The Boy with Words for Skin

Chapter 10: The Porcelain Girl

Kit smiled as she dried off her hands. "I was just thinking about you, sweetie. Of course you can have some food! We had breakfast burritos. Sit down. I'll make you one."

Porcelain looked away. "Can I have three?"

Kit laughed. "How about we start you off with just one? If you finish that, I'll make you another. And if you finish that one, I'll make you another. I'll make you twenty if you eat them all!" She had already went over to the fridge, opened it, and pulled out the eggs and tortillas and cheese.

"Kit," I said.

She turned to me, her arms full. "Oh, right! The dishes." She bumped the fridge door shut with her hip and started for the counter. "Would you keep washing for me? I'm going to need the pan, though, so could you wash that first? No. Never mind." She opened a lower cupboard and reached inside. Pans banged against each other. "I'll just use the smaller one."

"Kit, I don't think she wants breakfast," I said. "She wants food to take downstairs. For all of them."

Her mouth hung open for a second. "Oh." She stood and turned to Porcelain. "Is that right? You want to take food downstairs? For the three of you?"

Porcelain nodded.

"You know you're all welcome to eat up here, right?"

Porcelain just stared, her face emotionless.

Kit turned back to the cupboard. "Sit down. I'll make the burritos. You can take them down there. You might as well have something warm to eat for a change."

Porcelain went over to the table and sat down with her back to us.

I didn't know much about Porcelain other than what people said around town. Her mom was from Oak Knoll, but she ran away back when she was a teenager. A couple of months before The Man with the Accordion Legs' farewell, she called her parents, Theodore and Ulna Peterson, after not speaking to them for something like twenty years. She said she had cancer. The doctors told her she'd be dead in six months, and she needed someone to take care of her daughter when she was gone.

No one knew anything about Porcelain's father, but there were plenty of rumors about her mother. They said she was a prostitute or a druggie or that she wasn't actually sick, that she just wanted to get rid of her kid. There was a lot of talk about Porcelain herself, too. She hated being touched and barely talked. She got angry a lot and clawed and bit and kicked her grandparents. She tried to run away a few times.

It made me nervous seeing her move into 407 West Marshall Street because I didn't know what to expect from her. Was she as wild as they said? They were right that she didn't talk much, but I'd only seen her get upset once. It was a week after we moved into the house. She screamed and kicked the wall. A part of the big toe on her right foot broke off and spun away across the floor.

She technically shared a room with Kit and her sister on the main floor, but the longer we were in the house the more time she spent in the basement. It made sense. Down there, she could be more alone. Down there, she was with Face and Tang. They came from a rough family, too. Maybe they could relate to each other. 

By the time I'd washed, rinsed, and racked all the dishes, Kit had made a stack of breakfast burritos and wrapped each in tin foil. She put them in a plastic grocery bag and turned to Porcelain. "What else would you like to take down there with you, Porcelain?"

She didn't turn to face her. "Food," she said.

Kit grabbed another plastic bag and walked over to the table. "Well, yeah, but what? How about some fruit?" She grabbed a bunch of bananas and a few apples from the fruit bowl in the center of the table and put them in the bag. She went to the fridge, opened it, and looked inside. "Do you have a kitchen down there? A fridge or stove or anything like that?"