The Little Black Book

A picture’s worth a thousand words, or so the saying goes.

Yet, not even a single phrase came to mind (except for the old adage about words and pictures and whatnot) as I stared at the miniature canvas detailing a deer and her fawn.

“You like it?”

The vendor on the other side of the table broke through my trance.

“Oh… sure, it’s nice,” I mumbled back.

“I’ll give you a deal. You can have it for twenty.”

I almost laughed in spite of myself. “No, I’ll pass. Thanks though.”

The seller reached across and touched my arm before I could leave. “Okay, okay. Fifteen dollars, just for you. I can see it means something to you.”

I shook my head, knowing that this lady had no idea what she was talking about. The painting meant nothing to me. The entire market meant nothing to me. The only reason I was there was because I had been dragged by my crazy aunt, and as a result, I was left to wander amongst a bunch of other middle-aged women for the majority of my Friday afternoon.

As if the thought of her had caused her to materialize behind me, Aunt Kathy suddenly placed her hand on my shoulder.

“That’s a beautiful little painting, Aimee.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I think you can get it down to ten if you try.”

I shook my head again. “I don’t need it.”

“Ah perhaps you don’t need,” the vendor butted in. “But you want, yes?”

I couldn’t even remember the last time I had wanted something, so I just shrugged.

“C’mon, Aimee. Just buy it! You won’t regret it.”

I sighed and pulled a little wad of cash out of my pocket. I could have worked my way out of buying the painting when it was just the Filipino woman, but two-against-one was more than I could handle.

As I was handing over the eight dollars I had in my pocket and telling the vendor that it was all I had, Aunt Kathy browsed the rest of the table.

“Eight dollars won’t do,” the vendor frowned.

“What if we buy something else with it?” Kathy asked her.

The woman considered it. “Okay, but no bartering. You have to pay the price I say.”

“Fair enough,” Kathy responded cheerfully.

After a few minutes of scanning the table, Aunt Kathy picked up a book with a rubber band around it from a dusty box and read the title out loud.

“Ooh, this looks good. How much?” she asked the vendor, waving it in her direction.

“Ten dollars.”

Kathy stuck to their deal and handed over a ten dollar bill. To my relief, she asked if I wanted to go and I nodded, holding my new painting that I had been essentially forced to buy.

One chatty car ride later (albeit one-sided - take a guess on who the talker was), I finally collapsed onto the crumpled sheets of my bed. Dad never cared whether or not I made my bed, so of course, the obvious choice was “not.”

I don’t know how long I had been sleeping when an obnoxiously loud ringtone woke me.

“Hello?” I answered groggily.

“AIMEE!”

I jerked the phone away from my ear. “What?”

“You’ll never believe what happened.”

“Let me guess… you ran into a celebrity.”

“Nope.”

“You decided to take a spur of the moment trip to Paris.”

“Also nope.”

“You had a vision that I am going to become the first female president of the United States and wanted to tell me about it.”

“No, but that would have been way cooler.”

“Well then, if it’s none of those things, I don’t know what’s so important that you have to wake me up to tell me about it.”

“Wake you up? Aimee, it’s seven p.m.”

“Nevermind,” I sighed, realizing my mistake in admitting that I was sleeping through my Friday evening instead of enjoying it like a normal seventeen-year old.

“Aimee… I found a fifty dollar bill in that book I bought today at the flea market.”

“Fifty dollars?”

“Fifty. Five, zero.”

“Wow.” I was actually surprised. Even though I wasn’t as excited as Kathy seemed to be, her story successfully brought me out of the half-awake daze I was in.

“I have this great idea. Tomorrow, we should go back and buy another book from that box if it is still there. Maybe they all came from the same owner!”

I groaned internally. “I’m sure you just got lucky with that book.”

“Oh come on, Aimee. It will be fun! And who knows, maybe you’ll find something else that you like.”

I glanced at the little painting that I hadn’t even bothered to hang. Instead, it sat pathetically on top of the unfinished homework that was sprawled across my desk.

“I don’t know…”

Somehow, I felt like I could sense my aunt’s disappointment through the phone line. A twinge of guilt crept into me. She was only trying to do something nice for her niece. She probably pitied me - the girl whose mother had an affair and ran off, never to be heard from again.

If going to the flea market was her idea of bonding with the less fortunate, so be it.

“I guess we can go.” I said flatly.

“Yay! I’ll pick you up at eight,” she said hurriedly before hanging up the phone.

When morning came, I plopped myself into the front seat of Kathy’s stylish car, feeling underdressed in my jean shorts and lack of makeup in comparison to her chic sundress.

I followed my aunt through the market like a zombie and didn’t even realize we had made it back to that same table until Kathy whispered excitedly. “The box is still there, Aimee!”

The Filipino woman from yesterday was gone, replaced by a man who was likely her husband.

Aunt Kathy spoke quietly in my ear, “See if you can find any more cash in those books while I distract the vendor,” and immediately started asking the man countless questions about something at the other end of the table.

I picked up a copy of Great Expectations and haphazardly flipped the pages through my thumbs. Nothing.

Next book. Poets and Playwrights of the late 1800s.

“Who would read these?” I thought to myself. By the time I got to the third book, I was fairly certain it was a lost cause.

Yet, just as Aunt Kathy glanced over at me to see if I had found anything, dollar bills started to fall from the pages of what I had been holding.

Kathy’s eyes widened and I quickly dropped to the ground, shoving the money back into the book before anyone could see. Luckily, nobody around seemed to notice my blunder.

“What’s wrong with your daughter?” The vendor asked.

Well, maybe one person.

“Oh, that’s my niece. She’s fine, just a little clumsy.” Aunt Kathy gave a fake laugh to cover up her unease. “Aimee, darling, did you find what you were looking for?”

“Uh, yeah, I’d say so.” Had I seen a one hundred dollar bill in that book, or was it just my imagination?

“How much for the box of books?” Kathy asked the man.

“The whole box?” The man scratched his chin. “I’ll give it to you for fifty.”

“Sold,” Kathy said quickly, handing him one Ulysses S. Grant and grabbing me by the elbow as I picked up the entire box.

We ran off in a hurry, but as soon as we were in the car, we collapsed in our seats and laughed at the whole ordeal.

“I can’t believe we didn’t get spotted!”

“Well, it’s not like we did anything wrong,” I responded. I grabbed the book I had been holding and let the cash fall out onto my lap. A stack of hundreds. Twenty of them, to be exact.

Kathy looked at them in disbelief. “Oh my gosh… Aimee… there are at least twenty more books in that box.”

I looked back at her, the same thought crossing my mind.

We had stumbled upon a gold mine.

We went through every book. At five thousand dollars, we squealed in glee at our good fortune. (Yes, even me. I admit to the squealing). At ten thousand, we began to grow more silent. By fifteen thousand, we were pale and shaking with the discovery. When there were only two books left, one book about gardening and another little black notebook, Kathy reached across the seat to stop me.

“Aimee… whatever else we find, I want you to know… the money is yours.”

I felt my jaw drop as I looked back at her. “What? No! You were the one who wanted to come here today-”

“And you are the one who needs it.” Kathy cut me off before I could finish. “Aimee, I don’t go to flea markets to save pennies.” She shrugged. “I just go because it is fun.”

I just shook my head in disbelief. “But…”

“Hey. Let’s not talk about it now.” Kathy pulled open the gardening book, which revealed another stack of fifties and hundreds hidden between the pages.

Bringing the grand total to twenty thousand dollars.

“This could be enough money to get you into college. Wouldn’t that be a dream?”

I barely registered what Kathy had said as I shakily opened a little black book, but there was nothing in it, save a bunch of cursive scribblings.

The rest of the afternoon was a blur. Kathy had an appointment to get to, and Dad worked on weekends, so I found myself sitting alone in my room with twenty thousand dollars burning a hole in my desk.

I had to get out of there. Away from the money, someplace where I could think clearly. I grabbed a bag, shoved the little black book and a beach towel into it, and all but ran to the beach near our house.

After sitting and looking out at the ocean for almost an hour, my curiosity finally got the best of me and I opened the little black book that was full of handwritten entries. As I flipped through each of the pages, I realized that it was a book of poems. There were no names, only stanzas that told of failed dreams and estranged families.

On the last page of the book, my heart nearly stopped at the words written in the center.

The broken spirit has lost all joy

And does not feel at all

The emptiness of a faded life

Gives reason for tears to fall

I didn’t even bother to wipe away my own tears as I read those words over and over.

Is this what I was? A broken spirit, without feeling? An empty soul with nothing left?

Unbidden, the events of the day played back in my mind. I had squealed in joy. I had trembled in fear. And now, I was sitting on the cloudy beach, mourning the loss of my mother and weeping over the loss of myself. Rather than the numbness I had felt since the day she ran off, I felt raw and vulnerable and… human.

A human who could dare to dream again. While college applications had seemed out of the question just two days ago, the realization that I had a way to pay for tuition sparked a glimmer of hope within me.

The sunset broke through the clouds, and dazzling rays of orange light sparkled on the water as they skipped toward the sand. I couldn’t remember the last time I had experienced a sense of wonder, and I felt deep in my soul that this was perhaps the best emotion of all.

As the sun winked its way beyond the horizon, I walked home slowly, feeling like a new person and laughing at the irony of it all.

Sure, twenty thousand dollars could change everything. But it was the words in the little black book that changed me.