The Little Black Notebook

The soothing sounds of my mother playing the piano. Her hands moving on the black and white keyboard as fluently as water. Her head tilting from left to right along with her body as she swayed with her arms, which to me, looked almost like waves. My father didn’t play the saxophone but I often dreamt of him with one in his tiresome, scratched up arms. When he came back from work they reminded me of the really wrecked parts of walls from our local abandoned building in which homeless folks drank and slept, and had sex. They were nothing like my mothers hands. When he gave me a pat on my back I could almost feel the scratchiness of them through my clothes. In my dreams they were soft, big but gentle. Oh how wonderful they would sound as I slept. Her sonatas so beautifully played and him, holding his instrument in his arms, graceful, not full of dust and paint on his clothes.

When my mother wasn’t in the dining room, she was in the kitchen. Cooking and watching afternoon soaps. Every Wednesday she would get her phone and call the lotto to check if she’d won anything that week. I remember, when I was not bigger than seven she won a toaster. We still had it the day she screamed and dropped the phone. The plastic thing bounced on the curly black wire.

‘ Tony! Tony! Ahhhhh!’

I looked away from my morning cartoons for a moment, coughed a few times, blew my nose and finally asked her why she was screaming.

She shushed me and dove for the phone that was still jumping up and down.

I looked back at the TV. I could barely hear Tom chasing Jerry because my mother was speaking louder than usual. I could hear every word. It didn’t help with my headache.

‘ No! Oh my god! Incredible.... Wow! You’ve made me a very happy woman Mr! Yes!’ She paused ‘ I will!’ My mother took out her little black notebook from her pocket and wrote something down ‘ Thank you so much! Thank you, thank you!’ She put the phone back on the wall and looked down at her feet.

‘ Mom? Who was that?’

She smiled and started jumping up and down until her voice broke into a happy scream.

‘ We’ve won twenty thousand dollars Tony!’ Her scream continued.

‘ What?’

‘ We’ve won! We’ve finally won!’

‘ Oh!’ The cartoon still playing on the TV was now so far away that I ceased to hear any sound coming from the screen. ‘ We need to call dad!’

‘ Michael is going to be over the moon! He won’t believe me when I tell him!’ She jumped a few more times, pure excitement and joy running through her body that seemed little to me even back then.

‘ Call him, call him!’

That night we had an expensive dinner. My father took a bath before coming down and dressed in clean clothes. The expense of water wasn’t taken into account, not on that evening. That night was special, it stood out! On that evening we weren’t just a middle class family that barely made it into the category. We were a family that could spare some change for the homeless. We were three people who could buy toilet paper and not have to cut up newspaper in small squares. I was a young boy who could have new shoes for school and maybe even get one of the little black notebooks my mother cherished so much. That evening we weren’t afraid of spending, all of us were too joyous to think about expenses. We were just happy.

The following weeks were glorious. We got a new toilet as the one we had before was chipped on the sides. My father bought a sink. Before the new, shiny porcelain basin there was only a plastic bowl. All scratched and rooted in all kinds of colours from the food. My mother bought me new shoes, I think she would have gotten me the notebook too but I didn’t dare to ask. Every time she spent money, I could see it in her face, she felt a loss. She was afraid of the day that was coming when she would have nothing again. She was afraid but she didn’t show it, at least she tried not to. I don’t think she knew that I could read it on her. A few times I took her hand after we left the shop and just for a moment I saw the fear leave her. She’d look at me, the corners of her lips almost reaching her eyes. The most beautiful smile I’d ever seen to this day. Even though it was all crooked by worry, it was genuine. Any stranger would have known that.

When winter came and it finally began to snow my father placed an order for a big truck of wood. It came a few days later. We carried it to the shed. I helped him chop the thinner pieces, he got the big ones. To me the axe was massive, the handle barely fit in my two hands but when I looked over to see my dad I found it was almost too small for him. Nowadays they make them different. Not so thick, not so heavy and hard to control.

Our house was warm for three months but when March came the snow was still friable and our shed empty. Only tiny splinters left, we collected them on one of the colder days. Once the fire was set we cuddled up to the fireplace and drank tea that we now bought regularly. My mother got up and ran to the kitchen. When she came back I smiled so wide my lips hurt.

‘ Shortbreads?’ She said in a goofy tone.

We sat by the fire for the rest of the evening and listened to my father tell stories about his childhood and his times in the army.

I looked around to see if everyone was still listening. Every once in a while glancing at my mothers coffin sitting in between me and them. My hands closed the notebook.

‘ Janine used it so little that there was still space left for me to write this’ a chuckle wrapped my words but my throat felt closed up.

‘ We lived comfortably for a long while, the same way the money came- it left. After we went back to cutting up newspapers and drinking hot water with the cheapest squash instead of tea my mother still played the piano gracefully but I had already forgotten dreams of my father playing the saxophone. Our generous dinners stuck however not as often. I think my parents decided without a discussion that the happiness we all got from them was not worth counting every cent.’

I looked over at my wife, sitting at my mothers piano, waiting for my nod. A smile took over my face.

’ Heres her favourite song.’