June Blame

I’ve always wondered who made the sun for the morning. After all, I’ve watched it melt into the edge of the sea from docks, sand crumbled shores, and unsturdy balconies. An ephemeral fruit that hangs in the sky, teasing mankind with it’s intangibility; until it rots or succumbs to the horizon. I’m quite tired of being so cold at night, so whoever the craftsman is ought to learn how to make something that beats longer. Though that’s unlikely. 

Where I’m standing now makes the sun look like an angry beast. A swollen canary with sharp beady eyes, a prideless lion with his jaw suspended over the burnt Savanna, a retired bull whose horns are too heavy for his head. I said angry; not mighty. The cliff’s edge is overwhelmed with long viridian grass. Blades shift with the wind like the botched bangs of a college sophomore, blown up and aside by an aggressive breeze. The lake below shimmers and refracts light, mimicking the beams that warm the water, and as I mix it’s cream tint on my palette I can’t help but think of what I have to deal with after this. 

Meditation can happen anywhere, she said, just let your mind drift; Forget about what your obligations are and where your responsibilities lie. I remember how the advice simmered in the air. I have a tendency to zone out during our sessions and she never knows how to approach it. Sometimes she repeats herself once she’s snapped her fingers a few times, like I’m an inattentive puppy, or she coughs deep in her throat so I’ll focus back on her instead of the white board on the wall beside her. My contempt must have suffused my gaze during yesterday's session, since she just smiled and sighed, that’s our time for today. 

My phone buzzes at the bottom of my apron, a harsh callback to the weeds caressing my ankles. Sweat has gathered at my brow and beads of it fall down my face at a steady pace. It’s collected in the fold of my thumb too, slicking the handle of my paintbrush to the point of being uncomfortable. I’m sure my body expects me to be out here for longer, or at least craves to stay, but my reminder for work swallows my screen. I take a moment to look back out over the cliff. The smell of summer falling over it. A beguiling jezebel with her perfume sitting on my lip, tempting me with the hope I’ll fall with her. My phone buzzes again. 

The front of my car jolts when I put it in park. I can feel the engine shutting off, sputtering to an end. The photo of Mom swings from the review, back and forth, back and forth, slowing with each sway. She’s smiling with the utmost felicity, her cheeks forming robust ‘apples’- as Grandma used to call them. It’s framed in black stiff metal and dangles in front of me by a thin rope. It pivots constantly, as if on cue. It’s a pattern sure to wear it down like bone; to a gnawed, chewed bone. I hear what my therapist said at our third appointment, Do you feel you deserved to lose her? 

The Ela Pottery Center is always cold compared to the heat outside. Cool air seizes me and goosebumps rise over my skin in waves. I can hear my class chattering, their voices carrying through the plaster. The bulb in the backroom sticks to the ceiling over my head as if threatening to flicker and bust. I almost wish it would. It’s as bad as a full sun in the center of the sky to blind and maim me. I feel caromed; shaken as if I’m in a bottle until I manage to stumble past the beaded threshold. Marie is standing closest to me when I come out, and she’s the first to hiss out that I’ve arrived. Like a freshly scolded classroom, my peers devolve into quiet mutterings as they find their seats. I pull my lips back, feeling my cheeks bundle against my teeth like tight red balloons. They stare with wide eyes, some turn to each other as if their head is on a swivel. I can hear Marie’s lips parting and binding in intervals, afraid if she prodded me my pulse would quicken to fail and the lesson would be CPR rather than wheel throwing. 

“Good afternoon everyone, how, are,um,” My tongue is twisting in my mouth, my eyes darting through the spaces between each wheel. They hover over Gabriella's weary indigo flats. Eva. I want to tell her they’ve been used up, that they should just be thrown out. Eva. They’ll be ruined in a week. 

“Eva !” Marie’s throat sounds dry. I look up at her, her face flushed with some kind of anxiety. Anxiety over the class, over my behaviour. Do you think it’s your fault?

“I’m sorry class, I’ve not been too sharp lately. We’re gonna start with something simple, a mug,” I can smell the clay before I even shove my hand into the piles on the table. The wet mud feels so good consuming my fingers my eyelids flutter shut; I can hear them getting their buckets and sponges, shuffling around to roll up their sleeves behind me. Some of them are laughing. I once told Gineveve her laugh was identical to my mothers. You might as well be twins, I told her. The only difference was a few years and Gineveve had arthritis that she complained about whenever we started a lesson. 

It doesn’t sound as sweet now. It sounds aged, like yellowed paper with holes from invasive moths.

“Make sure you don’t get too much clay. You want to have a sizable chunk,” Saturdays sponge is floating at the top of my bucket. It throbs in the muck of the water when I slam my clay onto the wheel. 

“But not so much that it overloads the wheel.” I can feel my foot shaking as I put it on the peddle, careful not to begin too fast. They’re watching me like baby birds learning to fly, except Gineveve, who was smiling through me from across the room. Is it possible that you’re mistaking your productivity for something positive? I can see Marie leaning into my space, the corner of her violet-dyed bob falling into my peripheral.

“I liked the piece you left here the other day,” she says. I can hear her intention crawling beneath her dulcet voice. I don’t look at her. 

“Thanks.” 

“What glaze did you use? I’m in the middle of making this little statue,” her wheel was slowing down as she spoke, speeding up whenever she stopped to pay better attention. She used to do the same when she cooked. Her hair would tilt forward and cover her eyes while I watched from the bar. Sometimes I’d turn on music and distract her with my awful dancing; it was easy enough to do. She never could put her full care into things. 

“I don’t remember. Just test out different glazes. You’ve done this as long as I have.” My hands seemed to push into the clay on their own. As if they were tired for me. 

“Well yeah I guess but I was just trying to tal-”

“I’m tired of talking.” I looked up at her finally. My knuckles plunge into the half-made mug. It collapses; Marie chuckles next to me. I hear it deep in her throat, guttural, unpitying. It’s as if my stomach has been filled with sewage. A swollen globe of skin floating at the top of that saccharine lake. I feel like the weary indigo flats. I feel like the cold sponges around us. I lean over to Marie,

“If you’re going to be cruel, leave. I can’t keep entertaining this routine,” I whisper it so nobody else can hear, so it’s private, so they can’t suckle on the drama like sweet bark. Maybe it works, since they’re watching me for what to do now. I smile and start again, 

“You wanna make sure you keep your hands and the clay wet,” I take the sponge and wring it out, old water pittling back to the yellow belly of the bucket. It’s mimicked by the other women as their sponges echo mine. The water reminds me of caves; the way water slicks around the ceiling only to drip to the floor. It’s ominous and hungry, as if the cave itself is going to swallow you whole. I believe you’re just avoiding confrontation with your emotions. You do need to face them, Eva. 

“I am facing them.” My voice encumbers the room. Somehow it seems heavier- smaller- when it’s void of people. I turn away from the table and face the storefront. There’s fingerprints clinging to it, illuminated by the peach orange of the sunset. I start cleaning when two people start walking past. A taller woman in a pale pink coat held by the hand of what looks like her young daughter; just barely at her hip, with hair that falls down her back in a similarly smooth fashion. They’re talking about something I can’t decipher through the thick of the glass, though I swear I can hear her call out, 

“Mommy!” Her smile makes it cloying. As if she spit up a ball of clumpy food and hair, right into her palm, right in front of her mother. Do you think this resentment that you carry for your mo- I mean Angeline- is not because you hate her, but because you feel as if she abandoned you?