Missing

The day it all started falling apart was the day she dropped me into the loose floorboards of the old farm kitchen. Not to brag, but I was apparently the only thing holding them together. The day she first started wearing me, I was sure they’d stay together forever. The words the guy was saying were for once kind of sweet and sincere.

I’d had my doubts about guys in general, just because so many of them had looked at me, then looked at the price tag and decided that their girl didn’t deserve something so valuable. But this guy had seemed different. My girl had thought so too, and she’d said ‘I do’ that day, whatever that means. I think it meant she was promising to leave me on her finger and let the guy move all his smelly clothes and boring video games into the old farmhouse she’d grown up in.

They’d been arguing that morning, and I could feel the veins in her fingers raised as she begged him to help her do something. He wasn’t very good at helping her with anything, but she’d gotten used to it. She washed all the dishes, plunging me into the steaming hot water, my elegant golden skin scraping against the rough metal of the cheap pots her mother-in-law had given her as a present on the big day as she scrubbed much harder than I thought necessary. The piles of laundry folded neatly and put away always went through her hands, the warmth of the fresh-from-the-dryer materials soft against me. And cleaning the toilet? That was me too. The first time I endured that was the day my last once of hope that the guy had a shred of decency in him flew out the window faster than he ran away from helping her.

But they were talking about a baby, and she was saying if he couldn’t help her now, he wouldn’t help her later. I wasn’t sure what baby they were talking about. But she washed her hands in cold water for a long time after that. I didn’t mind because I always felt cleaner afterward. Her fingers were a little wrinkled, and the finger I stayed on all the time felt smaller, thinner.

The laundry was piled up that day, and the guy was in the corner, playing his video game. My girl had lost the argument. She was doing the laundry herself. Again. I felt the cloth of her favorite fluffy pink shirt grab onto me, pulling me off her finger. I tried to scream but just like every time I had tried before, those times I’d wanted to surprise her, it didn’t work. I couldn’t speak human. And I couldn’t stop myself as I slid down the fabric and slipped neatly into the crack in the floor.

She realized she’d lost me later that evening, but she didn’t realize I was gone for good until a few days later. The guy yelled at her for not wearing me, as if she would do something bad if I were not there. When he left, she sat down near me and cried, the tears running down her ringless fingers and dripping silently to the floor. I wanted desperately to hug her, to tell her that I was here, that everything could be okay. But something told me that she wasn’t just crying about me.

The day the guy left was the day that the first sunbeams of a summer sunset fell across the floor, reflecting off my skin in a dazzling golden gleam. The house was bright that day, and I thought I might have heard her singing.

As the years passed, I slowly lost hope that she would find me. There were several other guys who came through. But none of them stayed long.

Until Dave. Dave was different. He made my girl laugh. He made her sing, on days that there was nothing to really sing about. She smiled a lot with him. I could hear it in her voice.

Then everything changed. There was another ring in the house. But this one did its job. She stayed happy. And Dave helped fold the laundry, and Dave washed the dishes, dripping more water on the floor than was necessary. But I didn’t mind so much.

When the dishes were washed and the work done, Dave and my girl would dance through the kitchen, stepping on me and pushing the dirt in tighter around me. But it was enough to her her laugh.

When the first little baby came, I understood why she had wanted one for so long. It crawled over me one day, and it touched me. It tried to scrape its tiny little fingers under my body, to pull me out, but I was wedged too tightly.

When the other babies came, I kept an eye on them as they crawled around above me. I watched as they walked, as they snuck cookies out of the jar they’d seen Dave steal from when my girl wasn’t looking, and I listened as they sang with my girl and Dave, their young voices threatening to pop me out of the floor from the sound vibrations.

And then I didn’t hear them as much, unless there was turkey and lots of people. Most of the time, it was just my girl and Dave.

I still wished, I still hoped, that one day, she’d look down and see me stuck here in the crack, a little older, still waiting for her.

But I watched as my girl learned how to be happy.

I thought that was my job, to show her, to make sure she was. I thought if she found me, she could be happy again.

But I was wrong in the end.

She had to lose me to be happy.

And I couldn’t be happier.