickly realized what it was.

Charlotte had stopped writing many years ago, probably as a child but she couldn’t quite remember. In fact, she had forgotten she ever even wrote as a child. This little black book was like a time capsule, an emissary of the past with stories and messages from her 8 year old self. She sat on the floor and began to read, then began crying and laughing, taking in every page.

It seemed so impossible that this book survived, and stranger still, was that she felt such a deep connection to it. It was just an old book but the stories, the pages, even the energy of the book seemed to create a torrent of emotion, like a rush or a wave, strong and sudden within her. She didn’t quite understand it but that didn’t matter. She flipped to a clean page in the book, and just started writing, almost picking up exactly where she left off. She sat on the floor writing for hours like a child again. Her hand remembered the pen well, like an old friendship.

Those hours turned into days, days into weeks, and weeks into months. All the feelings, emotions, ideas, stories, abuse, and trauma of the past now had adult abilities to express it. Charlotte had plenty of books to write on, and of course a computer, but there was something about this little black book that was catalyzing. It was allowing her to do more than just write. It was allowing her to tell her truth, take back the narrative, find purpose, to heal.

Many months had gone before she finally finished her writing, which now was more like a novel. While proud to have finished it and comforted in her catharsis, it seemed that the book had served its purpose. Somewhat unceremoniously, she placed the book along with its new appendix under the coffee table, hidden in plain sight. Once again, that little black book was forgotten about but at least it was more comfortable than a musty and cold old attic.

Many more weeks had passed now, and Charlotte was preparing for company, making dinner and pouring wine as the doorbell rang. “John!” She exclaimed. John and Charlotte were old friends that the drudgery adulthood and responsibility had been keeping apart. Their reunion ruptured into laughter almost immediately.

Charlotte handed him some wine, and walked back towards the kitchen for final preparations, talking and laughing across the rooms. And then silence. At first Charlotte didn’t notice, distracted by the food, music, and wine, and then like a crack of thunder, “Did you write this?” John said. Charlotte whipped around with preemptive embarrassment, eyes locked on the little black book John was now holding. “Uh yeah, it's nothing though” Charlotte reassured John. “This is really good though, seriously.” John said in a serious tone. Charlotte’s insistence that it wasn’t led to banter, and the banter led to betting.

“Just do it, it costs nothing and if you get absolutely no response from a publisher, I will give you $100. And if they accept it and like it, I’d like a dedication when it gets published.” John smirked. Charlotte’s face was now a rosy blush from the wine as she giggled and agreed to what she believed was John’s drunken idea.

As ridiculous as she thought this was, she was always true to her word, and the next day she found an agent and submitted the draft, to which there was no response, but to be expected she thought.

Some time had passed, and John was on her mind. Though she probably wouldn’t actually take the money from John, she wanted to let him know she won the bet. She smirked and laughed to herself, imaging John reading the text she just sent him. Not even a minute later, John was calling.

She picked up the phone, and answered, already laughing.

“Charlotte? It’s Janet.” The voice said, puzzling Charlotte. Charlotte quickly looked back at the phone again, trying to reconcile John’s number and the voice she was hearing but it wasn’t John’s number. She answered, not paying close enough attention, assuming it was John.

“The literary agent?” “Oh yes, of course, hi Janet.” The astounded Charlotte replied.

”So we loved your book. I think there is a lot of work and refining to do here but it’s great. We’d like to bring you in and discuss it, including advancing you $20,000, but we can talk about all those details later. We’re very excited, Charlotte.”

Shock and disbelief was the only way you could have described Charlotte’s face that afternoon. Serendipity or fate, that little black book that her grandmother had randomly given to her, that was clutter, that helped her cope with the abuse, that sparked a love for writing as a child, and then reignited it decades later, that healed her, that helped her, that had been forgotten about, and survived decades in a musty old attic, found its way back to her, with $20,000 written on the pages, changing her life.

Some time had passed, and John was on her mind. Though she probably wouldn’t actually take the money from John, she wanted to let him know she won the bet. She smirked and laughed to herself, imaging John reading the text she just sent him. Not even a minute later, John was calling.

She picked up the phone, and answered, already laughing.

“Charlotte? It’s Janet.” The voice said, puzzling Charlotte. Charlotte quickly looked back at the phone again, trying to reconcile John’s number and the voice she was hearing but it wasn’t John’s number. She answered, not paying close enough attention, assuming it was John.

“The literary agent?” “Oh yes, of course, hi Janet.” The astounded Charlotte replied.

”So we loved your book. I think there is a lot of work and refining to do here but it’s great. We’d like to bring you in and discuss it, including advancing you $20,000, but we can talk about all those details later. We’re very excited, Charlotte.”

Shock and disbelief was the only way you could have described Charlotte’s face that afternoon. Serendipity or fate, that little black notebook that her grandmother had randomly given to her, that was clutter, that helped her cope with the abuse, that sparked a love for writing as a child, and then reignited it decades later, that healed her, that helped her, that had been forgotten about, and survived decades in a musty old attic, found its way back to her, with $20,000 written on the pages, changing her life.