I was looking at my father’s bookshelves when I noticed things other than books. My father had put ceramics in the empty spaces. There were some vases and bowls, but among the ordinary objects were two figures. They were made from red clay, maybe terra-cotta, and their surfaces were rough—each stood about a foot-and-a-half tall. They were wearing robes, so their arms and legs were hidden by folds of “cloth.” Their faces were simplified, yet suggested nobility. Each was wearing a crown: They were a king and queen.

It wasn’t clear if they were a specific king and queen, or whether they were generic. But I soon realized they were chess pieces. I didn’t see a giant chessboard or any other oversized pieces to match. Maybe my father hadn’t planned for these objects to be used in an actual game of chess. They were as heavy as rocks, and anyone playing with them would have a hard time making moves. I lifted the two objects and set them on the floor. I turned them to face each other. I didn’t know who they were supposed to represent. They could have been modeled after specific historical figures, or after my parents.

I pictured thirty-two pieces like the ones I’d found. Would players have to climb ladders to see patterns on the chessboard? Would they have to climb down, lug a piece across squares, and ascend again to contemplate their next move? The question was not important, since no pieces other than the king and queen existed.

*

When he got home from the local bar, my father complained to my mother about my siblings and me. “They are not my children. They are your children.”

“I’m Chinese, but they are American,” my mother said

“That’s the problem!” my father shouted. “I moved here to live apart from society, but they are ordinary Americans.”

“How so?”

“They want things.”

“But we don’t have things.”

“That’s what I’m saying! We have no things to give them!”

*

My siblings and I went to the playground at the local school. The area was usually empty, but on this day we arrived to find an adult with dark hair, a trimmed beard, and a tidy mustache. He was the playground’s instructor. He was waiting for other children to come, but none did.

My brother and sister wandered around the exercise devices, and I asked the instructor what I could do.

“Do you play chess?” he asked.

I knew how to play, but I was impatient. I didn’t want to spend time thinking about my moves. I wanted to see the pattern on the board and get a feeling of what to do. I wanted to think only one move ahead, but I wanted it to be the right move.

“Yes,” I said.

The instructor and I sat at a small table outside the school building, under a half roof. I had the white pieces; my first move was pawn to king four.

“Are you sandbagging me?” my opponent asked as he also moved his black pawn to king four.

I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I knew my move was Bobby Fischer’s standard opening.

The game began competitively, but my position quickly worsened. My decision to castle did not protect my king. My opponent swatted my pawns aside and leaped over my moat with a horse. I looked to a bishop for comfort, but he couldn’t offer a prayer. My queen was my only hope, and she desperately ran one way and another, across the length of the board.

The black side, on the other hand, made no mistakes. He ensconced his king in a strong fortress, with towers at two corners, and used a heavily armed knight to protect the entrance. His pawns advanced steadily toward promotion, and his bishops’ prayers were answered. His queen was wise, working behind the scenes to support his army. I didn’t have a chance.

*

I wanted to join a chess club at school, but I quickly learned that my school had no such club. The closest thing was a math club, so I went to the first meeting. The gathering was held in an empty classroom after school. When I arrived, I saw only a few other students, all boys. No one seemed to be in charge, and there was no agenda for discussion. We sat at desks, behind the curved writing arms, and looked at each other.

“We could discuss quadratic equations,” one student said.

“What are quadratic equations used for?” I asked.

“Well, they have a squared variable in them.”

“They sound like they’re for squares.” another student said.

“Are we squares?” I asked.

“I’m not a square.”

At the end of our discussion, we did not schedule another meeting.

*

I found a tray of broken glass among my father’s art materials. The fragments were of different colors, and the primary hues were intense. I picked out some of the pieces and tried to fit them together, but I couldn’t form a recognizable shape.

When my father saw me handling the glass, he said, “You have to cut the pieces to size.” He picked up a metal tool, laid a straightedge along a pane and scored the glass with one stroke. He aligned the score mark with the side of a table and snapped the glass with his free hand. “Do it fast,” he explained.

I tried cutting a piece of glass myself. The glass broke, but not where I had wanted. It came apart in a curved line, roughly at right angles to my score.

“You need to practice,” my father said, “until you have the touch.”

He showed me a drawing of a Biblical scene, with dark lines separating each piece of color. “I designed this window for a church,” he said. “It’s there now, in the front wall. We could go to see it, but it’s far away.”

I pictured the sketch blown up to the size of a two-story building, with light coming through the colored panes.

“I started with ceramics,” my father said, “then worked for a stained-glass company. But I lost that job over politics.”

“How?” I asked.

“I didn’t like a presidential candidate, and I said so. My bosses thought I was going to assassinate him.”

“What happened?”

“I moved my family here, to nowhere. Now, I make my own art prints. If anyone wants one, they can buy it for next to nothing. And if they can’t afford that, I’ll give it to them.”

 *

At school, I took a shop class in ceramics. The assignment was to make a coil pot, glaze it, and fire it in a kiln.

We rolled wet clay into ropes with our palms. Then we cut the strands into lengths. For the base of the pot, we wrapped a strand into a disk shape, then built the vessel by winding clay strands upward. We let the clay dry, then added glaze. I painted the inside of my vase white and the outside black. The piece stood about three inches high. I fired it in an oven, then brought it home as a gift for my parents.

“What will we do with it?” my mother asked.

“You can put flowers in it.”

“Very small ones,” she said.

“Anyone can make art,” my father said, “but hardly anyone can make good art.”

I set the vase on my father’s bookshelf, next to the ceramic king and queen.

*

My mother made an origami bird by folding a piece of paper. She held the bird by its body and pulled on its tail so that its wings flapped. She handed it to me, and I did the same. I pulled on the “tail,” then let go. The wings folded down, then unfolded straight out. “What kind of bird is it?” I asked.

“It’s a crane,” she said. “It has a long neck and long pointed wings. In China, it stands for nobility and longevity, as well as lasting love.”

“Shouldn’t it have long legs, too?”

“This one has no legs.”

*

I found a worn-out paperback titled Chess Strategies on my father’s shelf. I paged through the book and found the Ruy Lopez opening, the Caro-Kann defense, and the Nimzo-Indian defense. I glanced at the king’s gambit and the queen’s gambit. I noticed strategies for open boards and others for central domination. None of it meant anything to me, but I thought I could slowly memorize sequences of moves. If I became sidetracked or bored, I could switch to origami. I could manage the folding of paper.

– Thaddeus Rutkowski

Author’s Note: “Questionable Moves” grew out of a prompt I gave in a writing workshop: “Think of an object in your childhood home. Describe it, and say how it was used.” I picked a pair of clay figures on my father’s bookshelves: a stylized king and queen. They were chess pieces my father had made. My memories spiraled outward to my parents, siblings, schoolmates. The story comes back to the search for a strategy—for a chess game or anything else.