Castles on the Sand

Twenty-Five

“This is what my life is worth,” she says. “I gave everything for this, and this is what I have to show for it.” She turns towards her wheel, hammer raised.

“Mom! No.” I tackle her and we both fall into the drying shelves. Bowls and cups rain down around us, some of them breaking on the concrete floor. I do my best to hold her arms to her sides and wrestle the hammer away. “Don't. Stop.” I throw the hammer out into the backyard where it disappears among the weeds. “Stop.”

She struggles with me for a moment, then goes limp, tears streaming down her face.

I hold her. “It'll be okay. We don't owe any rent. I can pay for groceries and stuff. We'll be fine.”

She shakes her head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because as long as you're here, I can't forget.”

“Forget what?”

“All of it. Everything I did, just because I thought I deserved better.” She wriggles out of my embrace and sits with her head between her knees, pottery crunching under her.

I get up and stare down at her crumpled figure. Mom dies inside without her pottery. Keep her away from her wheel long enough and the light goes out of her eyes. It's happened over the course of a weekend, once, when her wheel was being repaired, and again the one time she traveled for a show. She sold nothing and came home irritable and spitting venomous insults.

As I watch her, the pieces start to click together in my mind, like a shattered pot reassembling itself. She sniffles and doesn't look at me.

I pick my way across the pot shard littered floor and wrestle open the big bag of clay that she always has by her kiln. She's almost run out. Her shelf of glazes is looking pretty depleted too.

“I'm calling your supplier,” I say. “Get you some more clay and glazes.”

“Don't-”

“I'm not asking your permission. I'm just letting you know. I'm gonna write a check for $900.00 to Elaine, and leave it on the kitchen table. That should cover a lot. I tried to pay our rent with that money, but the landlord just voided the check.” I hit the switch to power up her potter's wheel. “Come on. You can clean the place up later.” 

She doesn't look up.

I step carefully over to the door and then pick my way back to the house, my feet smarting so bad that I'm sure I've cut myself. At the back door I brush off the soles of my feet and find that I've got little plant spines of some kind stuck in the skin. It takes me half an hour in the bathroom with tweezers to get most of them out, but once I emerge again, I hear Mom working at her wheel. I call her supplier and arrange for her to come by today with her truckload of supplies and write the check I promised.

Then I shower, dress in my most comfortable jeans and a plain shirt, and put on minimal make up. Eyeliner so that people can see I have a face, not just a pasty oval floating above my shoulders, lip gloss, and a little blusher under my cheekbones to make my face look slimmer. My hair I dry and put up in a ponytail.

It's still early, but I'm not hungry for breakfast. I pack a lunch and walk to school instead.

I’m halfway there when John calls.

“I hope I didn't wake you up. I just wanted to see how you are.”

“I'm okay.”

“What can I do?”

“Nothing.”

“At all? I can't even crack some lame jokes or something?”

“I figured it out.”