Origin Story

My career in karmic facilitation began at a young age.

Age six, to be exact.

Back then, my mom would drop me off at my nana’s house anytime she had to work but I didn’t have school. Often that meant going to Nana’s bridal shop, where I could hide under the dress racks and pretend I lived in a frothy tent. Or I could peek in between the full skirts and watch women try on dresses that made them look like princesses. Future brides with misty eyes would clasp hands with mothers who similarly couldn’t see through their tears.

Of course, that was back when I believed true love and magic and happily ever after might exist somewhere outside the animated movies I watched.

On Sundays and Mondays, however, Nana’s shop was closed. On those days, I stayed with her in her antique-filled Queen Anne home, a house where children were to be seen but not heard. Absolutely no running. No touching. Nothing above a whisper because Nana lived with her aunt Edna, a woman lost in another era, both literally and figuratively. Looking back now, I can see she suffered from dementia, which probably explained why the house was kept pretty much as it must’ve looked when she was younger.

Hardwood floors, plush rugs, and ceramic knickknacks perched precariously on small tables—they didn’t believe in childproofing back then. Or, to be more accurate, their idea of childproofing was to teach children not to touch or to run or to knock about the house. To my credit, I did a good job of not being a bull in a china shop.

One day, Aunt Edna wobbled into one of those little tables, which caused Nana’s favorite vase to topple over to the floor and shatter into pieces too small to be reassembled with superglue.

I, it should be noted, was in a different room entirely at the time. I heard the crash and ran to the parlor, a.k.a. the scene of the crime, only to have Aunt Edna throw me right under the bus just as Nana arrived.

“Look what this little girl did!”

Shock and hurt reverberated through my tiny body. What this little girl did? This little girl had a name, Stella, and she had been watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood—that’s what she had been doing. I could think it, but I couldn’t make the words come out of my mouth.

When Nana turned narrowed eyes and a frown on me, I froze in the face of her disappointment. After a handful of excruciating seconds that felt like hours, she slowly shook her head and left the room to find a broom.

I looked at Aunt Edna, whose expression was self-satisfied, to say the least. “You don’t have to live with her,” she said before stepping gingerly over the vase’s remains and leaving the room.

Maybe the stutter I hadn’t quite outgrown kept me quiet. Or maybe it was the harsh realization that adults didn’t always do the right thing. Whatever the reason, the outcome was the same: I never said a word.

Instead, after I’d received an unjust spanking from my mother, I crept into the front parlor, where Aunt Edna always kept a puzzle on a little table. As my mother apologized profusely to Nana, I grabbed a piece of that puzzle and stuck it in my pocket.

I’m not entirely sure what made me do it, but I think it was simply that I knew Aunt Edna found great joy in putting together elaborate thousand-piece puzzles. She took pride in still being able to see well enough to do so despite being ninety. In truth, she had very few hobbies, so the puzzle was the only thing I could think of.

As to what kept me in the petty business?

The beautiful schadenfreude that came a week later, when I happened to be at Nana’s house because school was out for the day.

I heard my aunt Edna’s cry of distress and left the television to stand in the doorway of the front parlor as she walked around the little table, then crouched down with a grunt to look underneath. With great effort and the help of the table, she got back to her feet. “Uh, little darlin’”—she’d forgotten who I was again—“I’m missing the very last piece of this puzzle. Would you get down on the floor and look? It has to be around here somewhere.”

I hid my smile while I easily complied with her wish. I even scooted around the small room and looked under the writing desk and the chairs she’d lined against the walls so she could walk around her puzzle table with ease. Finally, I sighed. “I don’t see it anywhere, Aunt Edna.”

“Huh. Must be a manufacturer’s defect,” she said with a frown. “You go on back and watch TV, then, like a good girl.”

I bounced out of the room and finally allowed myself to grin.

Many’s the day I thought back on that puzzle of a mountain scene with one tiny piece missing from the middle. Many’s the day I took that puzzle piece out of my top dresser drawer to run my fingers around its now-softened edges.

But where is that puzzle piece now?

Framed.

On my apartment wall.

Because if there’s one life lesson that has been drilled into me, it’s that you’re never too young—or too old—to be petty.