Notebook Mary

Once in a while, when the thundering silence of the empty room is too much to handle, I walk the downtown sidewalks, hoping to run into a familiar face, you know – sort of accidentally on purpose. Walking the grimy broken walks at the odd lonely hours, one has occasion to meet the local characters, the alone, the lonely, the misunderstood people who seem more comfortable going by a nickname rather than a name.

There is Bill-Bill, the stuttering set of twins who share a single name, and Flower Danny who gives out wilted roses because he can’t stand to see such beauty thrown away because of slight imperfections. Then there is Notebook Mary, who spends hours writing in her notebook, unconcerned by the fact that her pencil has no lead in it.

On this particular occasion, this group of lonely souls sits around the back booth at the all night diner. The conversation turns to the subject of Notebook Mary, who is seated by herself across the diner. In low whispered tones, the gang discussed whether Mary might have gone around the bend, since she is still sitting at her table, scribbling away at pages that are still as blank as the day she bought the notebook. Each person at the booth has his own opinion; some suggest that we take Notebook Mary to the free clinic to get evaluated. The only one who hasn’t spoken up yet is Blind Willie, although he seems like he sure would like to. As we are being served, the conversation dies down a bit, and Willie gets his turn to speak.

“You cats have got Mary all wrong”, Willie says as the others are digging into the mashed potatoes and fried chicken. “Mary may or may not have a lead in her pencil, I have never seen it. But these fingers of mine have felt the dents made in the paper by the tip of the stylus.” Willie turns toward the table where Notebook Mary always sits, and calls her over to join the rest of us. “Mary, let me see your notebook a second, please” After a moment’s hesitation, Mary offers her precious notebook Willie. With subtle movements of his ultra-sensitive fingertips, Willie glides across each page, reading aloud the words that only the blind man can see written there.

Willie reads on and on, long flowing poems that Mary has written about grokking her new friend at the subatomic level, about the patterns of the stars in the sky, about the beauty of the sunset reflected off the ocean waves. This lonely, broken lady, who never speaks and who writes poems that only the blind can read, has somehow managed to work the names of each of us, each lonely twisted one of us into her poems. Notebook Mary calls us by our real names in her poems, not the public handles that we go by on the streets. This poor girl, who many of us have described as the weirdest one among us, has not written one unkind word about any of us; in fact her poems describe us a heroes, defenders of the poor and the weak.

I turn to Notebook Mary, no I mean just plain Mary, and start to offer my apology. With trembling voice and tears in my eyes, I try to say something, anything to salve my own guilty conscience. Mary gently lays her hand upon my trembling hand; she says, “You didn’t know, how could you have known. You judged me by what you could see of me, by what I chose to show you. I have never let you see my poems until now, have never let you run a gentle hand across the worn and tattered pages. You live your life day by day, trying to run more scam to score another meal for your earth suit. I do those things too, I need my daily bred as much as anyone, but when I write in my journal with my leadless pencil, I do it as my way of practicing the invisible.”

The sound of forks being laid at the edges of plates fills the air; seven hungry diners are now too ashamed of themselves to eat. As wallets are drawn out to pay the checks, I am pleased to meet for the first time, the familiar faces of Bill, Mary, Willie, Travis, Nevin, and Cyle; I will no longer need or want to use street handles for my friends. As we each pay and leave, going our separate ways, Mary quietly hands me a page torn out of her journal. My eyes can’t read the poem, and my fingertips can barely distinguish the outlines of the letters dented into the paper by the well-worn stylus. As I stand there, running my fingers across the pages to try to make out the meaning of what is written there, I find myself thinking that I will soon have to learn how to practice the invisible.

FINIS