Cracked Ball Joint

by Ray Talbert

A gramophone of scorched copper and splintering wood falling off the crooked bookcase jarred the girl’s eyes open. It was too fuzzy to see but she turned her head to the sound anyway, wincing slightly. Her whole body felt like she had been trampled by a horse and there were multiple knives stabbing her all at once. Her mind was spiraling as she moved her arms in an effort to locate where she was in this room. The girl felt charred, brittle wood along with singed fibers of a wool rug from under her hands. Starting to panic as she realized she was pinned under something, the girl started to flail her arms in search of the obstructing piece of furniture. She found what was pinning her to the ground as her arm hit it–a collapsed small, brass twin-sized bed.

As she tried to push the bed off her, she kept getting into coughing fits. The pungent and smoky scent in the air irritated her already dehydrated throat, causing her eyes to tear up and making her movements wobbly. After ten minutes, she finally was able to push the bed off her. She was able to turn to her left side and brought her wrist up to wipe the tears leaking out of her eyes, allowing her to see a little better. The girl looked up to see blackened walls with scorch marks and cracks. The wallpaper was scorched as well as most of it peeling off all together, revealing the wood paneling underneath.

Looking around, she spotted a cracked mirror and rushed to it–stumbling as she did. The girl stared into the mirror and all that stared back at her was a foot and a half figure made of porcelain. She inched closer to examine her face. Her entire left cheek was completely shattered–leaving only a big hole of deep, empty space. She noticed her left eye was knocked out of place.

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” The startled porcelain girl yelled as she did a few quick thumps on her head and knocked the eye back in place, which made her eyesight nearly perfect. She was now able to notice the smaller details about her state. The painted porcelain on her face was cracked all over in a design a spider would weave using her silk. Her lacy ruffled dress, that was once white, was now a very dirty yellow with caked on ash clinging to the hem. On the hem of her apron, she noticed a name and date on it–a birthdate maybe? It read, “Dorothy Brown – 04.30.1903”

‘Am I Dorothy?’ the porcelain girl thought to herself as she hobbled on her near broken leg with a cracked ball joint–looking around the room. She caught sight of a signed advent calendar on the floor. All the calendar doors were already flipped open and empty. She limped her way downstairs to the living room and saw a knocked over Christmas tree decorated with charred tinsel and baubles that had shattered on the floor. Underneath it, she glanced at an open box which she pulled out from under the toppled tree. Looking at the front of the box, she saw…herself? On the front had a graphic of a porcelain doll in her likeness and above it was text stating, “Meet Pauline’s best friend, Ruby! By Little Lady Toy Company.” The porcelain doll dropped the box in shock and started to back away from the tree. However, she slipped on some crumbling wrapping paper, falling backwards on the floor.

That’s when she finally noticed the fireplace to her right. The inside looked almost pitch black with cindered logs all strewn about. The blackened bricks and wood walls surrounding the opening looked like a giant firework had gone off inside with the jagged edges of ash– as if a summer flower was in full bloom. Then “Ruby” saw a line of tinsel from the tree leading from inside the fireplace. It seemed like a part of the hanging tinsel fell off the tree and into the fireplace.

‘A single piece of tinsel caused all of this!?’ The porcelain doll’s head started swirling with possible outcomes of what happened to the people inside–her new family that hadn’t even lived with her for an entire day yet. But she didn’t see anything that would indicate anyone was hurt or worse.

“Ok, they must have ran to safety and just didn’t have time to take me with them, surely. My new family will come back for me. Dorothy will run to me smiling and they all will take me home. I’ll just have to wait for them at the window.” “Ruby” hoped to herself as she ran as best as she could upstairs to Dorothy’s bedroom window–sitting on a little white tea table–and looked outside. All the snow was gone and countless wildflowers were in full bloom. It must already be spring, that means her new family should be here any day now! And so, “Ruby” smiled as she waited.

Spring had made way for summer; then, the leaves fell to start autumn which then blizzards into winter, just to melt away for spring once again. Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter. Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter. Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter. By the time spring rolled around after the fourth year ended, “Ruby” was no longer smiling anymore. Looking out the window, she saw absolutely nothing. Not anything. Not anyone. The tornado building in the back of her head was finally bursting at the seams. As tears leaked from the porcelain doll like a fountain, an ear-piercing wail could be heard ringing throughout the hall of the ruined house.

Nineteen more winters would pass before something new would happen. A woman, thirty years of age, slowly walked towards the wreckage of the once standing house. The house had since collapsed after being left to the elements. The woman’s sisters started rummaging through the wreckage for salvageable wood, which spurred the woman to do the same.

‘Of course we needed wood or anything sellable to even have a chance to make it to next year; but it doesn’t make it any less difficult to be here.’ The woman thought as she found what appeared to be remains of a girl’s room. The lump in the woman’s throat grew as she started lifting pieces of rubble out of the way to find anything of use. A piece of lacy fabric caught her eye and the woman widened her eyes in disbelief. She started to tear away everything that was covering the lacy thing–the lump in her throat growing bigger. As she yanked away the broken white tea table, her eyes landed on a little porcelain doll about a foot and a half in the wreckage.

The woman delicately picked up the porcelain doll. The doll’s entire left cheek was completely shattered, and her left eye is nowhere to be seen. The doll’s hair was a raggedy mess. The painted porcelain on her face was cracked all over. She was missing a leg–leaving behind a cracked ball joint–and a few of her fingers. Looking at the doll’s soiled dress, the woman spotted the embroidery on the hem, “Dorothy Brown – 04.30.1903” The lump in the woman’s throat became too much for her as she started sobbing, clutching the doll to her heaving chest as she murmured a thousand apologies to the doll.

A hand being placed on the woman’s shoulder snapped her out of her thoughts and brought her attention to her younger sister. With a look of understanding and concern, the woman’s younger sister whispered, “We got enough wood to last for a while, we should be ready to leave now before it starts raining. Are you okay, Dorothy?” Dorothy looked at her younger sister and smiled wobbly. She nodded and let her sister lead her away to the car–still clutching “Ruby” to her chest as they went home. Unbeknownst to her, “Ruby” tearfully smiled for the first time in nineteen years as Dorothy finally came to take her home.