Scribbles

By Desiré Hendricks

She began writing the letter on the back of a flyer, a yellow piece of printer paper, screaming, COME GET CRUNKED! The bright missal invited the city to attend the Hip Hop concert and fundraiser to be held that weekend in some centrally located city park by a local housing association. They were trying to raise money to refurbish the children’s playground in their housing complex. She’d turned over the flyer moments after taking her seat on the train, then drawn her favorite purple inked smooth roller pen from her purse, and begun to write. She wrote in furious bursts--her writing transferring to the soft cover of the book she’d been reading. Her writing made smooth indentations of her loopy longhand which she overwrote as she shifted the book when she reached the end of a line.

As she wrote, the middle aged man seated next to her attempted to peer at her scribbling. Normally, he minded his own business on the train, looking neither left nor right and only occasionally upward when he noticed a new advertisement among the mini-billboards that acted as runners along the length of the car; today was different. The intense, focused energy of the young woman’s writing intrigued him. Her shoulders were taught as she mouthed and breathed the words she pressed on the page. Her grip on the pen caused her knuckles to whiten and her hand to shake when she paused to think before resuming her hurried writing. Despite his curiosity and his peering, he couldn’t make sense of what she had inscribed on the page and embossed upon the cover of her paperback—the title of which was obscured by the flyer and all of which was overshadowed by the hunched posture of her body.

Shortly, she ran out of space on the blank side of the flyer and began cribbing her notes in the margins of the printed side of the flyer. As she turned the page to write in the left-side margin, she paused suddenly like a doe scenting an intrusion and turned to look at the nosy man seated in the aisle seat next to her. She stared directly into his eyes but clearly did not notice him. Instead, she noted the focus of his attention. She followed his line of sight to her page then moved a little further into the corner of her window seat. This change in her position gave him a view that encompassed even more of her shoulder and none of her paper. She returned her attention to balancing the book and writing on the paper on her knees. She continued to write with increased ferocity. She filled every empty space on the page in labyrinthine fashion with her writing, only she could discern the beginning and the end of her thoughts on the page. She finished writing with a satisfied sigh and signed her name with a flourish. Mona.

At her stop, she murmured, “Excuse me,” to the newly nosy man seated next to her as she stood to exit the train. Mona dropped her writing and her book into her shoulder bag as she stepped past him to exit the train. She turned toward the light coming from the station tunnel’s exit. She walked through the tunnel and up the stairs into daylight. She shielded her eyes, surprised to find herself looking into the summer sunset. Slowly, she walked the two blocks to her small rental home, pulled out her keys, and smoothly unlocked the door. Mona followed her usual homecoming routine—toss the keys on the foyer table, hang the bag in the entryway closet, but not before retrieving the flyer on which she’d been writing. Then she headed down the short hallway and turned left to enter the kitchen.

A glass of water, a handful of crackers, and a smooth jazz CD later, she walked from the kitchen across the hall to the front room holding her roll top desk. Mona approached the desk with a sense of anticipation. She rolled the cover up and perused the variety of stationery that she’d purchased when he’d gone away. She couldn’t decide at first. Should she use the lilac pages speckled with purple or the pink pages with the picture of a single rosebud superimposed diagonally over their length? She fingered a set of pale red pages, weighing her options. She decided to use one of the pink rosebud accented sheets as her top page and chose the pale red pages for the rest.

Now, she needed the perfect writing implement. She considered the color of the ink just as important as the feel of the pen in her hand. She chose a silver inked, heavy barreled pen, seated herself in the old wingback chair in front of the desk, and began to write. She began to write, Dear... This time instead of scribbling, she wrote slowly taking great care that each stroke of her pen painted a picture which complimented her words. When she finished the letter, she signed it, Yours, Mona, and placed it in a white linen envelope then sealed it with a red rose sticker. She carefully addressed the envelope.

Mona picked up her beautifully addressed letter in her right hand and walked back into the kitchen then through the narrow backdoor at the rear of the kitchen to her backyard. Once there, she placed the letter in the barbecue pit; Mona removed the matchbook from the pocket of her denim skirt. She’d picked it up when she went to lunch at the restaurant where they’d last shared a meal. She lit a match and carefully touched the corner of the envelope with it. The letter took a bit to light. She singed her fingers but refused to drop the match until the envelope began to burn. In her heart, she knew that each action must be as perfectly executed as the letter itself—no pauses, no fumbles. Her face remained expressionless as she watched it burn. When it finished burning, she gathered the ashes into the box she’d placed beneath the grill before leaving that morning. She cleared the grill pit carefully making certain that nothing remained. She used a tissue from her other pocket to wipe away the last brief gray smear in the bottom of the pit. All indications that the letter had been burned there were gone. She took the box into the house.

As she walked into the living room, her sense of anticipation peaked. She hurried to the mantle piece and removed the ornate urn sitting there. She placed it on the coffee table facing the hearth and removed the lid. Carefully, she poured the ashes into the urn, replaced the lid, and said a prayer before returning the urn to her mantle piece.

For the first time in six months, Mona smiled and headed to the kitchen to fix a real dinner. She felt like salmon with mushroom gravy and mashed potatoes, and those dinner rolls and green beans she’d picked up at the farmer’s market—white wine would go nicely with that.