Fiction by Thea Atkinson

Broken China

by Thea Atkinson

Muddied tracks on a squat porch floor, frayed curtains, and a steady stream of children coming and going, yelling and laughing, that's my view of the world. At least it is nowadays and promises to be for years to come. Not that I feel trapped, mind you, or isolated. I don't think that way. Life just is, is all, and you traipse through it day-to-day, managing small miracles wherever you can.

Charlie's my miracle. He gave me my first piece of China back in '55. He sat on our bed and scooped off his socks, while I tidied around him.

"Take a look in the bag, Ann," he said, tilting his head towards the general direction of the dry sink where a paper bag with the letters R. H. Davis printed on the front sat on the gouged surface.

I opened up the bag and peeked inside. You can imagine how my heart tripped over itself when I realized it wasn't just another piece of trash.

A tiny horse lay cushioned inside, wrapped in wrinkled tissue. Bisque glazed a creamy tan, it had a black mane that flowed down its neck and touched the curve of its back. I'd never seen anything so delicate. It didn't matter that it had a missing foot and half of its tail gone. Neither did it matter that there was one solid crack that ran from flank to shoulder and showed more than a share of white. I took one look at Charlie's broad face with its stubby, rounded nose, the short chin, and I lost my voice.

"They were just going to throw it away," he asked, seeing my silence. "I thought it looked kind of pretty. Do you like it?"

"Like it?" I croaked. "Why, Charlie, it's the prettiest thing I ever got."

He had a way of grinning that made my legs tremble, and he shot me one great and glorious smile.

"It came in broken like that," he said.

I sat next to him on the bed. It creaked wickedly and sagged. "Lucky me."

He reached out and thumbed my chin in answer. Smooth, his fingers were, and smelled of Old Spice and back-storage-room grime. After three years, those scents mingled had become an aphrodisiac. I think that night was when I got sick with Danny.

That year saw two more kids in school. For once in my married life I shipped out more than I brought in. For a sweet period of time, I didn't feel like I was constantly swimming underwater.

I could set my clock by Charlie in those days. At 12:05 every weekday, I'd peek through the curtains and see him with his legs pumping, and arms a-swaying, rounding corners and heading down the dirt street toward home. For a short man, he sure could walk.

Dinner was always to the stove at that time of day, with onions and carrots simmering happily on the Kemac. When I'd see him, I knew I had enough time to ladle it up into a plate and be just setting it on the table when he walked in. It didn't matter what I served or how often I served it. He always barged in the door, arms wide, face beaming, and gave a great big sniff, so loud the kids could hear him from wherever they were in the house. Inevitably, they all came running and charged at him.

"Wow. Something smells good, Anna."

"It's just a little rabbit stew," I said to him, and pulled kid after kid from his lapels.

"My God, rabbit stew. Is there a family that eats any better?"

I had to roll my eyes. Maybe he wasn't sick of rabbit, but I was about to grow fur.

Every now and then, Charlie brought another trinket home: ducks, geese, children, fine ladies, oh, the like of them, and they were all for me. Here in my little shack with the smell of onions and bread and the sound of squealing children, was a window to the unexpected. Imagine that. Anna MacIsaac, owner of fine china.

The kids couldn't understand my pride over the little collection. Not that I displayed them anywhere. Lordy, no. I'd have to wait till the kids all grew up and got more responsible. Trouble was, kids kept coming. So I had to wrap the pieces up in paper that I got from the butcher. Sometimes I sat to the kitchen table with a bowl of Carnation canned milk and patiently sealed the cracks of the more fortunate pieces and glued the less lucky ones back together.

Dorothy often watched me, sometimes they all did, whispering to each other and staring at me as if I'd gone queer.

"Isn't it beautiful, Dort?" I asked her once, holding the original horse.

She screwed up her nose. "But it's all cracked and broken."

I waved her away. "You wouldn't know treasure, girl, if it bit your nose."

She tutted and went in search of a brother to bother, and I went back to my dreams.

There was a lot in my life I could be thankful for. But like I said, I didn't think that away. No time is granted during the run-of-the-mill day when ten kids are howling and supper needs fixing and laundry needs done, to even consider fortune, let alone thank it. I just lived. The kids grew, both in height and in number. Charlie worked and came home. Life did its thing, and no one was the wiser.

Once in a while the years hiccupped and served me a dose of indigestion. Sometimes it straight out poisoned me. When I took to the bed to deliver Michael, Charlie, as usual, endured his share of the trial.

"He's a little sickly, eh Ann?" he said, sticking his baby finger into the squalling mouth.

I was horrified. "Are you saying there's something wrong with our boy, Charlie MacIsaac? Cause if you are, you can blame yourself. You with that bad stomach of yours, I tell you, your blood is poor. You got no strength in your bones. Imagine. Mixing that foul Scots blood with this fabulous French stuff... We're strong, us Doucettes. I ought to curse you, you damn Scot, you know I can. Why..."

"Enough." He kicked the bed. "Christ all mighty Anna, I was just observing. You don't have to pull out the evil eye."

I hunkered down satisfied, ignoring the whispering inside my mind that told me Charlie would be right in the end. Michael, bless his soul, died in my arms and I near went mad. Charlie held me as tightly to sanity as he could. But when Beatrice was stillborn ten months later, the tether snapped and caught me right in the eye.

My china calmed me though, all through the tough times. At the worst of it, I took each piece out from its butcher paper wrappings and handled it for hours. I'd enlist the older kids to help reseal the re-sealed-and-come-unglued cracks. There we'd sit, dipping fingers into a big bowl of canned milk that I'd put on the table. Chubby fingers rained drops of white on the beaten surface. The next day, I'd always find two or three hardened globes that shone shiny in the early sunlight.

Ah, but it wasn't always that way. By the time my other babies came, I was all over the turmoil. Charlie got a promotion to salesman and got to use the company car for his sales route.

He still brought home the trinkets every so often too. And just as often I'd get to ride in the car with him. On one trip we went all the way to Meteghan, to the place where I'd been born. He didn't say a word when I asked him if I could visit my sister, Verna, and take a peek at my first girl. It's a shame I didn't do the math; we drove all the way to my sister's house only to discover that my girl was 17 and had moved out on her own. Charlie just sat in the car and absently rubbed his stomach. He knew I was upset.

"Stomach bothering you again?" I asked.

His bottom lip shoved up into his top one the way it did when he tried to pretend something wasn't bothering him.

"It's been worse."

"Well, you better get to the doctor and get it looked after. I got enough to worry about without having to give bed baths to some old Scotsman."

"Whew," he said with quick grin. "Now a bed bath sounds great."

On the way home, we pulled into an old saw road and drove the car as far into the bushes as we could. I'd had a long dry spell. Usually, all I had to do was drop my drawers into the same laundry basket as Charlie's, and I got sick with my babies. Nowadays that didn't seem to matter. 42 was close enough to the change that I thought I was safe.

Almost ten months later, a midwife proclaimed that I'd had my last son. That was fine by me. But I did name him Mikey. I guess I just couldn't lose the thought of the first. All told, this one woman had given birth 16 times, 15 of those years I'd been married to Charlie, and 12 of those kids were his. It's a good thing he loved children. To me they were like squawking geese pecking at my shins and flapping in my face. How I loved summer when I could pack a couple of them off to camp with the rest of the altar boys down at Notre Dame.

Charlie wouldn't go to church with me, not to the old church on Albert Street with its large stained glass windows, or to the tiny new church just down our way. He said he'd seen enough priests drinking and smoking and being downright hypocritical to last him a lifetime. So when the new church was built, he refused to even step inside with me and the brood. Sunday mornings we'd come home to a dinner Charlie had made. Usually, it was fried hamburger with canned Campbell's tomato soup and elbow macaroni. Lord how good it smelled when I walked in the house. It didn't even matter to me when he got up from the table and got sick. I guess I just never thought about it then. By Christmas he spent more time over the toilet than he did at the table.

"It's my stomach, Anna. It's taken to bleeding," was all he said.

"Oh, my God, Charlie. We better get to the doctor."

He waved me away like he usually did, picking up the littlest of the babies and setting him on his knee. Patty-caking, and peek-a- booing, he pretended he didn't hear me.

Neither of us slept well that night. No heat came up through the floor grate, but I knew his tossing and turning wasn't from the cold. Finally I prodded him into a sitting position.

"Yes, Anna. I know. Get dressed." He flung his legs over the bed, and pulled his pants from the floor. Through the yellow light of a cheesey dime store lamp, I watched him button his starched white shirt. As I safety-pinned my bra together, a terrible and familiar feeling came over me.

"You know my great, great, great grandmother was burned at the stake."

"Yeah?" he said.

"Well, I get feelings now and then."

He nodded at me. I'll never forget the look on his face. In all of our years together, he'd never spoken of that uncanny talent of mine. That night his face was as deadly serious as I'd ever seen it. "I know, Anna," he whispered. "But you can be wrong sometimes."

We shambled down the creaking stairs, and made ready to go to the emergency room.

Unfortunately, Danny had awoken and was standing in the kitchen on the faded linoleum staring into his father's eyes.

"Where you going Dad?"

"Just to the doctor, Dan. I might even be gone a few days. You mind your Mama, okay?"

Danny's solemn nod would have made me chuckle any other time; Lord, he would try to be good, but he just didn't have it in him. That night, I was too strung to smile.

Bleeding ulcers, the doctor-on-call said. Something that could be fixed up with a little operation. I tell you, I was never so happy in all my life. I tucked Charlie in bed, and made my way home. I hated that he wouldn't be home over the holidays, but I sure was glad he was going to be okay.

He came through the operation just fine. But he looked some little lying in the hospital bed. The white, white sheets made even his brown face pale, and his blue eyes were circled with black.

Every day I brought a different kid with me to the hospital to visit their Dad.

"Dad, you look funny," Dorothy said when I brought her.

Charlie laughed straight out and held onto his belly.

"Why Dort? Why do I look funny?" He twirled her mousy pigtail around a stubby finger.

"Well, your mustache is all grown."

I realized for the first time in the days since the operation, that he hadn't shaved. "Why don't you get the nurses to shave you, Charlie."

"I don't think so, Anna. They been trying to bath me all week. And they threatened to come back tomorrow. But I'm a grown man. I can shave myself and I can bath myself. I don't need no help."

"I'll bring your razor tomorrow."

He nodded with a satisfied grunt and sent us home. He said he was tired and needed to sleep. That he didn't want Dorothy out in the cold too long and it was a long walk back to Prince street--too long a way back in the slush and snow.

I wish I could say he got his shave. That damn proud Scot. He got up in the middle of the night, figuring he'd wash himself before the nurses got in the next morning. Slipped and fell, he did. And no one found him until the next day. How could I explain to the children that their father had survived the operation, only to hemorrhage later on. I couldn't; didn't give any reason. And though Charlie had never set foot in Notre Dame, he was the first man wheeled down its aisle.

All I have left of him now, are my children and my collection. The kids are all to bed. Sleeping soundly or fitfully wrapped around each other to keep warm. I can't sleep. The house is too noisy in its silence. The icebox with its chronic drip keeps me company in the cramped kitchen, the freckled countertop creaks from the weight of boxes filled with Charlie's goods waiting for pick-up by the Salvation Army. And, of course, I sit in the middle of it all, handling my china piece by broken piece.

At first when I unwrapped everything, and laid it on the table, I was amazed at how much I'd collected--how much Charlie had given me over the years. It really is a huge collection, and I need a much bigger bowl of canned milk. But it's hard to remember how beautiful they were all pieced together. Now I look at the chunks of bisque, the assorted hooves and hunks of dresses, and various heads, and I wonder how in the Hell I'm going to put them back together.

Thea is a freelance writer in Nova Scotia obsessed with fiction. Besides this exciting opportunity to be part of The Danforth Review, she has had stories in QWERTY, Thought Magazine, Regina Weese, Vestal Review, Captains of Consciousness, Zygote, Canadian Stories, Happy, ShyFlowers Garden, and on CBC radio one. She is shopping her latest novel and writing her seventh.