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Village life: No pawnshop for stories

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By Teddy Robertson

Saturday, January 23, 2010

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Turning the key in the lock, gazing distractedly through the lowest pane of the back door window,  I see a slight but unaccustomed disorder in the dining room.  Chairs at an oblique angle to the dining room table,  the rug is slightly crooked.

Now that I've walked in, why are the winter draft rolls in the middle of the room?  The hall door to the upstairs unaccountably open. No one seems to be here, but I feel a sense of someone having rushed by rapidly.  I call out my son's name questioningly — the only other person with a house key and who might enter at any time.  Maybe an emergency search for some of his tools or auto parts still socked away in attic and garage.  And then, it hits me— someone has been in my house.

I stare hypnotized at details not yet part of a picture, like a gawker at a highway accident. Treading carefully through my own house as if not to disturb it more, I move from the dining room, through the hall to the bedroom.  Why are the dresser drawers open, underwear and socks rising like yeasty bread dough overflowing the edges of a pan?

Of course,  this is where ladies' loot would be tucked into little private places, or nestled in sateen-lined boxes with lids that snap shut, or laid out in the efficient squares and rectangles of the burgundy faux felt compartments that organize everything.

On top of the mahogany dresser is the porcelain dish where the jewelry that felt most a part of me was dropped each night.  Empty.

Pearl earrings received at college graduation, my dad's signet ring,  my grandfather's watch fob made into a pendant. What else had been there just hours ago? Each piece was old, heavy with memories,  bound firmly to a family story that only my mother and I knew. This morning everything had been nestled together, linking my life to those now dead but daily remembered.

I reach out, but can't bear to touch the disarray, its surfaces tender like a wound. I retrace my steps and exit, but this time through my front door.  I need to explain that my things are gone, grabbed hurriedly by someone who did not know them.

I stride with purpose across the street and ring my neighbor's bell and blurt out my distress. My neighbor and her daughter are more alarmed. Could someone still be in the house? We call the police. A kind of post mortem begins, though the body is gone.

The next morning seated at the dining room table, I try to list the missing items, describe their shapes, name their materials and estimate their ages. Their identities derive from their history.

In my grandfather's time, gentlemen wore stick pins and had monogrammed watch fobs. They carried small pen knives, engraved with their initials and indicative of elegance. One stick pin had been made into a ring for my mother and a watch fob had been mounted as a pendant. New sorrows emerge as lost pieces come to mind that I hadn't remembered.

Unlike princes and warriors of the ancient world, we are not buried with our treasure. My grandmother and mother would give me some small piece for an important birthday,  a coming-of-age gift. Closing the tale of a ring or pin I admired, they would say, "You may have this when you are older."

And so it was that the story melded to the object. And so it happened that a ring or a bracelet marked the passage from childhood, to adolescence, to graduation, to marriage.

The household insurance did not cover these losses. I had not lost enough it seemed or purchased a rider that covered antiques and memories.  The city police sergeant, impatient and patronizing, had more serious, life-and-death issues in his office distant from the front desk. I should just leave my list of items with the somnolent officer behind the cage. The goods were probably long since out of the city, on their way to Detroit.  Pawnshops might help, although they aren't supposed to deal with hot goods. I could take my list around to them.

Steeled by loss, I set off for the local pawnshops, remembering their locations once noted in disdain. Weaving through dusty tunnels of tools and TVs at the entrance, I make my way to the back and the jewelry counter.  The clerks vary.  One takes my list to the backroom, perhaps smokes a cigarette and returns — "no descriptions match."

Another, more conversational, confides that his back safe is so crammed with jewelry that every three weeks some of the stuff is just shipped off to be melted down. Once carefully chosen, engraved and presented to mark an important occasion, my family jewelry might return to its original state. A fate more appalling than theft.  Sold at market price, re-cast into ingots, it would simply revert to elemental aurum and re-join the world supply of precious metal.

A neighbor consoled me with urban lore.  Every now and then a local drug bust turns up a cache of stolen jewelry. The stuff never makes it to pawn at all.  Dealers hoard it, give it to favored women and trade the goods internally. Just hang in and wait.

It's been several years now since the break in. From time to time, I stop in at the pawn shops in town, following clerks' advice that the stock in the cases changes every few months. I'm almost a regular.

Slowly walking the cases and bending over the glass, I see bracelets and necklaces, mostly gold, their designs clichéd and rarely distinctive. Perhaps their lack of originality makes them easy to move on the pawn market.  Twelve to 14 feet of wedding ring sets arrayed in rows, the rank and file of failure.   Engagement rings with sad, small stones.  The purchaser could afford little, but wanted to be proper. The recipient was thrilled at the new stage of life this tiny diamond signified. Now through disappointment or desperation it's in pawn along with the wedding band.  Sadder stories than my own.

Some of my losses I can still visualize quite clearly, their color, engraving, detailed filigree or remember how a ring felt on my finger. Thinking of the objects fondly, I wish that I could tell their stories to the new possessors. It's the stories that can still pierce my chest. Other losses I've forgotten.  No longer a young girl anticipating the occasions of adult life that they marked, I wait to pass down what little is left.

With their stories, of course. That's the most important part.

(Village life is written by Teddy Robertson this month. Jan Worth-Nelson is taking a break while she is gets her teaching act in order. She will be back next month.)

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Teddy Robertson grew up in California but has lived in Flint since 1984 and in Mott Park since 1995.  She teaches history at UM-Flint, specializing in Polish history.  Her research is about the Polish-Jewish writer Bruno Schulz and she has published translations from Polish to English.

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