Shards of Porcelain

Fractures

You know you were very little but not very small. You know this because you weren't wearing very much, and your naked belly had folds in it, and the sweat that collected there tickled unpleasantly, and you scratched yourself with dirty fingernails. You know they were dirty because the old woman who called you Mikita, though it was never your name, told you about the dirt.

You weren't so little that you didn't know she called you by the name that wasn't yours, but you weren't so big as to question it, and you really didn't mind what she called you that day because she gave you that fly swatter and put you in charge of the flies.

It was a very big thing of red rubber and a wooden green handle, splintered and scratched, but the rubber part felt new and heavy in your hands.

You smiled at the old woman, and you were just big enough to know that she was your grandmother, but not so big that you knew that you had the same eyes because she forgot to give them to your mother, who was the oldest, but not so old that she ever forgot your name. And you remember thinking that day how lucky you were that you had more names than anybody, and thinking, too, how lucky you were to be in charge of the flies.

And one day, many, many years later you walk into a room that doesn't smell like a room someone is dying in is supposed to smell, because you are not so old yet that you'd done this before, and your eyes travel over her hands, smaller now than you remember, and dark, and you notice that her fingernails are clean. And for some reason it makes you smile, and then you are sad for smiling, because her hands weren't ever clean before, and they smelled like garden soil and earthworms, and because somehow you know, you know that now they don't smell like anything.

And she looks and looks and looks at you, and you put your hands in your pockets, because suddenly, you don't know what to do with your hands. And you wish you weren't dressed the way you were, the adult way, and you wish you didn't dye your hair a bright, unrecognizable red, and you wish and you wish and you wish she'd still know you, by the old wrong name.

And you see it, the whisper of a memory in her eyes that are still the same as your eyes.

And you see yourself as someone old and wrinkled and tired from all the digging in the soil, and all the missing your children, and all the knowing and then not knowing your grandchildren, and the constant remembering and forgetting of everybody, you can see it in those old eyes looking at you as if you are someone she once knew, someone she loved.

And you let her do it then, let her call you by your mother's name, her first born girl who looked nothing like you, who is nothing like you, and you smile at her smiling at you, and hold the too-clean hand in yours, and tell her about all the people you don't know.

And you hope and you hope and you hope.