Porcelain Fish

This is something I wrote for my workshop class. It's the unedited version that I submitted. I may post the new version later.

There was this porcelain fish that sat on a metal stand on the top shelf of the china cabinet in the dining room. Blue details were hand painted across its white body. I think it was a gift from Aunt Janet. Cara said it must have been because it was utterly useless, just there to be admired and guard over the fancy plates and serving trays we never used.

I was really little at the time, so I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I wanted to feel whether the scales were imprinted or just painted on. I dragged a chair from the dining table and stepped up on the plastic covered cushion. I looked at it from eye level. Its eyes were surprised circles and its mouth was gaping open like it was gasping for air. I lifted it from the stand with both hands. I let go of my right hand to stroke the raised edges of the scales.

“Charlene,” my mother’s voice said behind me.

I turned around. My hand recoiled from my grip on the fish. It landed on the armrest of the chair and broke into a good number of pieces that scattered around my feet and the floor.

I looked at my mother and held my breath.

“Don’t move,” she yelled.

She went to the closet, took out her shoes, and put them on. Then she walked over to me. I had lost track of my limbs. My arms were still in the position they were in when I held the fish.

My mother stepped over the porcelain fragments. When she got to the side of the chair, she picked me up and carried me to the hallway.

“Don’t go over there,” she ordered.

She went to the closet again to take out a broom and dustpan. She walked back to the mess. She sighed a forceful breath and started gathering the shards.

I hurried off to my room. I jumped into bed and pulled the covers over my head. I began to cry about nothing particular, at least nothing I could put into words at the time. I felt this pressure at the bottom of my stomach that made me want to yell, though I knew it wouldn’t make the feeling go away.

When my mom called me for lunch I sat down at the kitchen table while she put away the dishes in the dishwasher. I couldn’t help dropping a few tears over my peanut butter and banana sandwich.

“What were you doing?” she asked, drying off a dish with a towel, “You should know better than to touch those things.”

I swallowed some sandwich. “I don’t know,” I told her. I started to cry again, trying to make as little noise as I could.

She put a dish in the cupboard. She walked over and rubbed my back with her palm in two circles. She went back to the sink and dried another plate.

“I told you you’d break it,” Cara said when she came home from piano lessons. “You’re in trouble” she teased, “Mom said that grandma gave it to her.”

My mother’s mother was the only person I knew that had died. There weren’t many of her things left because there had been a fire that almost burnt her house down.

Cara went back to doing her homework on the coffee table. I tried to ignore her with the TV.

When grandma died, it was the first time I had seen my mother cry. I peeked into her room when I couldn’t go back to sleep early one morning. She was sitting on the bed, hunched over, with her face in her hands. She would breathe in two quick breaths and let out a sound I had never heard come out of an adult. I went back to my room and lay in bed and still couldn’t sleep.

“Can you turn that off?” said Cara, “I’m trying to study for Algebra.”

The next Sunday was grandma’s death anniversary. We went to church and visited the cemetery. The sky was clear. The sun made the grass look too green.

My grandmother’s marker was a metal plate lying flat on the ground. My mother stared at it for a while. Cara looked around at the grand headstones that had angelic carvings and statues. I listened to the birds whistle to each other and waited.

My mom bent down and placed something beside the vase of flowers we had brought. When she turned to leave I saw that it was a broken piece of porcelain painted with a few blue scales. I stared out the window on the way home and ignored the tugging at my stomach.

That evening, I laid in bed and couldn’t sleep. I got up and walked down the hall to my mother’s door. It was slightly open. I could see her on her bed, propped up by a stack of pillows. Her hand was on her face. She sniffled and wiped tears off her cheek one side at a time.

I stepped back on one foot, a quarter turn away from the door. Then I stepped forward, bringing my feet back together. I put my hand flat on the door and gave it a gentle push.

My mother looked up at me for a moment. She put her arms out to me. I climbed over the foot of the bed. She wrapped her arms around me, only letting go of one arm to wipe her hand across her eyes and placing it back around me.

Before school the next morning, I stopped in the dining room on the way to the kitchen. The fish was back on the top shelf of the cabinet. I dragged a chair over to examine it, but I didn’t touch it. It was the same fish only there was a hole in its side.

“I managed to glue it back together,” my mother said behind me, “except for that one piece. I couldn’t get it to fit back in.”

The fish was missing a piece and you could see the cracks where it was glued, but it was back where it belonged, watching over the plates.