~Crack!~
Lila stared dispassionately at the cracked heirloom, lying despondently on the cold tile in her excuse for a kitchen. The porcelain figurine shards had managed to scatter from one end of the dinghy room to the other, pieces having skidded to under the fridge, behind the trash can, and even underneath her.
She dragged in another breath, feeling the frigid air of her neglected apartment scratch down her windpipe, the heavy breathing trying to replace the air she had sobbed out moments ago. She sank down from her crouched position until she was kneeling on the floor, ignoring the sharp pain from the icy surface and the porcelain shard digging itself into her kneecap.
Her ragged breath filled her ears and the pounding of her heart seemed to be filling her head with blood, making it hard to see past the starry bursts in her vision. But she could still make out the figurine’s face, cracked into two- smiling brokenly up at her still.
But what caught Lila’s eye were the other smiles….the three other familiar painted faces, broken into smaller pieces and flung it different directions. Red, yellow, and green the pieces glowed under the florescent light in contrast to the dirty floor and appliances.
It had been here when she moved in over a year ago. A smiling doll perched on the window sill- its paint faded and cracked from years of direct sunlight, covered in dust and grime. It had been left by the previous occupant and while Lila had noticed it she had left it. After all, if she had a standing arrangement with the bugs of 220B, she could extend the courtesy to the soft eyed figurine. As long as they didn’t bother her, she wouldn’t bother them.
So, the doll had continued to stare out the window and Lila learned to look past it. Until tonight. Until she had walked in the dark, cold apartment for the first time in what felt like days, and finally let herself burst into tears. She had been blind, deaf, and dumb with frustration in her attempt to turn on the cantankerous heater. And in her failure to get the old bucket to click on, she had caught the doll’s eyes. Black and bottomless, sad and longing, silently judging her.
She had lashed out. Because she could lash out at the figure on the sill even if she couldn’t scream at her coworkers who blamed her for their mistakes or fight back with a guest who called her worthless or anyone else who looked down at her without even knowing her.
She had to take it. And take it. And take it.
Until she just couldn’t take it anymore. Until she broke.
Shakily, Lila reached out and scooped up the largest remaining piece of the figurine. It was heavier than she had thought, cold to the touch and looked brand new. The same paint colored the mini piece of pottery and Lila dimly recognized it as a baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes with a rosebud painted on its chest. The black eyes were small but bright and looked out sleepily.
Rolling the baby in her palm, Lila looked back up at the remains. Eight eyes stared back at her and she found herself scooting closer to the shards, scooping them up, ignoring the splinters of pottery that wedged into her skin, finding the matching pieces until she looked down at four rough faces.
She had not realized the figurine was a Russian nesting doll…nor realized the small fault line had been a catch, hiding the smaller figurines inside its hollow shell. Lila stroked the familiar black eyes, rosy cheeks and broken pout of the familiar doll before glancing at the others.
Stages of a young woman in bloom smiled back up at her, broken and cracked but still smiling despite it all. A child with a larger rosebud looked up at her engagingly, smiling shyly and then a preteen gazed up with a mischievous grin plastered on her face and a blooming bud peeking out from beneath her folded arms. The second largest was the first with rosy cheeks and pink lips with a budding blossom exploding across her chest and a flare of passion in her eyes and there again was the hollow shell piece with long eyelashes painted on to the pale face, the delicate black hair falling in an arc across her forehead and the budding rose, thick and heavy in its maturity, sprouting little buds, fertile and vibrant beneath its dirt and grime.
Lila looked shakily from the faces to the mess that lay splattered across her floor, the drops of blood from her knee had smeared across the floor and her hose had ripped open at what had only been a minor run earlier that morning. But it was the baby still cradled in her palm that sent the tears coursing back down her unwashed face.
She rocked back onto her heels, and put her back against the counter and just let the sobs escape, careful to remember to breathe between them, to shakily suck back the oxygen she exhaled and kept her eyes focused on the broken faces, not the rest of the shards that still lay forgotten.
Forgotten. She had forgotten that she used to be too shy to look at a stranger or that she had used to play tricks on her younger brothers. Forgotten that she had hated wearing makeup and bras with wires and always wondered when she was going to feel like a woman instead of a girl…
Because somewhere between the yesterdays and the todays, she had become a woman.
She had become a hollow shell, forgetting the layers of her childhood, ignoring them and burying them inside of her instead of building on them. She had stopped growing, was withering away…the sad eyes of the mother shell stared back at her, and Lila wondered if the previous occupant had been waiting for someone to come home. Had kept the doll in the window to keep watch.
Lila sniffed and let out a short breath of laughter before slowly finding the strength to stand up. For a moment, her eyes went over the floor and the red and yellows mixed into it before lightly placing the resilient infant onto the sill. She faced her inward. A reminder.
She stepped carefully over the broken shards, promising to return and sweep them up, perhaps she could try to glue them back…or perhaps she would throw them away…
But at the moment, Lila was going to change out of her work uniform and then she was going to call in and offer her two weeks.
It was time to keep growing.
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