EngW - 1102 - Fall 2007

The Kettle
Eva Marie Ginsburg

In truth, the pot never called the kettle black. It never spoke to the
kettle directly. Nor did any of the pots, but every time the kettle
whistled, they expressed their disgust by turning slightly toward one
another, shifting a handle up, or rattling their disapproval. None of them
liked the kettle. It had a soft black finish, like charcoal, and a very
queer asymmetrical handle, white plastic with maddening black lines that
came in varying widths and ran in different directions. It had been
designed by some prestigious Swedish artist whose name nobody knew how to
pronounce. It was supposed to look very modern and dramatic, but everybody
knows pots and kettles are for cooking in, not for looking at, and the pots
liked to jeer at it. They ridiculed it with rattles and bumps. They
muttered behind its back. They scoffed and they tittered, and sometimes,
next to it on the stove, they gleefully splattered the kettle with grease.
They could all tell from the lines on its handle and the way its spout
stuck out, calling attention to itself, that the kettle considered itself
more important than the others. And then there was the matter of its
whistle, the way it screamed when it boiled and got louder and louder until
the man came to turn it off—as though the kettle believed the man existed
to serve it, and not the other way around. The very idea of the whistle
outraged them. Besides, to add insult to injury, the kettle had been given
to him by the woman.

That the woman never came around anymore changed nothing. They knew all
about it, knew how the kettle had been bought at an expensive store and
wrapped up in December with pretty paper and a ribbon, and had been
presented along with some extra-large mugs and loose luxury tea leaves. The
pots knew all about it, how the man and woman had eaten the stuffed chicken
breasts and the apricot couscous and finished the bottle of red wine, and
the pleasure they’d had. The pots told themselves it didn’t matter, that
they were more important because the man had bought them himself, with
money that he earned those nights he came home too late and too tired to
cook. They were capable of cooking so many things, soup and fried rice and
pasta and chocolate mousse, but the kettle was only good for boiling water,
something any one of them could have done.

They couldn’t forget, though, that night the woman had brought the kettle,
the meal and the wine and the candles she lit around the house, and the way
the man sang to himself after she left. They despised the kettle, but
secretly they envied it, even though the woman had been gone for many
months now, even though the pretty box had been thrown away and the man
cooked more simply these days and had stopped singing softly in the
kitchen. They were beginning to tire of mocking the kettle. They wished
they had a sweeter way to pass the time.