Violet’s Black Book

The automatic doors of the hospital swished open, blasting Violet’s face with warm air. She marched through the entrance, heading directly for the ICU, smoothing her hair, which reflected, raven-blue, under the fluorescent lights. She felt buzzing dry electricity of winter prickling through her. Vi was wearing black, as always—a black turtleneck, tucked into black pants, and a long black sweater that trailed out behind her as she walked—like Dracula’s cape, a witch, or a New Yorker.

She was a New Yorker, or had been, for the last eight years, trying to become something, someone. Everyone she passed stared. Violet had that effect—thin as a wisp and tall, with angular features, she wasn’t beautiful, but striking. She’d taken the train home. Violet did not like coming back, and before the phone call, she didn’t know that her mama was here, in the old industrial town, a place filled with working class people who no longer worked. She stomped down the hall, jaw set.

When Violet entered the room, it was quiet and empty, with the steady solid beeping of the heart rate monitor. Mama looked tiny in bed. She was sleeping. For a moment, she reminded Violet of a small child after a tonsillectomy, like she might wake up and ask for ice cream. Vi had to steel herself, take a sharp inhale.

Mama was smaller than ever, and as Violet came closer, she gasped at how old her mother looked, much older than forty-six. Lines were etched deeply into her forehead, wispy smoker’s wrinkles outlined her mouth. Her mother’s breaths were shallow and ragged—the cancer was smothering her. Violet hoped she wouldn’t be anything like this at forty-six, in eighteen short years. She’d always hoped that she’d never be anything like her mother, she’d taken every possible effort not to be. The familiar feeling of contempt and longing ached in her body. She wanted a cigarette.

Mama stirred in her sleep, a child having a bad dream. Her eyes shot open and she gasped like a drowning person coming to. She looked into Violet’s eyes, the ones that matched her own. Their gazes locked and something flickered across her face.

Mama’s eyes crinkled in a smile and after a few blinks, she croaked out a “Hey baby girl. Been a long time.”

“Hey mama.” Vi responded. Tears threatened, but she was determined not to fall, not to let herself be swept up and taken down. Looking at the withered body in the hospital bed, she felt ten years old and a hundred at the exact same time.

“They say I’m dying, and I forgot your birthday.”

“Again.” Violet said automatically, to both statements. She regretted it instantly, hated herself. Why fight? There was no point. Mama didn’t react.

Violet backtracked, “It’s okay. I’m not a little girl.”

“They’re moving me to hospice tomorrow.” Violet could see that her mother was missing a few teeth. Mama took a rattling breath and continued, “It’s not ok. I know. I didn’t really forget. I’ve got your package. It’s on the table. I just forgot to send it.” She winced, Vi couldn’t tell if she was in pain or if it just hurt too much to admit. Mama gestured, lifting a toothpick thin arm. She took a labored breath.

“You can open it. It can be like a birthday party. Maybe they’ll bring a piece of cake on my lunch tray.” The childlike hopefulness in her voice turned Vi’s stomach. She wanted to cry and smack her in the face. Mama closed her eyes and inhaled, like she was trying to remember something, then went still. Her breath sounded like the wind whistling through a cracked window. Violet sat silently and listened for a long time.

Vi opened her bag and searched for a pen, thinking she might as well write if she was going to be sitting around. She was working an idea, and had interest from an agent she’d met at a party in Brooklyn. She glanced up one more time and wondered if this was really it, and if so, how long would it take? How long did dying take?

Across the room, beside her mother’s dirty backpack and even dirtier coat, was a pristine padded envelope. Vi knew what would be inside. She shuddered seeing her mother’s filthy belongings as she reached for the package.

“Vi baby.” She heard her mama wheeze behind her, but her voice faded...she was asleep again before she finished her sentence.

Vi knew what would be inside the package because it was the same every year since she’d turned fourteen and said she wanted to be a writer—every year since her mama had left. It was the first gift she sent after taking off. Mailed from somewhere in Arizona, with a note

Happy Birthday! Write your dreams here. Love, Mama

She’d been angry. Angry that her mama was gone and angry that she got a notebook for her birthday. But Vi grew to love those notebooks. They were the only kind she would use. Now, she had stacks, shelves, and boxes of them. Their pages contained stories of a hundred other lives she’d created, collected and preserved.

Violet ran her hand across the smooth black cover and lifted it to her nose, inhaling. The smell was clean and new, but also mysterious, a chance at uncovering something. Vi said her version of a prayer, one where she imagined this could be the one, that something transformative would spill onto the pages. Her prayers felt more desperate lately. She knew that her chance of making a living as a writer was like winning the lottery, but she was still frantic to go all in, to buy as many tickets as possible. Before she christened a new notebook, Violet whispered to whatever god there was, please let this be the one.

Opening to the first page, she whispered, “Thank you mama.” As she was about to start, she noticed there was something sticking out of the back of the notebook. Flipping through the pages, an old, beat up, greeting card envelope fell out onto her lap. Violet stuffed it in the back without opening it, letting herself float on words for a little while—away from the hospital room and imminence.

Scrawling sentences and catching scenes that formed in her head, Violet lost track of time. One moment she was writing—suddenly, there was was a loud beep. Then, more loud beeping. Then, a continuous high-pitched deafening tone. Time bent. Expanding and contracting so that Violet felt dizzy and nauseous.

There was a room full of doctors and nurses, people and equipment trying to save her mama. Doctors shouted orders, people ran around in a frenzy. Then, just as quickly, there was silence. Violet was standing in the corner of the room, clutching the black notebook to her chest.

They couldn’t save her. Of course. There was too much wrong. Dead. Gone. Not in the way she’d been gone before, but forever.

After the silence, there was bustling arrangement, other people, and I’m sorry for your losses. There was planning, a funeral, and finally, the burial. Vi floated through it all like she was watching herself on television.

After the funeral, at her grandmother’s, Vi lay on the bed mama had slept in as a child, staring at the ceiling. The house smelled like mothballs and the casseroles covering the dining table. Hearing whispering mourner’s voices below, she knew she should make an appearance, but Violet was tired and wrung out. She felt a restlessness building and something dark lurking beneath it. There would be no more chances. Vi didn’t even realize she’d been holding out for chances.

Vi lost her mama a long time ago, to addiction and mental illness, but this hurt in a different way. The permanence was the most painful part. Everything felt different, untethered. She was afraid, realizing that there had been something inside of her that had held on to hope. Now, it seemed like hope died along with her mama.

So she stared up, feeling the buzzing in her bones. She needed to write. It had been days. But everything she was working on before seemed different, far away, like it belonged to someone else. Still, Vi needed to get out her energy. It was either write or scream.

She rolled off the bed and slid her feet out of the uncomfortable black pumps she was wearing—funeral shoes. She shuffled across the carpet, dug the notebook out of her bag and flopped back down. For a moment, she just stared, wondering if there was any point. It didn’t matter though. There didn’t need to be a point. It was as essential to her as breathing. Even if no one else ever read a word she wrote, Violet knew she still had to.

The red envelope was sticking out of the side of the notebook. Violet slid it from between the pages and opened the card. The card wasn’t even signed, some vague, corporate greeting for a daughter’s birthday. But there was something else, a ripped-out magazine ad for some kind of décolletage cream claiming to be the fountain of youth.

Vi sighed—nonsense that would only mean something to someone high out of their mind. She was about to throw it away, but there was something stuck to the back. Vi turned over the page. A sticky note bearing her mother’s perfect cursive stared up at her. Violet’s heart clinched at the handwriting—the one aspect of her mother’s beauty that hadn’t faded with hard living.

Send to Violet!

Vi removed the note and read. A writing contest. It was hosted by the notebook company, the one that made Vi’s little black books. As she read the details, her heart raced. The prize was a chance—survival money, exposure, and hope—twenty-thousand dollars. Twenty-thousand reasons to hope. At the bottom of the page were the guidelines for entry. The story needed to include two things, unexpectedly coming into money and a black notebook. Violet laughed at the absurdity. She looked up at the ceiling like her mother might be there.

Violet picked up her pen and wrote like her life depended on it, like her dreams depended on it. Tears fell, but she kept writing, bleary-eyed and into the night, pouring out her grief, letting it roll from her heart and onto the page. She skipped dinner and furiously worked for hours, staying awake until a pale-yellow dawn peeked in through the curtains. She wrote and re-wrote. Finally...she stopped.

It was the story she needed—a story of loss, longing, and a glimmer of possibility. Violet slid the notebook into the envelope. She ran to the kitchen to find some stamps. It was dark and quiet. The air smelled like leftovers and medicine. Vi rummaged through a junk drawer—old people always had stamps. She placed about fifteen on the front of the envelope, just to be safe.

At the door, Vi slid her feet into a pair of worn-down slippers and ran to the mailbox. There, she placed the package, a baby in a basket, ready to go downstream. She flipped up the little red flag, closed the mailbox and exhaled. She stood for a moment in her pantyhose and black dress, breathing the icy air and letting the winter wind whip at her. The early morning sun was trying to break through the clouds.

Yesterday’s eyeliner and sadness streaked Violet’s face, but she’d found something. She’d received, on the worst day, the best birthday gift her own disaster-of-a-mother could have given. Without knowing, Vi already knew. She would wait for the results, but she allowed herself to feel hope like it had already happened.

She’d won.