judgmental, the depressed, into her all encompassing embrace, where she would teach them essential life skills such as how to take the silver lining out of clouds, or conjure flaws out of thin air. Daria had overheard her mother telling friends how the labor with her second daughter was like birthing a cactus—the implication clear to Daria that things had not changed in the intervening years.
DARIA TOOK a sharp wire with a wooden handle on each end and sliced through the cool, hard block of clay in front of her. She picked up a chunk, testing its weight in her hands, feeling its moist surface clinging to her skin. Then she cupped her hands around it and shoved down, hard, onto the board with the heel of her hand, her thumbs. She pulled the red-brown mass off the board with the ends of her fingers, pivoting it toward her, pushing again with all her strength, feeling the energy move from her shoulders through her elbows, down her forearms to the clay. Push, flip, push, flip, pressing out the air that would cause a pot to explode in the kiln.
IT WAS MARION whom Daria remembered when she thought of her childhood. Marion, already owning the sensual, sanddune lines of breasts and hips and thighs by the time Daria was born, taking Daria out into the world with a grown-up assurance that was both a relief and entirely frustrating to Daria. When she was young, Daria always thought that the glasses Marion wore were special, allowing her to read the road signs in life that were incomprehensible to Daria—the line forming between their mother’s eyes, a smile from an aunt or uncle that might or might not be friendly, the inflection in a shopkeeper’s voice.
It was Marion who had told Daria the story of the chocolate cake Marion made herself for her sixteenth birthday party, a tower of three dirt-dark layers and luxurious brown frosting. A taste of that cake had magical effects, Marion had told Daria, as wonderful as the bite of Snow White’s apple had been disastrous. In Marion’s tale, Daria’s conception became art, created by a kind of glorious, dark chocolate fate.
But when Daria was five, Marion left the Midwest and moved to Seattle, taking her stories and her special glasses with her, and Daria gave up trying to read the road signs of life. It seemed much simpler to become something for the world to navigate around, rather than the reverse.
It wasn’t difficult. Daria already attracted attention with her tumbleweed hair and desire to play in the mud, her preemptive strikes on the playground, her unusual eating habits, which changed and developed over the years. There was the time when she was six and decided to eat only one color per week, following the order of the rainbow (yellow by far the easiest, particularly if you were allowed to include tan). Twelve was the year of vegetarianism; fifteen, the stage when her body started following the curves of her older sister, a time of green protein shakes and strenuous gustatory self-denial.
What was considered odd in elementary and junior high school became an asset on the dating circuit later in life. Men always loved the hummingbirds, weightless and colorful, so quick you could never catch them even if you wanted to. And her affinity for mud had turned into a profession in clay.
DARIA HAD FIRST ENCOUNTERED clay the summer she turned ten, when her mother signed her up for arts and crafts camp. The fact that Daria’s mother—who was eternally and vocally annoyed at Daria’s love of playing in mud—was willing to spend good money when it was called clay was highly amusing to Daria, who wisely said nothing and even expressed a few carefully timed expressions of reluctance to make sure her mother didn’t change her mind.
But the moment Daria touched clay, her hands instinctively wrapped around the ball the teacher had given her. It was like mud you could control, flexible, warmed by your hands, made slick with water. She spent the first day rhythmically
DARIA TOOK a sharp wire with a wooden handle on each end and sliced through the cool, hard block of clay in front of her. She picked up a chunk, testing its weight in her hands, feeling its moist surface clinging to her skin. Then she cupped her hands around it and shoved down, hard, onto the board with the heel of her hand, her thumbs. She pulled the red-brown mass off the board with the ends of her fingers, pivoting it toward her, pushing again with all her strength, feeling the energy move from her shoulders through her elbows, down her forearms to the clay. Push, flip, push, flip, pressing out the air that would cause a pot to explode in the kiln.
IT WAS MARION whom Daria remembered when she thought of her childhood. Marion, already owning the sensual, sanddune lines of breasts and hips and thighs by the time Daria was born, taking Daria out into the world with a grown-up assurance that was both a relief and entirely frustrating to Daria. When she was young, Daria always thought that the glasses Marion wore were special, allowing her to read the road signs in life that were incomprehensible to Daria—the line forming between their mother’s eyes, a smile from an aunt or uncle that might or might not be friendly, the inflection in a shopkeeper’s voice.
It was Marion who had told Daria the story of the chocolate cake Marion made herself for her sixteenth birthday party, a tower of three dirt-dark layers and luxurious brown frosting. A taste of that cake had magical effects, Marion had told Daria, as wonderful as the bite of Snow White’s apple had been disastrous. In Marion’s tale, Daria’s conception became art, created by a kind of glorious, dark chocolate fate.
But when Daria was five, Marion left the Midwest and moved to Seattle, taking her stories and her special glasses with her, and Daria gave up trying to read the road signs of life. It seemed much simpler to become something for the world to navigate around, rather than the reverse.
It wasn’t difficult. Daria already attracted attention with her tumbleweed hair and desire to play in the mud, her preemptive strikes on the playground, her unusual eating habits, which changed and developed over the years. There was the time when she was six and decided to eat only one color per week, following the order of the rainbow (yellow by far the easiest, particularly if you were allowed to include tan). Twelve was the year of vegetarianism; fifteen, the stage when her body started following the curves of her older sister, a time of green protein shakes and strenuous gustatory self-denial.
What was considered odd in elementary and junior high school became an asset on the dating circuit later in life. Men always loved the hummingbirds, weightless and colorful, so quick you could never catch them even if you wanted to. And her affinity for mud had turned into a profession in clay.
DARIA HAD FIRST ENCOUNTERED clay the summer she turned ten, when her mother signed her up for arts and crafts camp. The fact that Daria’s mother—who was eternally and vocally annoyed at Daria’s love of playing in mud—was willing to spend good money when it was called clay was highly amusing to Daria, who wisely said nothing and even expressed a few carefully timed expressions of reluctance to make sure her mother didn’t change her mind.
But the moment Daria touched clay, her hands instinctively wrapped around the ball the teacher had given her. It was like mud you could control, flexible, warmed by your hands, made slick with water. She spent the first day rhythmically
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