I pulled the plastic bin of felt strips out of my sister’s bedroom closet and brought it to the kitchen table. When she got married, I decided her closets were going to waste, so I gave the clothes she left to Goodwill and used the space for storage for my craft materials. To be honest, my books filled her shelves, too. As I started sorting what felt I had by color, I thought about all the things that had happened at our kitchen table and silently thanked God the table couldn’t talk. I wondered if it remembered the arguments our dysfunctional little brood had pitched back and forth across its old mahogany top. Every disappointment of my childhood was certainly ingrained in it somewhere, along with hundreds of Daddy’s fist prints.

For years there had been a sugar bowl in the center that Leslie bought for Momma for some occasion. It was beige crockery, octagonal in shape, and decorated with stamped gold filigree. Not exactly a fine heirloom. But oh, my word! To hear Momma carry on about it, you would have thought it was made by Fabergé, encrusted in real gold and decorated with jewels.

Remembering the moment I dropped it still made my stomach hurt, even all these years later. We were drying dishes after supper. I was wiping off the table, so I picked the sugar bowl up to catch any crumbs with my damp paper towel. My hands were wet. It slipped out of my hand and hit the table. One of the handles popped off in a clean break, and naturally the screaming started. Talk about drama! Daddy walked out. And he didn’t come home until very late. And when he walked out for good? That was my fault, too, because Momma had to spend half her life yelling at me. She spent the other half yelling at him, but somehow that was beneath her notice.

I glued the handle back on with Super Glue, but that wasn’t enough to restore harmony. Even now, every time she asked me to pass it to her, she’d suck her teeth and warn me to pass it carefully. Then she’d shake her head as though I was hopeless. Leslie was her favorite. I knew it. Leslie knew it. The whole island knew it.

I was just a kid. It was an accident, but Momma didn’t believe in accidents. Neither Leslie nor Momma were very nice to me for the longest time. I’m not exaggerating one little bit. That’s how it was.