The China

The China

Abigale F. Kemp

Here I am, sitting dusty and cold under three other plates that all look the same as me. I suppose we are approaching Christmas, as I heard Mama call out, “Can someone wash the china?” earlier this morning. We are the china, old antique dishes that have been passed down as an heirloom through several generations, with rich, red holly details, a few with chips but most of us sustaining little to no wear over our years of somewhat infrequent use. 

We have sat here for three-hundred and sixty-four days a year, sometimes three-hundred and sixty-three if Mama and Daddy get too drunk on Christmas to do the dishes a day later, for the past ten years, since their son, Jeremiah, was born. We were given as a baby shower gift to Mama just six weeks prior to Jeremiah being born. Wrapped in thick white wrapping paper with gold dots and expensive pink ribbon, Grammy had been gifted us at her first baby shower, and it was time we were passed to the next daughter. Ever since, we have only seen the light of day one day a year during the holiday season when Mama, Daddy, Jeremiah, Adeline, and Daddy’s other two children, Titus and Polly, eat Christmas dinner at our house. 

As god-awfully boring it can get sitting in the old wooden cupboard against the chipped yellow-off-white-ish paint lining the family’s home, we do much more than just sit in two even stacks next to champagne glasses, margarita mixers, and other ‘one-day-a-year’ dishware. We observe the tension between Mama and Daddy, how Daddy can’t stand to look at Mama, and Mama can’t last five minutes in a room with him without saying something hateful. We observe the tension between Mama and Polly, and how Mama is jealous of the attention Daddy gives Polly, in her sick and twisted way. We observe Adeline, the youngest daughter, eight years old, who, though always has a smile on her face, has something bigger, more evil and negative than any of the dysfunction that occurs around this house. We observe Jeremiah: a shell of a ten year old boy encapsulating ten years of feelings and emotions that have never left the walls of his brain and as time passes, will eventually grow to be many more darker, sadder memories. And then there is Titus. We observe the grief that Mama gives him for his weight. We observe his loving and protective brotherly spirit and how each year he grows to be more and more like Daddy. We observe Daddy, his hiding beer in cabinets, next to cook-books that have been there for years, untouched. We observe Mama’s disheartened face when she finds the half-empty glass bottle and realizes that he’s been drinking again. 

We have been there for every memory, observed every holiday; every Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, and we have observed every fourth of July. All from afar, obviously, but close enough to see the pure brotherly rage on Jeremiah’s face when Mama drunkenly called Polly a slut in the driveway after the family returned from the county’s Independence Day fair this year. Next to the window in our old wooden cupboard, we sat, watching out into the driveway as tears began to stream down Polly’s cheeks, just fourteen years old, full of innocence and a youthful, bright spirit. The family stood around and watched, not knowing what to say. We watched ten-year-old Jeremiah body slam Mama’s frail, alcohol-burdened body into her white 2006 Honda Pilot that she’d crashed about a hundred times, and we watched Daddy run and grab him, attempting to hold him back as Adeline and Titus comforted Polly. We saw the bruises that lasted on Mama’s body until August.  

We have seen a lot of memories in the making from this old cupboard, many bad but a few worth savoring. We have seen Jeremiah and Adeline make friends, some of which kept coming by, others who we saw maybe three times over the span of a school year who seemed to just fizzle out of the mix. We watched all four kids sit in the living room, watching the Polar Express and drinking eggnog around a big green Christmas tree decorated in ornaments they’d collected throughout the years, as we were washed in preparation for dinner the next evening. We watched Mama and Jeremiah come home on the night of Christmas Eve four years ago with a white, male kitten with green eyes and fur that gave Adeline hives, who they named Linus. We watched the family play with Linus for hours until Mama and Daddy told the kids that if they didn’t go to sleep, Santa Claus wouldn’t come that night. We watched Daddy get sober, and then relapse, and then get sober again. We watched him try his hardest and through all his hardship, still manage to wake up and work eight hours a day, every day to support the family. We smelled the eggs, bacon, and biscuits he made for the kids every Saturday morning and heard the cooking shows that played quietly on the television in the background with a glare across the screen so bright that you could barely make out what was on it. Somehow it seemed the sun always shined brighter on Saturday mornings. 

Things haven’t been the best for the family this year, following the incident on the fourth of July. Though I am just an object that sits and watches the family from the cupboard, attaining no opinions or moral stance on the nature of this quite obviously dysfunctional household, I do believe that through viewing these experiences, I have grown wiser eyes. I have laid here for years watching the most beautiful thing anyone (or in this case, anything) could begin to muster up, the most complicated and infuriatingly enlightening concept: life. I have seen things that could scare a human, and that’s coming from a plate. However, amidst all the darkness, there are still the candles that burn hot above us on the table as the family sits down to Christmas dinner on the one day of the year when the holiday spirit seems to override the negativity. There is still the string of white lights that hang from the tree that emit a warm wave of cozy energy throughout the house. There is still the hope that maybe next year they’ll take us out and use us for Thanksgiving. Maybe next year, they’ll be able to tolerate sitting down to dinner as a family for two days of the year, instead of just Christmas. But for now, there is this one day, one of three-hundred and sixty-five, where the darkness seems just a little bit brighter, and we get to be a part of it. There are the Saturday mornings when the sun shines through the living room window onto the children’s faces. There is that sweet, breakfast smell. There is the cat, and Daddy’s sobriety, and the family. And somehow, just those little, seemingly insignificant glimmers of light, are what make the darkness worth it.