Broken Angel
by Sarai

You can say it’s all a waste
Lost your time and space
There’s nothing left to lose.
Like a broken angel on the ground
Like a symphony without a sound
Turn around.
-“Shine,” Clay Aiken, Measure of a Man


I don’t know how I even wound up there. I just left the school and walked. In the middle of a school day, too. Even Grace, with all her anti-establishment talk, doesn’t just walk out of school before lunch. But I couldn’t… Jane… no. My head kept skipping from one thing to another and all I really saw was a mess. Hours and hours of work and emotions and Jane holding a chair. A stupid chair. No. Nonono… I saw it like I was there, even as I kept my eyes on the sidewalk and walked away. Scrap metal. Junk. Trash. Ruined. It was more than my ticket out of high school lying in a broken pile in the gym. So much more.

Then I was there. And staring, I landed on my knees. Mom… I couldn’t find my voice. I don’t go there. Except on her birthday. I picked up the piece I’d brought last week, turning it over in my hands. I would have brought… but it was too big… I picked the dead leaves out and stared, seeing nothing and everything. I’d worked so long and hard… wanted her to be proud of me… Pile of junk in the gym… Jane… I got angry for the first time and raised my arm because I wanted to throw something and hear it, feel it. But I stopped myself and was gasping for breath in the middle of a graveyard in November. What was I doing? I lowered my arm and cradled my statue in my hands. I made that for her. Gently, I placed it where it belonged, at the base of her headstone. I don’t know where the others had disappeared to, but this one was still here.
Looking up, I read the words to give myself something to focus on because I felt all mixed up and all over the place. “Rove, Elizabeth. Beloved wife of Carl, mother of Adam.” I felt like I was going to be sick. “Mom…” I said quietly, putting my hand up and leaning my weight against the palm pressed over her name. “Mom… I…” Mommy…

I could see her, feel her. I remembered her sculpting, afternoon sun lighting her from behind like a halo. She looked like an angel. An angel with permanently dirty fingernails and hands brown from the clay. Paint on her cheek. I remembered how it felt, when she stood behind me and held her hands over mine and guided me, helping me shape a pot out of wet, gooey, cold clay that turned and turned, changing shape with every rotation. The huge smile when I made an angel for her out of coat hangers one Christmas. Watching me weld with that half smile of hers. Bringing me things she found at work, or on the street. I remember when I would bring home report cards, and be afraid to show them to her. She would sigh, and touch my hair. “Next time, baby,” she would say. “It’s all up there, and I know you’ve got the memory for it. My very own encyclopedia,” she would wink. Hugs. Cinnamon and cardamom. Christmas lights. Snowmen. Noxema on sunburns. Vapo-Rub for colds. Singing to herself, humming all day long…
And then… No more singing. No more clay. No more paint-flecked furniture. No more… Her voice… I’m forgetting it and that scares me. A lot. I remember what she said… but I can’t hear her in my head anymore. Not really. She said, “Don’t stop, Adam. Put a little of yourself in everything you do. The more heart you put into a piece, baby, the better it will be. It’s a part of you, and if you stop… you aren’t being true to yourself.”
“Mom, please…” Please what? “Help.” I pulled my hand back, and I just… hurt. “I put it all in…” And I heard the crashing, the creaking and twisting and clanking… I saw Jane and a chair and I shut my eyes against it, but it was like a movie in my head. Over and over, I heard the crashes and saw the crowd gathering at the gym entrance… I knew. I didn’t think I knew, but I did. It didn’t surprise me as much as it should have when I saw Jane swinging that chair right through best thing I had going for me. It just hurt. Then, when she was crying in the hallway…
I just don’t understand it. She knows. She knows what that meant to me. She knows more than anyone about me, and I’m just realizing that I barely know her. Even Dad just guesses at why I work so hard on these things. I told Jane. And Jane went and… did this.
It figures. It is November, after all. Nothing good happens in November. Everything terrible that’s ever happened to me happened in November. I hate this month.
I don’t know how long I sat there. I got cold, but I barely noticed. The ground made my knees wet straight through my jeans, and me feet started to fall asleep. I don’t even really remember what I thought, or if I said anything, and if I did, what I said. I just know I must have been there for the better part of the day because when I’d said goodbye and gone home, Dad was up. Working as the night janitor, he’s rarely awake before noon.

He was sitting out front with the paper and his coffee, like he does from the first warm day in spring until the first snowfall. He watched me come up the street and into the yard. Never said a word, until I went to go inside. “Adam…
” I went inside. No way was I going to “talk” about it. Stupid grief counselors and their advice, anyway. Seems like ever since Mom died, he’s been trying to talk everything out with me. It doesn’t work that way. I can’t just… talk about something and poof! It’s all better. Mom was like that, too.
It surprised me that I actually made it out back before he came after me. I stared at my current project, but couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t remember what I had in mind when I started it. I just… see things, the way they’ll look when I’m through, and go from there. But whatever I had seen just the day before was gone now. Like smoke.
Dad came and stood in the doorway, blocking out the light. I didn’t move and didn’t say anything. I just sat there. I hadn’t even bothered to pick up any tools or wires, but was just looking at the thing I’d been working on. All I saw was a bunch of stuff other people had thrown out. That scared me a little.
“Mr. Price called me.”
Damn.
Dad waited for me to react, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. “Adam… I’m sorry, son.”
I looked up at him. I hadn’t expected that. I know Dad likes my stuff—he wouldn’t have it in the front yard if he didn’t. I know he was proud of me for the art show. But I hadn’t told him about dropping out.
Again, he waited, but I didn’t know what to say. He sighed and came further into the garage. He picked up something I’d made, turning it in his hands. When he did talk, he spoke to that. “You should have said something to me. About dropping out.”
“So you could talk me out of it?” It came out bitter. I didn’t want to take this out on him. He was just making himself convenient.
Dad sighed. “Maybe.” Neither of us said anything, and I would normally have begun working on something then. He’d have left. But I looked around me at all my stuff and didn’t see anything. No image pushed itself into my brain and took over my vision. I couldn’t see how all those things would fit together into something beautiful.
“She would have loved it, Adam. Been proud of you.”
What are you doing, Dad? I just stared at him, blinking hard.
He shook his head and put down what he’d been distracting himself with. “She would have been so proud of you. But… She wouldn’t have wanted this.”
I looked away. Willed him to stop.
“Mom was always proud of you, Adam. She just wanted you to try.” He waited to see if I would look at him, but it hurt to think about lifting my head. I saw his feet turn and he began to leave. “She would have wanted you to stay in school.”
Thanks Dad. Just had to say that, didn’t you? We’ve reduced her to a weapon now. “I miss her.”
It just came out. I don’t know where it came from or what made me say it.
Dad paused on the way out, his hand on the doorframe.
“Me too.”
Dad’s not much for talking things out, either. He left.

I sat out there for a long time. I’m not sure if I even thought. I felt numb. It was a lot to process. I looked around blindly, taking in all the things I’d made and all the stuff I had collected to use. I shut my eyes, laid my head in my arms on the table.
I must have fallen asleep, because when I opened them again, it was getting dark. There was a covered plate on the table next to me, and the lights were on. Dad must have come out to check on me. I wasn’t really hungry, but I ate the sandwich anyway because I hadn’t eaten breakfast that morning. The sandwich was a peace offering, anyway. I know better than to ignore those. We may not always get each other, but we’re all we’ve got. Especially now. I thought I had Jane, for a while… But I guess I was wrong.
I looked around me. Earlier, I’d been afraid. I can’t really remember not seeing anything at all when I looked around out here. It made me begin to wonder if Jane had stolen this the way Price had stolen my music.
But I picked up what might have been a hubcap and saw something else entirely. I knew what I needed, and began grabbing things from the shelves and floor, piling them on the workbench and moving my other project to another table.
I guess I can still talk to angels. With or without Jane.

End.

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