Object No. 63 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by J. Robert Lennon, has ended. Original price: $1.99. Final price: $21.50.]

The day after the day I turned seventeen, three weeks after the recital in which I received the award for distinguished effort in solo violin performance, five months after my older brother was arrested for dealing cocaine and thrown out of college and came home and ever since had been living in his old attic room which he had transformed into his personal domain during the last semester of high school when he had the argument with our father which our mother believed had contributed, however indirectly, to the stroke which killed him some weeks later, I stood on the stair landing gazing out through the tiny hexagonal window overlooking the back yard and saw my mother gardening there, and her bent form among the vegetables moved me, yes, but in an unexpected way — somehow the sight of her vertebrae humped underneath her purple blouse and the thick white bra strap visible through the fabric, even from here, filled me with anger, for the way she had pushed me, the way she had forced me to practice the same pieces over and over again those cold afternoons when I alone was sitting beside the radiator perspiring through my thick sweatshirt, and though my mother was frail already at forty-eight, worn down by the relentless belittlement of my father, I wanted to march down the stairs and tell her she had ruined me, that I hated her, to smash my violin against the cracked and disintegrating cement cherub that stood in the center of her flower garden, which my father had bought her in a happier time, or perhaps a time in which unhappiness was still latent, not yet fully expressed — but instead I reached out to the squat and ugly little end table that stood in the corner of the landing and took into my hand the nearest of her china figurines, all of them together a mystery, for they were cheap and tacky and beneath her deluded sense of herself as the wife of a man of wealth and power, which my father was not, rather he was a second-rate businessman in a third-rate city, and in any event dead now for three years; and when my brother came loping down the stairs from his room, reeking of weed and holding between his chin and extended left hand an imaginary violin, which he limp-wristedly sawed at with the imaginary bow in his right, while emitting a mocking squeak intended to represent my playing at its worst, I turned to him and punched him with all the strength I could muster, shattering both his nose and the choirboy figurine in my hand — and my brother fell back against the stairs gagging on blood, and I felt the shards of choirboy slice through my palm and the muscles of my fingers, which even at that moment I understood would take six months to heal if they ever healed at all, ending my nascent career as a classical performer, and I wish I could say that it was with satisfaction that I regarded my brother lying on the carpeted stairs with his hand over his other hand over his face, and that it was with relief that I regarded my ruined hand as the fingers jerked open, raining blood and choirboy pieces onto the oriental runner, but in fact I felt neither, I felt only the foolishness that accompanies any discharge of rage, and the very beginnings of shame as my mother, as though sensing this disturbance through the hexagonal glass and sixty feet of late spring air, turned her kerchiefed head to squint up at the house where everything she had hoped would make her happy was continuing to fall apart.

Object No. 59 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Jen Collins, has ended. Original price: $2. Final price: $20.50.]

For my 9th birthday, I begged my mother to take me to the iron-on decal store at the Meadow Glen Mall. I had seen some older boy wearing a sweatshirt with a glittery rip-off of the Superman “S” shield saying SUPERBRAT, and I had to have one. By the time I convinced my mother, they had run out of the decal. So I settled for a glitter Garfield on a royal blue pullover hoodie. I was crazy about Garfield — he loved lasagna and hated Mondays, just like me. I had all his books and my friends would come over and read them. This was awesome to a 9-year-old in 1983. I wore the pullover to the arcade, to sleepovers, and to my first track meet.

I wasn’t a Superbrat anyway. I did have a whoopee cushion, though, and a ketchup squirt bottle with a long string in it — both gifts from my father, a wiseass. Naturally, I always picked the 7Up Uncola glass from the kitchen shelf, except for when he picked it first. A few times, when we were watching TV, he stole it from me when I wasn’t looking.

For my 13th birthday — a few days before it — my father left us. A Monday morning. He was packing his briefcase for work while Ma was packing our lunches for school. He came into the TV room, kissed my little sister on the forehead and told her, “Do good today, OK? ABCs?” Then he side-hugged me and said, “See ya latah, Ambah.”

When I got home after track practice that night, my mother told me my father wasn’t coming back. “He left you a present,” she said.

“An abandonment present? Is that customary? No thanks.”

“What can I tell you? He’s an asshole, he’s always been an asshole. At least he remembered this year.” She put a package on the kitchen table, wrapped in newspaper.

It was shaped like an Uncola glass.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Rachel Berger, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $5.50. This story was part of a special collaboration with Design Observer, where it was co-published, here.]

In the fall of 1991, Olivia Mendel was 27 years old. Her face held a small dreamy smile, and her hair smelled like crayons. She was beginning her third year teaching fourth grade at Schechter Elementary, and we loved her.

Ms. Mendel taught us long division: Divide, Multiply, Subtract, Bring-down. “Dad, Mom, Sis, Bro,” we whispered to ourselves. She taught us the days of the week in sign language and the months of the year in Spanish. Around Halloween, Ms. Mendel confessed to us that she was a “chocoholic,” and Ano Balakrishnan’s mother called a special session of the PTA to discuss his teacher’s drinking problem. During the long, dark winter, Ms. Mendel read us Where the Red Fern Grows, and when Old Dan and Little Ann came to the end, her eyes squeezed shut.

We offered Ms. Mendel seaglass, gum, a mouse skull, rice cakes, cherry tomatoes, friendship bracelets, baseball cards, bottle caps, paper cranes, daisy chains, four-leaf clovers, string cheese, Piccolo Petes, Pixy Stix, and pinch pots. She accepted them all with solemn grace.

***

In the spring of 1991 — and for ten years before and after — my mother was a pilot. She flew long haul night cargo flights between Baffin Island, Canada and Lima, Peru. She called home every afternoon and shouted cheerfully into the phone, “We’re in the same time zone, Hooky!” I remember her shoulder pads drying on a rack in the laundry room. My father called them her wings.

My father, a reserved man who was happiest on long, solitary walks, was uncharacteristically enthusiastic when I mentioned my idea for the gift. “Oh, she’ll be thrilled,” he said with curious force. And together we chose the wood, cut it down and sanded it, whittled out the round O and angled M’s, glued the pieces together. Our steady, quiet work was punctuated by his occasional musings, “Can you believe it’s May already?” and “It’s just, just lovely that you’re doing this for her,” and “I guess we might not see much of her over the summer.” He seemed to be speaking to himself more than to me.

The morning the gift was finished, the last hook in place and the last coat of poly dry to the touch, like magic, my mother appeared. Her uniform was soiled and shoulder pads deflated, but she wore an enormous smile. My father stood, his eyes glittering. She came toward us, her weary arms outstretched. “Oh Hooky, look at that!” she said, bending toward the gift. Lunging wildly, I knocked her arms away, snatched the # 1 Mom hooks up, and ran, down our front walk, across the street, and up the hill toward school.

I left the gift on her chair, didn’t think a card was necessary. The object spoke for itself: “To Ms. Olivia Mendel, My Number One. Love, Hooky.”

It was the only gift I ever gave that made somebody cry.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Jennifer Michael Hecht, has ended. Original price: 99 cents. Final price: $10.50.]

Kathy can remember how she left both of her ex-husbands but she can’t remember how she left Jeffrey. She can remember a phone call that seemed to finalize that she was leaving him with his father but she isn’t sure when that happened or why. Kathy is pretty and rich, but she loathes herself and everyone except Jeffrey. When she is with Jeffrey she loathes herself less, except she gets some sharp stabbing pains of it. She has been with him a lot lately, so has been drinking a lot less.

She is awake alone in the middle of the night. The very nice man she lives with is asleep in their bed at the top of her town house, two flights upstairs. She can turn on lights, make normal noise with a beer bottle against the table. She is drinking a yellow beer with lime in it. The house is warm but not warm enough for no pants and Kathy is wishing pants weren’t two flights away. For the time being she isn’t moving. She’s only had one beer since she got up, but she drank more than a few the night before.

Kathy is smoking a joint in the kitchen and looking at Michael Phelps on a Corn Flakes box. Phelps won eight gold medals swimming in the Olympics and then lost his Corn Flakes endorsement deal because of a photograph of him smoking a bong. Kathy’s boyfriend saw a pre-bong cereal box at the supermarket and snatched it up. He likes things like this. Now the Phelps cereal box has been mounted prominently for many months on a kitchen shelf. Phelps is in the pool up to his neck, holding up one finger and smiling like crazy. She takes a hit and smiles back at him. She replies to his “We’re number one” finger with her own. She rests her lighter on a ceramic figurine of the “Hakuna Matata” guys from The Lion King. Kathy had been to Kenya with her second husband and people there said “Hakuna matata” the way we say, “No problem,” and they pronounce it like a machine gun, fast and hard.

Kathy had grown up with Baloo the bear in Jungle Book as her icon of happiness through low expectations. The bare necessities, the simple bare necessities, the bare necessities of life. As she remembered it, you just eat whatever you find under a log. Kathy is on her second beer. The paper towel wrapped around it is wet from bottle sweat. Drawn-out syllables are playing in her head, “Haah koo na ma tata, what a wonderful phrase. Haah koo na ma ta tahh, it’s no passing craze.”

Kathy picks up the ceramic figurine and closes her hand around it. It is cooler than room temperature; its shape massages her tight palm and fingers. She considers throwing it at Phelps, just to see which way the box would fall but decides it would seem hostile. She chooses instead to duplicate the warthog’s position. Leaving the beer in the kitchen, but bringing the figurine, Kathy walks into the parlor and looks down at the rug. Mutters “Jeffrey’s pillows,” and eases herself down to them. She puts one pillow on her belly, as if it were a meerkat. Closes her eyes.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Matthew De Abaitua, has closed. Original price: $1.99. Final price: $15.50]

My Daddy shouts at me when I go near the piggybank, and he screams when I turn it upside down. So l leave the piggybank alone and tell my baby brother and sister to leave it alone too. The piggybank is the family curse.

One day a week my Daddy is good to me, and he teaches me that words that sound the same can mean different things. Like were and wear. Like sentence and sentence. He listens to me as I read my stories and when I am finished he tells me how talented I am. I like those days. But on working days he is mean and tells me to shut up, before he has even heard what I am going to say. My Daddy’s working days are hard, so hard. You wouldn’t believe how hard they are.

Because of Grandad, our family has to keep the piggybank with us always. Grandad met the devil coming out of his wardrobe and the devil promised him death, death right there and then, and Grandad said no, and so a deal was struck. If the piggybank goes out the back door, death comes in through the front door.

On pay day, one half of all the money that crosses the doorstep goes into the piggybank. Daddy comes back from his job making safe the gas in the iron lungs that rise and fall across our town, rise and fall like the valves of the trumpet he plays on our birthdays. He takes out his pay packet and pinches half of the notes between his fingers and hands the money to Mummy, without looking at it. It is Mummy’s job to place the tribute into the cursed pig.

Daddy gets angry so suddenly, it makes it hard to breathe. I know he doesn’t mean it. I tell him not to be so angry with me and he stops, and he looks sad. I’m a big girl. I know how hard the days of grown-ups can be, so hard you wouldn’t believe.

Saturday is shopping day. Mum and I look around the shops. In the toy shop Frank, my little brother, plays with the train track, and he screams when the time comes for us to leave. None of the clothes fit Mummy right. There is nothing for us to buy. I see the scooter I want, the one with the special wheels. I go to the pig to see if there is money in it but the pig has eaten all the notes and left only coins.

Once I walked into the living room and found the piggybank choking on our money. Greedy piggy. I slapped it on the back and the money rattled back into its belly. When I turned it upside down, the money had gone.

This is the family curse, the same thing every week, the same for my Daddy as it was for Grandad and the same it will be for me, when I am older. Mummy looks for the bad hairs on her head and pulls them out. Daddy rolls moaning in his bed. I take a deep breath. The pig swallows and winks.