A Worn Cardboard Shoebox

This was part of a writing exercise for one of my writing classes. It is related to a fantasy story that I have been working on for a long time now.

Adrian pulled the shoe box out from under the bed as though it were made of crystal rather than worn cardboard. It was small, probably one that held children shoes at one time. On the side and top was the name of some long forgotten French designer, Jean Pierre Marceau, with the logo Marchent un mille dans des nos chaussures written underneath. Adrian didn’t speak French at all, and could not remember what his sister Kathryn had said it meant

 

The lid was well worn, all four corners split and lovingly taped to hold together. The box itself had seen better days as well, scratched, bent, stained with something, probably juice, and torn in places. Adrian held it a moment, thinking of the times he would watch Kathryn lift this box from under this very bed. She would always be crying when she did, but the tears would not last for long after.

 

 

Adrian sat down on the bed and laid the box in his lap. He hesitated to open it. Kathryn never liked it when he was messing with her stuff. She’d never be so bratty as to yell for Papa, but she would chide him, though usually gently, and remind him how it was rude to rummage through people’s things without permission. But she wasn’t here to do so now.

 

Adrian glared at the open door accusingly.

 

He opened the box and laid the lid beside him. Only three things were inside, the only three things there ever were inside the box: an old rag doll, a top no bigger than the palm of his hand, and a patch of crochet. They were the only things, Kathryn said, that she had time to grab when they left Russia. Kathryn barely remembered the flight, and Adrian was not even a year old. What she remembered of it, she’d told him many times, when Adrian would ask her why she was looking in the box. She had said that Papa rushed home, bruised and cut. Mama wasn’t with him. He told them to hurry and dress, because the soldiers would be there soon. Kathryn did as she was told, and after grabbed the only three things she had time to: her favorite doll, the top, and the patch of crochet. Then, with Adrian wrapped in his arms, Papa had hurried her out of the house and into the hills and woods. Kathryn didn’t know why they were running. Papa never told them, only that Mama had been killed and they, whoever “they” were exactly, were not stopping there.

 

Adrian picked the doll carefully out of the box and looked at it. It was so worn now, with stuffing poking out in places. One of the eyes, some sort of blue stone, but definitely not glass, was missing and the other was loose. The nose was intact, being sewn thread, and the sewn smile never faded. The doll wore a pink dress with blue flowers on it and little leather shoes that were sewn on, but torn in places. Her hair, made of yellow yarn, was still held into two ponytails by ribbons that were frayed at the ends.

 

The doll had originally been Mama’s and had not always been so worn. Once, it was in almost pristine condition. It was obviously hand-made, perhaps by whoever had been their Grandmother. Papa did not know who she was. The doll, like their mother, was not Russian.

 

Papa said that Mama had amnesia when he’d found her so long ago. She did not have any accent that he recognized and after he fell in love with her, he did not care where she was from. She would be his wife, she was Russian now.

 

The top certainly was Russian design, though not something a child was likely to find in a toy store. Papa had always been a clever man, good at making things with his hands. He had carved the small top himself, decorating it with simple geometric shapes, a square, a circle, a triangle and a pentagon, that danced around in turn as the top spun. A pull cord was inserted at the top to spin it.

 

What was unique about the top was not the outside, but the inside. Papa had taken apart a musical box and fitted the mechanism into the top, so that when it spun the teeth of the mechanism would strike the barrel, creating the musical sound. It was a design that, according to Papa, took him four years to perfect, but perfect he did. The top, when the cord was pulled, spun perfectly, the top and bottom spinning rapidly and playing the tune (a Russian tune that Adrian did not know the name of and Papa could not remember anymore) while the decorated middle spun a little slower the other direction, the shapes dancing in and out of sight.

 

Adrian held it now, but did not spin it. Kathryn always said that when he was a baby, she would spin the top for him, and he would clap his hands merrily to the tune. She said that was why she always played with it. Perhaps so eventually, but Papa said that when he made it for her, Kathryn would not put it down for days. She would just spin it, listening to the song and watching it dreamily.

 

He put it carefully back into the box, beside the doll.

 

He wanted to pick up the crochet patch, but found his hands trembling when he tried. Of all the things in here, this was the thing Kathryn had always held in highest reverence. Even if she was still crying after pulling out the doll and the top, when she pulled this piece out, her tears would stop. She would hold it to her chest, rocking back and forth softly, and humming some strange tune.

 

She never knew the words to it, but she had said that she could remember Mama singing her to sleep with the tune.

 

The effect, though, was just the opposite for Adrian. His hand hovering over the patch of knitted yarn, he could feel tears welling up in his eyes. He blinked them away as best he could and tried to muster the strength to pick it up.

 

No good.

 

He looked at the strange patch that had such an effect on him. It wasn’t much to see, knitted green, white, and blue yarn, each of the colors making diamond shapes that came together to a brown border. Papa had said once that it was to be a blanket for Adrian, when he was just a baby. Kathryn had said she didn’t really know why she grabbed it, rather than a sweater of Mama’s or even the afghan that she threw over her legs in the evenings. But she had grabbed this, and over time it became the only thing of her that Kathryn had to remember Mama.

 

Kathryn had the memory of Mama for this to comfort her. Adrian was just a baby, not even a year old when she was killed. He could not remember how she looked, what her hands felt like, or how her voice sounded. He did not know the feel of her lips kissing his cheek or forehead. Kathryn had told him many times what these things were like, but it was not the same. Rose petals were not lips. A metaphor could not take the place of true memory, not really.

 

Adrian laid the box on the bed and laid back, staring up at the white ceiling. He tried to pull shapes out of the brush design of the plaster-paint, as if that might keep his mind busy and calm. Before long, though, his vision became too blurred. and he simply lay there, wishing that Kathryn were there to hum the tune she always hummed to make her own tears go away. If she could, his tears might go away too.

Author's Note

I wanted to capture Adrian's pain at the loss of his sister. She has disappeared, with no trace, no note, nothing. She is simply gone from his life.

Reviews

[Here No More]

I think this is a great, mysterious fragment. I would love to read more, I hope you post it!

[Kire|Kira]

How sad..I like the story, though it seemed a bit filled with sad stuff but there was some happy moments..