One Goal That Changed Her World

It was a cold evening in November. The wind howled through the alley as Eliza rummaged through the bags in the now dark alley behind Emiliano’s. It was Friday, and she knew that there would be a large Ziploc bag of day-old spaghetti in one of the black bags in front of the dumpster.

As her finger pushed through the surface of one of the dark plastic bags just beneath the knot, the light above the back door flickered. Eliza’s eyes widened and she froze still for a moment, her eyes the only bit of motion as she peered toward the rusted door, quietly willing, “Please don’t let it open. Please don’t let it open.”

She waited for what seemed an eternity as the wind continued to blow small remnants of newspaper and leaves around her feet. The light flickered again, and Eliza realized no one would emerge from the restaurant to shoo her from her task. She lowered her head toward the small hole to peer inside the bag.

Eliza’s face lit up with a big smile as her fingers started to tear the hole wider. Her prize was within grasp! She just had to free it from its dark confines.

When Eliza reached inside the now gaping hole in the black trash bag, her hand grasped the top of her Ziploc bag prize. She slowly pulled the gallon bag, almost popping at the seams with noodles and Emiliano’s family-recipe red sauce, from the black trash bag.

Eliza slowly rose to her feet with her reward. As she did, the trash bag settled to the ground, and a small book slid from the bag coming to rest against Eliza’s worn tennis shoe. She paused for a moment to shuffle the bag of Emiliano’s spaghetti to the crook of her left arm, being ever so careful not to allow it to fall as she stooped down to investigate the book.

She slowly slid her index finger along the spine of the black binding. As it reached the top edge, Eliza grasped the book and picked it up off the ground. She continued to juggle the Ziploc bag in her left arm as she carefully rose with the book in hand, turning it top-to-bottom; bottom-to-top; and side-to-side as her gaze remained constant – curious about what the book contained.

Eliza was snapped back to reality as she heard the familiar creaks of the hinges of the door at the back of Emiliano’s. Not wanting to be caught red-handed with the bag of spaghetti from the restaurant trash, Eliza tucked the book between the Ziploc bag and the breast of her too-small wool coat. She quickly turned and dashed down the alley, away from the trash bags and away from the rusty door and the flickering light behind the restaurant.

As she reached the intersecting street, Eliza smiled. Her pace slowed, and she set her mind toward home.

“Eliza, where have you been,” asked her sister.

Eliza plopped the bag of pasta and sauce on the edge of the small table in the center of a darkened room.

“I went to get supper,” Eliza replied as she tugged at the sleeve of her coat, the book tucked under her chin. “Go ahead and start without me.”

“What do you mean start without you? What’s that under your chin,” her sister inquired as she reached for the small oil lamp in the middle of the table.

“Something I found at Emiliano’s,” Eliza exclaimed as she scurried off to a pile of pillows and blankets in the far corner of the tiny room.

Eliza’s sister pulled a small book of matches from her pocket. She gently pulled one of the matches from its cardboard frame and quickly ran it across the striking strip before carefully igniting the wick of the lamp and returning the yellow globe to its resting place on the lamp. Her sister then turned the knob back and forth adjusting the light until it reached the corners of the room. She then set about preparing the evening meal for herself and Eliza.

As the glow began to reach the corner where Eliza sat atop her bed of pillows on the floor, she opened the cover of the little black book to reveal a blank page. Eliza flipped to the next page. It too was blank. She thumbed through page after page of nothing. While she had been expecting a storybook or some other compilation of text, Eliza had never considered that the little black book would be a blank journal. In a disapproving huff, she cast the book aside to the corner and rose up from her bed to join her sister for dinner.

“So, what did you find, Eliza,” her sister smiled to her as she twirled her fork into the plate of spaghetti.

“I thought it was a book,” Eliza answered as she chewed a mouthful of noodles. “But, it’s just a bunch of blank paper.”

Eliza’s sister looked across the table and smiled. “You shouldn’t talk with your mouth full. You do realize that a blank page means you can write your own story, right?”

“Write my own story,” Eliza asked. “But, what if I don’t want to write a story?”

“You can use it as a journal, then,” her sister answered.

“What’s a journal,” questioned Eliza.

Her sister quietly placed her fork on her plate as she responded, “A journal is where you write your thoughts. It can be things like what you’ve done with your day, or things you’d like to accomplish.”

“You mean, I could write a wish list of things I want,” Eliza responded.

“Yeah. You can include a wish list if you want. Someplace to remind you what you’d like to accomplish,” said her sister.

The girls finished their meal as they continued to discuss options for what Eliza could write in the little black book with all the blank pages. After they finished supper, her sister cleared the dishes from the table.

“Go get ready for bed, Eliza” her sister directed.

Eliza rose from her chair, pushing it in with her knee as she reached to grab a pencil from a jar on the small countertop at the other side of the table. She walked across the room and straightened the pile of pillows on the floor to prepare her bed for the night. As she snuggled into the pile of pillows and blankets, she propped herself up on her left side and opened the cover of the journal to the first page. Eliza thought for a moment about what she wanted to write in the journal. With the pencil in her right hand, she tapped the pink eraser softly against her chin.

As if a light had gone off in her brain, Eliza smiled. She pinched the pencil between her thumb and fingers and started to write. The entry wasn’t long – just a single goal of something she wanted to do.

Happy with her first entry in the new journal, Eliza tucked the pencil and the little back book beneath the pillow she rested her head upon.

“Good night,” she exclaimed to her sister as she pulled the blanket up around her chin and settled in to doze off for the night.

The next morning Eliza awoke to voices. Her sister was talking with someone at the door. Eliza realized it was morning as there was the smallest bit of light starting to enter the room through the one window behind the sink on the other side of the table where the girls ate their meals. The sun had not yet risen, but Eliza figured it would be soon. She rolled over on the pile of pillows, trying to see if she could figure out who her sister was talking to at the door. Her efforts were unsuccessful.

When her sister finally closed the door and came back into the room, Eliza asked her, “Who was that?”

“I didn’t realize you were awake,” her sister replied. “It was the weirdest thing.”

Eliza sat up on her bed of pillows, “What? What was the weirdest thing?”

“A man just stopped by and dropped this off. He said something about seeing you in the street yesterday and he followed you here. When he saw you come inside he wanted to offer some assistance, but didn’t know how to help,” she answered, perplexed by what just happened.

Eliza’s eyes lit up, and she leapt from the pile of pillows. She ran to her sister and pulled the check from her hand to examine it.

“$20,000?!?! He just gave us $20,000,” Eliza gasped.

“Yes. And, he offered me a job. I start tomorrow,” her sister answered.

“It worked,” Eliza exclaimed as she ran back to the corner where she had tucked away her journal. She turned it to the first page where she had written her one goal. “I can’t believe it worked!”

Eliza skipped across the room back to where her sister continued to stand in shock. She turned the open page of the journal toward her sister and smiled, “I wrote my goal in the book, and it came true.”

Eliza’s sister looked at the journal entry she had made, and read it aloud, “Help Tanya the way she helped me after Mom & Dad died.”

Tears welled up in Tanya’s eyes as she pulled Eliza toward her in a warm embrace.