Little Black Book

Luci sat in the chair of her therapist’s office rubbing her face with her hands. "I just don’t get it doc. No matter what I do, I just can’t seem to connect with her. How can someone that I carried inside me for nine months feel so foreign?”

“This is actually more common than you would think in postpartum women. I think I have something that might help you.” The psychiatrist reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a little black book. “I want you to take this and fill it with images of your daughter. It can be photographs, drawings, or written stories about her.”

Luci reached out and took the book, “and that’s it. Just like that and all my problems go away?”

“Not quite, but it is a place to start.”

Luci looked down at her daughter asleep in the crib. She studied the way her tiny hands were swaddled under her chin and how her eyelashes fluttered against her cheek while she dreamt. Luci brushed aside the wisps of hair on the child’s forehead before sitting down to sketch. At first, the only time Luci had to sketch was when her daughter slept. But soon the pages of the book became filled with various images of the little girl making a mess at the kitchen table, laughing at the silly faces her mother made, or taking her first steps. After a time, Luci stopped drawing her daughter for therapeutic reasons. Instead she sketched to document each milestone or because she could not resist how adorable the child acted.

Luci held the book with three years worth of sketches as she kissed her daughter for what she prayed would not be the last time. Luci entered the bank with an army duffle in one hand and a check for $20,000 in the other. With a shaky hand she slid the check across to the teller, “I’d like to open a savings account for Athena Hunter.”

The teller took the check, “Would that be you?”

“No, my daughter actually. I don’t need that kind of money where I’m going.” She adjusted the duffle bag on her shoulder.

“Are you being deployed?”

“I’m shipping out tonight. And that’s my signing bonus.”

“You must love your country to leave your little girl behind”

“The army paid for medical school, without them I never would have gotten through. Now I owe them eight years of my life. When I signed that paper, I had no idea I’d have to leave my daughter. Hell, I had no idea I’d have a daughter.”

Luci had left Athena to be raised by her best friend in her absence. She planned to send her paychecks home to pay for anything her child might need, but the savings account was to be used if Luci never returned. She boarded the plane with her little black book tucked into her uniform pocket with little idea what was waiting for her when she landed.

Luci sat atop the nearby hill looking down at the camp. She slid the little black book from her pocket and traced the name Athena carved into the cover. She flipped through the sketches. Some of her little girl, others of her friends, and more recently of what she’s seen in the last six months. She found a clean page and began to draw. She managed to capture the smiles of the soldiers playing soccer in the field below her. She enjoyed watching her soldiers find small moments of happiness in all the chaos and bloodshed. The sun began to set which signaled the start of her shift in the field hospital. She slipped her book into the pocket of her pants and made her way down the hill. Before she could reach the bottom, the first bomb fell. The field that had been filled with laughter just minutes ago, was now a crater.

*25 years later*

“Hey mommy is this yours?”

“No, I don’t think I’ve seen that before?”

“But it has your name on it.” The little girl held up a small black book with the name Athena carved in the front of it.

“Let me see that,” Athena thumbed through the book and realized what she was holding when she spotted the images of war. “This must be your grandmother’s book.”

“I didn’t know that grandma was in a war.” The small child peered over her mother’s shoulder.

“She never talked about it. She never told me what happened there.” Athena had no idea how this book wound up in her moving boxes. The last time she saw it, was the day her mother shipped out.

Athena placed a small wrapped package onto her mother’s lap. As soon as Luci saw the cover, her eyes became wet. She looked at the sketches of Athena as a baby. When she reached the images of soldiers, her soldiers, a smile crept onto her face. She traced their faces as tears began to roll down her cheeks. It was the saddest smile followed by a choked laugh. Luci’s eyes met Athena's and the only thing she could get out was a soft “Thank you. Thank you for bringing them home to me.”

When Luci returned from duty, she came home broken. The only way she knew to put the pieces back together was to bury the past, to forget, to lose the book that contained the memories. She left the $20,000 in that savings account so that Athena could use it to pay for college and never be faced with the same decision Luci was. As the faces of her friends faded from her mind, she began to regret not holding on to the record of them. She lived with that regret for nearly 18 years. But now, with their images in her hand, she wanted to remember, she needed them to be remembered. So she sat on the floor with Athena and her first grandchild, Charlie, to tell them the stories of each person who didn’t make it home.