High Tea

I clamber up the ladder, stepping carefully onto the roof. "Hey, what are you doing up here?"

She smiles at me in a sunny way and pats the shingles, inviting me to sit down. "I'm being destructive."

"Oh, yeah?" Actively avoiding looking over the edge, I perch gingerly beside her, pressing my fingers into the folds of her t-shirt. "What are we destroying?"

I notice the big cardboard box in her lap for the first time, and she grins, reaching in with both hands, and gently lifts out a miniature porcelain teapot, with a lacy pattern of soft blue flowers.

My breath catches. "It's beautiful."

She laughs almost giddily, and I look at her warily. "I know." And, she throws it.

I watch it in its slow-motion reckless fall, and the tragic crash as it hits the driveway doesn't ring louder than my shriek of surprise and horror.

She misinterprets it for approval, and brings out another, a red-and-white Chinese pot, small and round and lovely, and I can't even find a voice to mourn as it tumbles to its doom.

"I've had these for years." She says softly. "My mom gave me the first one when I started first grade. She's given me one at the beginning of every school year since. So," She brings out another one. I don't look at it. "I have eleven to break." She pauses thoughtfully. "Well, nine now."

I close my eyes, but the shatter of porcelain devastates me so much that they snap open again, and I watch in silence and something like hatred as she sends pot after pot to their blacktop graves below. Each one touches me with a stab of love for their beauty in a different place in my heart, and rips it a little more when they come irrepairably apart on the driveway.

"Last one," she says cheerfully, standing up. She looks over at me for the first time, and her smile fades. "What's wrong, love?"

I have been sitting with my hand over my mouth for a long time, staring down at the mess of porcelain contrasting the black asphalt, tears slipping from my eyes to puddle on the edge of my fingers.

I look up at her, and I can't stand for a moment how beautiful she is, with her pretty white skin and lovely eyes and red, red raspberry lips. I can't stand how her long perfect fingers and her sharp elegant knuckles just destroyed everything in destroying the most insignificant little pieces of art.

Shakily, I scramble to my feet and hurry from the roof, and she calls my name, and I ignore her. I run down the driveway and feel like I'm gazing down at the crushed remains of a childhood, of a family, of a lover.

Sighing, in despair, I just look at all the wreckage, unable to understand all this. And, I think of something that doesn't seem to make sense or be important.

She is standing behind me, and I don't have to look to know it, so I don't. "You said you've gotten one every year since first grade." My voice is jagged like broken glass - or broken teapots, I suppose. "If there are only eleven here, that means there's one more." I turn towarn her, and my breath catches in a sob.

In her hands - her delicate gorgeous hands - is a polished teapot, black and pink and white, clean and whole and wonderful, and decorated with strawberries. She smiles softly, walking toward me with her gently destructive step.

"Every teapot is like a heart." She says quietly. "Every teapot is like green eyes, pink lips, white skin." She frowns down at the broken hearts. "If every one of those people had loved me, I couldn't love them like they needed or deserved." She presses the teapot into my arms, and carefully, I hold it, trying to keep my hands steady. Her intense eyes bore into me. "If this teapot is your black hair and white skin and pink lips and strawberry tongue, then I could never break it."