Kintsugi
by Stephanie King
My favorite bowl has started to crack. I’m sadder about it than I should be.
I always thought the first time a man laid hands on me would be the last. When we were arguing about him still talking to his ex, Garth shoved me and I bounced off the doorframe, and his eyes widened in such shock that I believed him when he said it would never happen again.
Eight months later, after it did indeed happen again and worse, I drove away alone in the middle of the night. When he still hadn’t come home by 3 am, I knew he’d be drunk enough that whatever happened next would be my fault. I threw my clothes and the guest pillows and blankets from the hall closet into the trunk of my car, and never looked back.
I didn’t know anyone in Cincinnati, which was how far I drove before my eyelids dropped so hard I had to pull over, and then I stayed. My apartment was a studio where the cash I had on hand got me a mattress on the floor, a lamp bought at a yard sale down the street where I met my neighbors, and one set of cheap dishes from Walmart. The light splayed weird shadows up onto the walls from its floor position while I read in bed for lack of chairs. My first splurge, after I got paid out from running barback at the new martini bar that has since gone out of business, was a room divider from the Pier 1 clearance section that I wanted “for privacy” (from whom?). I plucked the bowl from a display while I waited in line to check out, a heavy ceramic rice bowl with cherry blossoms splayed delicately across the side.
I used it not only for rice but all sorts of things: cereal at dinner as well as breakfast; the 3/$1 ramen that was all I could afford; reheated leftovers of my comp meal from work. I’ve thought of those days, each time I’ve wrapped the bowl in newspaper to move: to a better apartment, to a new city for a job, to move in with the man I would eventually marry.
Now, I stir a few tablespoons of breastmilk into the powdered rice cereal, according to the package directions. My husband Ross holds his phone up, recording, as I scrape the first spoonful against the lip of the bowl so it doesn’t drip. I see the crack, working its way down the inside of the bowl, stained at its edges from soup or sauce that has worked its way into the ceramic.
The bowl is sixteen years old and has served honorably. Old enough for a driver’s permit. In the video posted online, only I will notice the slight twinge of sadness, a twitch of my eyebrow, as I notice the crack. Everyone else will only see the green plastic spoon airplaning forward into Caroline’s eager, happily waiting mouth.
Stephanie King is a past winner of the Quarterly West Novella Prize and the Lilith Short Fiction Prize, with stories also appearing in CutBank, Entropy, and Hobart. She received her MFA from Bennington and serves on the board of the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference. You can find her online at stephanieking.net or Twitter @stephstephking.
