Page 61 of A Shade of Myself
“Thank you for hanging on to this,” I said. “I don’t know your name. Sorry.”
“Rhonda. Jake was a good boy and a good friend. And it was nice of you to humor a senile old lady with those stories.” She winked and I blushed.
I paused. “Uh, if it’s not too rude, why does your storage unit look like a living room?”
“My daughter and her kids moved in with me,” Rhonda said. “I adore them, but a lady needs some peace and quiet now and then.”
“I hear you.”
Letter in hand, I said my goodbyes. The elderly woman was lovely but I hoped I didn’t have to go back. It was too hard revisiting the past.
I could have taken the KH straight home, but I wasn’t able to face whatever Jake had written on my own, so instead I went to Jude’s studio.
Tatiana was wrong about truth forcing a more extreme action. My encounter with Rhonda had brought a much-needed closure to Uncle Jake’s death and all I felt was gratitude knowing he hadn’t died alone.
Jude answered my knock with a look of surprise, wiping her hands on her clay-stained white apron. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Yeah, do you have a moment?”
She paused.
“Bad time?” I said neutrally.
“I mean, I’m kind of busy, but what’s up?”
“Jake left me a letter.”
“Oh. Well, damn, come in.” She motioned me inside her studio, which smelled damp, like moist dirt from the clay.
She thought I wanted to talk about us. Or her. We would, but I let it go for now, just needing my friend to talk this new development through with.
I followed her to the sink at the far end, skirting several buckets. Water from wheel work couldn’t be directly dumped down the drain so Jude let it sit in buckets until the clay had settled to the bottom and the clearer water could be disposed of. “What are you working on?”
The last time I’d been here, her studio had been trashed, but there were no signs of that now. While the kiln and pottery wheel were currently unused, the containers of glaze were stacked neatly on shelving units alongside plastic-wrapped packages of clay and the brushes and sculpting tools in the holder on the long table were neatly cleaned.
“I’ve got some pieces to fire later.” Jude pointed at the shelving unit holding unpainted plates of various sizes. “But first I’m reclaiming clay. Got to stay on top of it.” She lifted a slab of clay out of a shallow basin inserted in the large stainless-steel sink. Freeing it from the cloth it had been resting in, she dumped it onto a smooth board lying on the countertop.
“Is this the loud thing you do?” I’d learned enough over the years to have an okay grasp of the basic process.
“Yup, but not for a minute. Talk to me.” She cut the clay into slices with a taut piece of wire that she held by two small wooden handles. “Are you nervous to see what’s inside?
I fiddled with the edge of the envelope flap that had come unglued. “Yes and no. Mostly I’m angry that I never thought to find out if there was more to Jake’s birthday cards than good wishes. He sent this two years ago. What if I’ve blown my shot to pursue whatever he learned? If he learned anything at all.”
“That’s fair.” Jude fit the slices back together and cut the entire thing in half. “Getting loud now.” She grabbed one square piece and slammed it down against the counter where it reverberated with a thwack. The next square was slammed down on top of the first one, perpendicular to it.
I worked my fingernail under the loose flap and tore the envelope open, while Jude pounded everything into a single large square and then made a number of horizontal slices to break it up again.
“How do your hands stay clean?” I said.
“Because the clay isn’t too wet. Here, feel.”
I poked it, then examined my fingertip. “How many more times are you going to do this?” I said loudly since she’d resumed thwacking the pieces together again.
She shrugged. “Might be as many as nine or ten times. I need to get all the color variations and bubbles out of it. Want me to stop while you pull out the contents?”
I shook my head, wanting a moment to sit with my feelings, both about what I might find and that Jake had loved me so much that he’d eaten my reject food instead of what he really liked. It was so unfair that I’d lost him too, after losing my parents.
By the time Jude moved on to rolling the clay into a ball of dough to get ready to use on the wheel, tiny wisps of her red curly hair stuck to her forehead.
