A frame for bits of family history spirited away from grandmothers and aunts one porcelain piece at a time, the second-hand China cabinet was an imposing presence in the Baxter family. After the kids grew up and they sold their house, this giant commanded one entire wall of Vivian and Don’s apartment for 25 years. That was before they had to move in with their daughter Deena in their elder years. A silent sentry, it kept vigil during long evenings of television viewing, frequent afternoon naps, countless uncomfortable dinners, merrier holiday gatherings, and summer visits.

It was “real” wood and heavy, a piece that cost $1,000.00 new in 1965 when the neighbor lady, Elouise Sloane, told her husband Lester she needed to have it. A colorless, unremarkable man, Lester Sloane agreed to the purchase without much discussion. He had his own garage then, and business was good. Lester drove Elouise down to Bybeck’s furniture store, filled out a green check and signed the contract. The two-piece leviathan arrived at the Sloane’s the next week.

Lester had balked at first, but Ellie was a good wife who had done without for much of their married life, so it was hard to deny her this luxury. She had given him one son, their only child, a quiet and compliant boy who would probably take over the business. Lester wanted to please her.

When Lester got sick and had to retire, they decided to move back to Tennessee to be near family. They sold most of their furniture before leaving. The year was 1984 and Vivian Baxter saw an index card scribbled in blue ink tacked to the bulletin board at the dry cleaners. The Sloane’s cabinet was for sale (for a song!) and she knew in an instant it would be hers. Vivian had seen the cabinet that one time Eloise hosted the bridge club. She remembered how it looked, its three glass panes gleaming, and Ellie Sloane’s pretty things shining through that glass, in the low living room light.

***

Cut Glass

They were never used at Grandma Faye and Grampa Frank’s house when Deena was a child, though she could remember some fancy Sunday dinners in the dining room. Once Faye got too old to cook, they always ate sandwiches in the kitchen, or went out to a restaurant when Deena’s family visited; but they were almost mythic, from a time when there was money, or the promise of money, when Grandma’s life was a blank book, she was vibrant and young and all days were good days full of blue, green and sun.

Cut glass dish. Cut glass creamer and sugar bowl. A trinity of lead crystal, holy like Sunday. 

Sometimes they were taken out of Faye’s China cabinet to be cleaned, and Vivian would put an object into Deena’s hands. “See? See how heavy it is? That’s because it’s leaded glass. They don’t make things like this anymore.” This was recited in a whispered voice, indicating knowledge that must be preserved; something to be memorized and repeated. 

The dish, creamer and sugar bowl had been wedding gifts to Faye from her parents back in 1919. They had been purchased with a bit of sacrifice and were meant to impress Frank’s mother who was not satisfied with her new daughter-in-law. She felt her son could have done a bit better and had let it be known in some subtle ways that Faye was from the wrong side of town. When Deena was older the dish sometimes sat full of candy on the high buffet, but she never saw the creamer and sugar bowl used. Never used by Faye when Deena knew her.

Never used after Faye’s third baby when it became too much of a chore making sure her little girls didn’t play with them while she ran around the kitchen cooking the Sunday noon meal. Setting the table, straightening the linens, and keeping the faces and clothes of the girls and her new baby boy clean was also part of her duties, before calling her in-laws and husband to the table from the living room where they lounged. Where they discussed family matters that Faye could never be a part of. 

The girls were only six and four and they were very active. It would be unforgiveable if somehow they dropped a piece and it broke; it would ruin the set and could never be replaced—something so rare—so expensive.

So they sat on the highest self in Faye’s little golden oak China cabinet, more valuable than any of her jewelry, even her wedding ring.

Glass that could cut you without breaking—

***

Porcelain Doll

She is really a small vase, six inches tall. A little French lady of the 1700s, the bustle of her flounced skirt hollowed out just large enough to hold a sprig of flowers; Baby’s-breath or Lilies of the Valley, nothing more.

The top tier of an inexpensive corner shelf in Faye’s dining room was home for “la noblesse,” as Grandma Faye had called her, and she demurely gazed down on its patrons, unaware of any impending revolution. A doll, but not a toy, her tangerine floral dress, French twist bun, and ruffled parasol were ever curious to Deena when she was a child. All she had seen of glass figurines were the mass-produced tiny kittens and birds at the Ben Franklin, each sitting on a plaster base naming months of the year. Deena would buy them for her friends’ birthdays, (50 cents well spent), though it was her whole weekly allowance. She even bought her own September kitten; white and gray, her birth month painted in glittery silver. The kitten had a blue sapphire crystal between its paws, her birthstone. Her first treasure.

One day Deena was visiting her mother when Vivian began talking about the past.

“My sister Loretta never let me hold that doll,” Vivian said, spitting the words. “She told me I was too little and wouldn’t be careful enough, so she never would take it down for me.”  Deena had listened to this story for years, was always shocked by the fresh resentment in her mother’s voice when she told it. Deena had heard all this many times before, but something new was coming.

“And now I have the little vase, the little doll, and I get to look at it every day!” Vivian smiled, victorious.

Vivian’s older sister Loretta had long ago moved to Ohio, and Faye had given the little vase to Vivian during a summer visit. That was the year Faye started putting small white stickers on the bottoms of her porcelain collection, writing the names of her daughters carefully in ink so they would not fight over anything when she died. Faye could clearly remember her own mama telling how some cousins smashed all the good china in a huge brawl after their mother passed, because they could not agree on who would get what. Her girls were not like those hussies, Fay thought. 

Still…

***

Broken Vase

“He’s giving me the “Old Silent Treatment,” Vivian said, as Deena watched her wipe away a tear. Deena, then twelve, was often her mother’s confidant. Vivian had only one really good woman-friend and was hyper-critical of most of the women she knew. She often spoke to Deena as though she were an adult, giving her opinion on everyone in town, even the ladies in the “Bridge Club,” a group that took turns gathering in the front rooms of their ranch houses every six weeks to play cards. Deena saw this as a mysterious event with more at stake than a winning hand. It was a ritual involving folding tables with paper tablecloths, tiny, amusing pencils, little tally sheets in pastel colors (all specially purchased at the Hallmark store) and dishes filled with mints and nuts. These women were friends of a sort, although Vivian felt several of them were not playing cards just to be friendly but were “trying to be social.”  Deena finally understood this meant status climbing, which in later years made her laugh because most of the women worked at the local factory or as secretaries somewhere in town. 

The Old Silent Treatment could go on for hours or even days, depending on what had happened to upset Don, with Vivian timidly waiting it out, hoping to regain his favor. Then one spring day there was the vase incident -- a watershed moment for both mother and daughter. 

The beautiful, delicate bud vase was Bohemian, handed down from Faye’s mother, Matty Lynn. Matty had come to Illinois from Eastern Kentucky in a covered wagon as a small child and had not known luxury in her lifetime. How she came to have the vase was a lost story, but it was an early “pick” Vivian brought home one summer after visiting Faye. The vase was glazed pale pink, about eight inches high, decorated with the relief of a girl in a field holding a few stalks of wheat. Everything was painted except the girl’s face and cap which were pink like the background, and the wheat was matte finish the color of electrum. Initially, Vivian kept it wrapped in layers of tissue paper in a box within a drawer of her dresser. Vivian warned her small children to “never take the box out or to look at that vase.”  However, as Deena and her brother got older, the vase was set out; first inside the corner of a deep bookshelf, and later on top of a drum table, next to a lamp. 

One night Don did something unforgivable, careless, and negligent. Rather than stay silent and sulk, Vivian unleashed fury on him. She railed at him, in front of the children, and for days afterward. Deena could hear it through her bedroom door, and even when she sat outside in the yard. He was “stupid” and “thoughtless” and “selfish,” she heard her mother yell. Don had come home tired one night and roughly dropped a stack of mail on the table, tipping the fragile vase on its side, breaking out a thin, triangle shaped piece. Don went into his basement workshop a few days later and gently glued the wedge back. “See Viv? You can hardly tell,” he said as he placed the cherished item before her, careful not to look in her eyes.

The Bohemian vase was given its old spot back on the bookshelf, but the imperfection was visible up close. It wasn’t the same. The tenor of the house was never quite the same either, for Vivian Baxter had found her voice.

***

Matty

“Matilda Lynn! Kem in hare. Hep me with these sheets. Thay’re havy,” her mama called. Matty knew it was urgent because her mother had used her full name, and she also knew washing sheets was difficult work. She really just wanted a few moments of daylight to finish reading her book, Cousin Maude, a tale about a young woman leaving her country town and becoming a governess to her rich cousin’s children. It helped take her away from her own life. Matty’s mother did washing for other people to get by, and Matty did help, but she loved to read. It was hard to read at night with a kerosene lamp, and her mother put the lamps out early and made her go to bed, so the 15-year-old tried to sneak in secret reading minutes during the day. 

She would sit behind the door of the empty upstairs bedroom, knees up and the book on her lap and not make a sound. With the door ajar (her mother would have suspected if the door was actually shut), and snug in the triangle it made, Matty would read. Young Matty was also aware that her mother, Rose, didn’t like the name Matilda, but had given it to her illegitimate daughter as a way of thanking the aunt who took her in during her time of trouble. Rose Cullen had been sent away at 16 by her family to care for her “sick aunt” in the next county and stayed away nearly three years. When she returned in 1863, the family told everyone the tiny girl in her arms was the result of a marriage to a fine young soldier whom Rose met while there. They said he had been wounded and released from the army when Rose met him but had recently succumbed to those wounds. Everyone marveled at this romantic tale, and gave condolences to the young “widow,” but in their homes they made sharp remarks about Rose Cullen’s great “fall.”  

***

Missing Piece

Jeremiah Lynn joined up with his cousins two weeks after the War Between the States was declared. They signed the papers at Everson’s Feed Store. Just 17-years-old, he pasted the number 18 on the bottom of his boot so when the recruiter asked him if he was “over 18” he didn’t have to lie. Jeremiah didn’t’ have many firm political views, but he did think slavery was wrong. This was largely due to knowing Albie, the Negro owned by Mr. Everson. Albie was kind and a hard worker, and Jeremiah thought he should have a different life than the one he had, hopping to Mr. E’s every command. Listening to his older cousins, ‘Miah felt excited and a little feverish when they talked about getting into “the fight.” He knew it would be the adventure of his life to go to battle; that it might be the only time he’d get out of McCracken County.

When Rose Cullen heard Jeremiah Lynn was gone to fight, she stumbled and smacked her foot on the runner of the rocking chair. “Whatever is the matter with you?” her mother cried. “I think I need some air,” Rose said and walked straight out the door without taking her shawl. She walked through the cool, April morning right to the meadow and plunked down on the big log. Remembering that day, Rose realized she hadn’t seen anything as she walked; it was like dreaming where everything is a fog-gray haze and sounds are distant and muted.

She walked to the same meadow where three months earlier she and Jeremiah had their fifth tryst. The same meadow where one evening he gave her a delicate bud vase, beautifully painted with a girl holding a sheaf of wheat, and told her she would make a good wife one day. The same meadow where a marker would eventually be laid for him after news came that he had been killed at Perryville.