A Little Black Book

A Little Black Book

By Nancee Wipperfurth Killoran

Susan tripped in the mud on the playground. She had ducked out of the staff meeting in the library because the air was stifling. Dust had settled across the tops and down the spines of the books on the shelves and found its way through her mask and into her nose, and she had started to sneeze. One of her colleagues had offered her a tissue. Even that had the smell of dust. In-person school was due back after the virus and this was the first in a series of staff meetings. Susan had pulled her mask down in the fresh virus-free air outside. She wondered if the students had come to this playground while school was virtual. Did they wear masks? Did they wash their hands after?

Susan’s fall was not graceful, but her knees were spared. She caught herself with the palms of her hands in the cold muck. Standing back up she saw something black in the ground; a book. She dug it out of the mud. It was probably something a student had dropped. Students were oblivious to the loss of their jackets, their hats, their homework. She would put the little black book in the lost and found.

Susan remembered she had left her employee badge on its brand new district required lanyard on the big wooden table in the library. “Ack”, she muttered. There was no one in the office to scan the cameras, ask “how may I help you?”, then press the buzzer to let her back into the building. Susan’s pal Jana, the librarian, had come to her rescue. “What did you do?” she asked as Susan slipped into the building with her muddy hands up like it was a robbery. “Oh, you know, big feet and all.”

Susan rushed down the long, empty hallway, put the little black muddy book on her desk in the office, washed her hands and headed back to the library. Safety was the next topic at the meeting. There hadn’t been a school shooting during the pandemic’s quarantined first year, but would that be the case this year? As schools reopened there were just as many reasons for people to be despondent enough to cause damage. The general safety precautions were familiar to Susan who was responsible for letting people into the building; but once inside, health concerns were amped up with the constant temperature-taking by the health office and subconscious distancing. Yet, there was an excitement with the discussion of the positive, vast changes possible at the re-start. The planning of Project Based Learning was already underway.

During this first meeting back there was a great deal of socializing. Susan and the three others in her breakout group were talking about what “restoration” they had done for themselves during quarantine. For Susan it was painting; not everyone at school knew that. She told them about the new color of blue that had been discovered and had been drawn from the earth to create the most luscious color of blue. “They call it Mars Blue. I’m on a waitlist for a tube of it!” She had already done some sketches for the first picture she’d use it on, and had started saving to pay for it.

After the meeting was over, Susan finally returned to her office. The little black book was waiting for her, still covered in mud, on her desk. Her office looked like time had stood still. Registration forms she had been working on that Friday, before the first lockdown, were still under her desk, in a box, with the word “save” on it. She, along with everyone else had walked out that day, not realizing education, and their lives would never be the same.

Now Susan picked up the little black book. She thought it looked similar to one of her sketchbooks, only this notebook was smaller. The elastic closure hung loose and was still encrusted with mud. Susan took it to the sink in the health office to clean it.

Just then the dismissal bell rang. The school electricians were testing the ever so familiar chimes. Soon there would be little heads bobbing past her office windows when that end-of-day notice sounded. It had been a long day. She put the little black book in the school safe so it wouldn’t get mixed up with all the notes on her desk. She would figure it out later. She laughed when she saw the five old cell phones that had been found and brought to the office so many months ago and were still in the safe.

Susan went straight to her studio when she got home. There were easels of paintings and jars of paintbrushes and drawing pencils scattered on all the surfaces. With one of the stimulus checks Susan had gotten all new ceiling tiles for her studio. The light that those new panels brought into the room made it feel like a new space and she was inspired. She looked at a photo of her mom that was on her desk. Her mother had always encouraged her creativity and had never asked her what she was going to do with a degree in Art. During college Susan had worked in offices on campus. She was good at it and it paid better than food service. When she graduated and got the clerical job with the school district it provided health insurance, and most importantly, it allowed plenty of time for her to work on her art. That afternoon she started a new painting--it was going to be the scene from the playground that day: a girl, alone, falling into the mud, under a pink sky, with a little black book jutting out from under the dirt.

Later that weekend Susan took pictures of some of her paintings and posted them on Instagram. “Why don’t you sell your art on Etsy?” Susan got that question a lot. Her daily Instagram art exhibit had grown during the pandemic, like so many online businesses and blogs. There had been a few sales. It was the process she would tell people. Dipping a paintbrush in paint and guiding it across a canvas or paper-- that was what it was about. Besides she had already bought a domain and built a website; and even if she hadn’t updated it for new and repeat visitors, it was a start.

The hoopla about going back to in-person school was everywhere. Teachers and staff had to prove they’d been vaccinated before returning to work, and there were some vocal voices bemoaning that requirement on camera. The media hung out trying to ask kids about going back; and if their parents were relieved. “My mom said not to talk to strangers,” one little kid told the reporter. In the main office, Susan was busy answering calls, registering new students and typing up staff lists. It felt like she had never left; except she was now wearing the required mask that was oddly comforting. At one point she buzzed a student into the office. “Mr. Lopez said Ms. Susan would give me a stamp.” “Well, I’m Ms. Susan and I can help.” She went to the safe to get the postage, saw the little black book and grabbed that too.

She had almost forgotten about the muddy book from the playground. It had now dried out. Susan didn’t want to be nosey, but she figured it did not belong to a student and she wanted to figure out who the book did belong to; so she opened it.

The pages were filled with different pigmented inks in flowing penmanship. The entries were dated, with daily weather noted. The bookmark ribbon took her to a page that looked like passwords to multiple accounts. Fortunately, for Susan, a woman named Erica Eden had written her name and phone number on the inside cover. Susan wrote down the phone number; then quickly closed the little black book and patted it, as if to say, I’ll get you home.

After a couple of rings, a woman answered, “hello, this is Erica.” Susan explained who she was and why she was calling. With an audible sigh of relief, the woman exclaimed, “Oh my God, I have been so worried. My entire life is in that little black book.”

Twenty two minutes later Erica Eden was at the main entry of Washington Elementary. There was a student in the Principal’s office, but otherwise it was pretty quiet when Susan buzzed Erica into the building. As she came through the door she exclaimed, “Wow, all this security for an elementary school?” “Well, if you were going any further, you would have to sign in, wear a visitor sticker, and record your initials on a form stating that you do not have any symptoms.” The circus of the process was intended to keep everyone safe from guns, weapons, and now a deadly virus and its mutations.

When Susan returned the little black book to its owner, Erica explained, “I must have dropped this when I was on my walk. It’s been so nice, with school closed, the path on the playground is always clear.” Erica sighed and continued, “and when I got home, the damn thing was gone. I’ve been in a panic since.” Susan figured that if she had lost all her passwords, she’d be freaked out too. Susan smiled at Erica, “well no worries now.”

Erica pulled a business card from her purse and handed it to Susan. “Thank you so much for calling me; let me know when your next fundraiser is. Seriously, I’ll buy some candy!”

Susan read the name on the card: Erica Eden Art Gallery. “Oh, you have an art gallery in town?” Susan asked. “Yes, we are just getting reopened after COVID.” She was lucky she could do that; so many businesses had gone under. “What kind of art do you show?” Susan wasn’t sure if she had heard of this gallery. Erica replied with a run-on sentence, “Oh, contemporary, modern paintings, watercolors, acrylics, expressionist, ceramics, some artists’ books; regional stuff. Are you a patron?” Susan answered, “I’m an artist.”

Seven months later, Susan and Erica were hanging Susan’s paintings for her first solo show at Erica’s Gallery. They laughed at how their friendship began. Susan’s painting, the one that she had started the day she found that little black book, was the centerpiece of the show. It already had a little red “sold” dot on the wall next to the title card. Erica had claimed it for her own, and she had paid a price that Susan still could hardly believe: twenty thousand dollars. Susan closed her eyes, took a deep breath in as the doors opened to the gallery, all Susan’s paintings before them. Erica turned to Susan “Don’t worry, my friend; they are going to love it!”