LIFE BITES (fiction)

When the weather was good, she liked to work with the big double garage doors standing open.  The old garage was a good place for a ceramics studio, just off the main street of the little town.  People liked to visit her while she worked and then later buy something.  She didn't mind company when she was at the kick wheel of the turntable.  Greenware cured on the shelves by the walls. The kiln, a little dangerous, was in its own little shack out in the backyard. Outside over the big double doors was a board with the name of the studio:  "Mud Shark."

"Don't you know that's a bad thing to say?"  A boy, maybe nine years old, was standing in the doorway.

"Oh, yeah?  Who says?  Why?"

"I guess no one ever told you it means a white woman who likes to fuck black men."

"For heaven's sake!  What a shock!"  She laughed, ignoring his language, and threw a double handful of wet clay on the wheel.  Whap.  Double-handed she held the slippery mass down and started to pump the wheel to shape it under her palms.  In truth, now that she was late in life she could admit that most of her lovers had been dark.  She judged this boy was trying to be a man.  Or maybe a man trapped in a boy. 

"You're white, right?" asked the boy.  He was definitely dark, straight black hair, dark eyes.  But Asian?  Mediterranean? Native American?  Mixed?  She herself had picked up a good tan this summer and her hair was dark, but curly.

"Well, I guess so."  The clay was round now and she dug her thumbs into the middle to open it into a bowl.  "What's your name?" she asked the kid. Maybe it would explain his patrimony.

"Gillette.  "Cuz I'm so sharp."  He laughed as though this were really funny, though she could tell it must be an old joke.

"What do they really call you?"

He scuffed his feet and looked around.  "Joey."  To change the subject, he asked, "What are you making?"

"A bowl."

He looked around at the shelves.  There were bowls everywhere, all pretty much the same size, all still greenware waiting for glazing.  "Is bowls all you make?"

"Sometimes.  I've just felt like bowls for a while."

"How do you feel when you feel like a bowl?  Hollow?"  He laughed uproariously.  She took a sharp look at him.  Something was bothering this kid.  He was a little off somehow, unhappy, upset, and disguising it.

"I dunno.  I just take a look at my insides and I see that I feel like a bowl."  The sides were thinning and she had to think about curving the lip.  She loved the feel under her hands, her knowing just how much pressure and where to put it.  She'd always been a receptive type, a holder, a keeper.

From the open doors a big shadow loomed over the boy and a deep voice spoke.  "Joey, you gotta come home and clean up now.  We're goin' out for dinner."  A massive very black man in an army uniform, crisp and immaculate, stood there, relaxed against the doorframe.  He hadn't made noise until he spoke.  He was very handsome, with a small diamond stud in each earlobe.  "Gay," she thought but didn't say it.  She stopped spinning the bowl and dunked her hands in the bucket of water she kept alongside, used an old towel and held out her hand.  

The beautiful soldier came close enough that neither had to stretch.  "Glad to meet you, Ma'am." His hand was firm and hard. Hers was a little damp.

"Is this your dad, Joey?"

The boy was sliding along the back of the shop among the shelves, hiding.  "One of them."  Reluctantly, he came forward and the two left together.  It was a little awkward and mysterious.  

"Thanks for talking to our boy."

The next morning another man showed up.  This one wore a fatigue shirt with the tail out and khaki shorts.  He was missing one leg but had a prosthesis, the kind that is not like a human foot, but rather a kind of curved spring, like a disabled runner.  "Joey here?" he asked.  He had one of those military mustaches that sometimes tip off being gay.  He was ruddy sort of brown.

"Haven't seen him.  I hope everything is all right."  

This man smiled.  "We're an army outfit so we move a lot," he explained.  "Joey always hates moving so he hides." 

"What does his mother say about it?" she asked, being strategic with false innocence.

The man looked into the distance.  "There is no mother, just us dads.  Three of us.  We adopted him in Afghanistan."  He grinned and held up his metal "Cheetah" foot.  "I don't get sent into action anymore, so I'm the stable constant and the one it's safe to get mad at."

She understood.  "Not very pleasant, but crucial!" she exclaimed.

"Let him know I'm looking for him?"

"Sure."

The third dad came the third day.  He was not so dark, smallish, wore round glasses, and had a bald spot where a yarmulka would go.  By now he knew she had been clued in, but there were still loose ends.  "I don't go into combat," he explained.  "I do the cyber stuff."

He turned over a sturdy bucket and sat down, interweaving his fingers and bracing his forearms on his thighs.  She didn't stop her wheel; it seemed to help stabilize what could have been emotional.  Today she had moved to porcelain, which is a white mud -- clay. 

"When King -- the biggest and highest-ranking of us -- was our leader, we went into a town that had been bombed.  King heard Joey, just a tiny whimper from the jumble.  We had come in to scout, not rescue.  The baby was deep in the rubble and nearly dead but we helped King dig him out.  No local people or support services were around so King just put him in the front of his shirt and we took the baby with us.  We kept him."

"How could you manage such a thing?"

"Complicated to get him out of country and back to the US, but we did it -- barely.  By that time he was really ours.  Some people brought back guns, some brought a puppy, and we brought our son.  Since there are three of us, we can compensate for each other so there's always someone there for him  We need to be a little careful and every time we move there's a danger someone will take him away.  We don't want trouble."  Families are of all kinds. Not everyone recognizes all of them.

"We're about packed.  Go tomorrow. Just wanted to say goodbye."

Then Joey showed up, running, crazed with emotion.  "I'm a baby shark!" he yelled and careened into the workshop and around, knocking over shelves, greenware dishes crashing everywhere.  Both adults jumped to their feet but there was little they could do -- he was small and fast.  "Baby shark," he screamed.

Finally the third dad caught him and held him tightly.  Joey, nearly incoherent with crying, said, "Sharks gotta keep moving.  Otherwise they're gonna die."  This was true.  The third dad carried his baby shark away.  

"We'll pay," he shouted over his shoulder.

She called back, "No need.  It was all potential.  No cost yet."

The potter started a new bowl and when the shape was ready, she embossed it with small sharks.  It would not be for sale. She would keep it in case this kid came back, so she could give it to him.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN-c-q2W3nY