Anna Vangala Jones
When my younger sister died, I lost myself in my art. I missed her so much, I crafted her likeness in my pottery studio, never expecting the clay statue to come to life. It could look, hear, think, speak, and feel—deeply—only it could not move. Wherever I chose to place her was where she would remain. She could communicate to me her wishes but could not make them reality.
One day, I handled her carelessly and a piece of her nose chipped off. In life, she had always panicked at the smallest blemish on her otherwise smooth skin. I hated myself for letting this happen, now that she was helpless to fix it and couldn’t research the latest trending skincare videos. She loved texting me about new products.
Like glass, she told me when she was alive.
Skin isn’t meant to look like glass, I replied.
Well, mine will, she said.
A chunk of her nose gone? No lotions or creams could conceal that. She’d have worn a mask for the rest of her days, assuming she’d ever leave the house again. I tried to chisel it back to its former beauty, but my alterations only made it worse. She was always the prettier one, but that never bothered me. I worried she’d wonder if I dented her delicate nose on purpose. Every time I passed her and sensed her silent disapproval, my guilt gave way to resentment.
Who cares if you don’t look perfect? No one sees you but me. You’re not even real, I told her.
Yes, I am, she said. Who do you think you are? My own personal god?
I wasn’t trying to be her god or anyone’s. I was just mad at whatever higher power had taken her from me in the first place. I was only trying to remember her.
She said she wanted to wear makeup and I had left her face too bare, so I painted on whatever colors she asked. Pink cheeks, red lips, a liquid black outlining her light brown eyes. I tried to feed her the meals she once loved, but she could not use her mouth to chew. She asked me to describe the taste and smell, but this only made her sad.
She was most heartbroken that she could no longer sit at her beloved piano and let her fingers dance over the keys. I ordered a basic keyboard online and tried to teach myself, though I had hated to play when we were children. I was still terrible. She longed to help guide my hands with her light touch.
I hired a piano teacher to come over once a week. He guided my hands for her and, for a time, she was content as I steadily improved and could play a few of her favorite songs. The piano teacher and I were spending a lot of time together, and he helped me forget to feel lonely. Soon our friendly small talk bloomed into something more. The first time he kissed me, she was in the room. I hadn’t known we would need privacy until his mouth was on mine. He forgot about the piano entirely as our newfound intimacy took priority. I knew now to move her to another room before he arrived. She would remind me as I closed the door on her that if I didn’t keep practicing my piano skills, I would lose them. I barely heard her as I rushed into the piano teacher’s arms. Sometimes his firm hands on my skin reminded me I was still alive and let me forget my sister. Other times, as he lay heavy on top of me, it felt like I was the one made of clay.
She said she was happy for me, but it hurt that she’d never get to fall in love or even have a casual fling. I wanted to give her joy by playing the instrument she no longer could, and now here I was causing her more pain, flaunting all that she was missing and would never experience. I stopped returning the piano teacher’s calls, stopped answering the door. He persisted at first but wasn’t so enamored with me as to make a fool of himself for long. Soon it was only my clay sister and me in the house again.
Gradually, I became a recluse. When I couldn’t take it anymore and needed to be anywhere else as long as it was away from her and these oppressive walls, I stood too close to her and whipped the arms of my jacket around too violently as I struggled to put it on, like I’d forgotten how. I didn’t feel my elbow make contact with her. A moment later, she was bright beautiful shards scattered on the hardwood floor. She didn’t make a sound. I’m not sure which I felt first—terror or relief or a mix of both. I hadn’t wanted her to die again. At least I don’t think I did. I sat beside her for I don’t know how long.
Then I went downstairs, opened the front door, and walked outside.
Anna Vangala Jones is the author of the short story collection Turmeric & Sugar (Thirty West, 2021). Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Craft Literary, Wigleaf, Berkeley Fiction Review, Short Story Long, Rejection Letters, and X-R-A-Y, among others. Her stories have been selected for Longform Fiction’s Best of 2018 and the Wigleaf Top 50 Longlist and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net anthologies. Find her online at annavangalajones.com.
Photo by Alex Jones on Unsplash