Ruth banged the omelet pan down on the stove and growled, “I’d just like her to be on time for once.”
“You know it’s not her fault, Mom.”
“So you say,” Ruth answered, flinging a thick pat of butter into the pan. “And please, Susan, don’t lecture me about sibling order right now. I know, younger sister, blah blah…let’s not talk about this now, though” and pointed with her eyes to the two young girls sitting next to Susan. Susan’s daughter Sally was playing Chutes and Ladder with her niece, six-year-old Bev, daughter of the delinquent mother in question. Bev was closely tracking the adult conversation without abandoning the game. She had overheard her grandmother’s side of the phone conversation with her mother. She could always tell Grandma was mad when she used her mother’s full name, Judith, instead of calling her Jude. “It’s not that I mind having her here, Judith, you know I love having her, I just wish you would let me know ahead of time.”
Bev was old enough to be reliably counted on to take turns, very rarely had epic tantrums, and was able to deploy several self-soothing techniques she’d learned in pre-school and kindergarten, such as taking deep breaths and counting to 10. But when Sally, older only in years, tried to go twice in a row, Bev shrieked, “Hey! It’s my turn! That’s cheating!” Susan, nearly comatose with the boredom of Chutes and Ladders and her mother’s irritability, was forced to intervene when the screaming devolved to “I’m not a cheater,” and “Yes you are!”
“Bev, please stop yelling. Sally, you have to let Bev have her turn before you can go again.”
“Come on Sally,” Bev shouted, grabbing for the spinner.
“Bev, no snatching!”
Sally handed over the spinner, but when Bev’s piece landed at the bottom of a ladder that put her into a winning position, Sally yelled “I don’t want to play anymore,” and before Susan could stop her, swept the entire game – board, spinner, and pawns in their little plastic stands – across the table and onto the floor. With practiced calm, Susan wrapped her arms around Sally to contain her thrashing. Bev thumped her fist on the table and whined “Sally always ruins everything!”
“Well,” Ruth sang out, “she hasn’t ruined these eggs,” and slid the halved omelet onto two plates. “I made them with lots of cheese, just the way both my granddaughters like them!” She managed to speak loudly enough to be heard over Sally’s continued protests without sounding annoyed. Sally stopped screaming, promised to remain calm, and reached for her plate. Bev quieted but continued to pout.
“I’m not hungry.”
Ruth sat down across from Bev, careful not to tread on the scattered game pieces, and placed her plate between them. While Sally ate happily and Susan cleaned up, Ruth spoke quietly to Bev. She confirmed that her mom would be late, but not too late to bring her home for supper. She wondered if there was someone Bev especially liked playing with at school, and what she’d like to do after her snack. Bev shrugged in response to every question but eventually asked for a fork.
“I have an idea,” Ruth announced. “How about if, after you guys finish eating, Sally, you can play another game of Chutes and Ladders with your mom, and Bev, you come upstairs with me to the sewing room.” Both children readily agreed, and Susan said “Thanks Mom. And thanks for taking her tonight.”
“Seems like you could use the break,” Ruth replied.
*****
Opening the door to the attic room that was home to her sewing life, Ruth felt a familiar ease wash over her. “This is my favorite time of day,” she breathed. “Me too,” Bev echoed, adding “and this is my favorite room.” Bev plopped herself down on the floor beside the old Singer sewing machine and continued “I love how everything is slanted.” And it was. The ceiling, the light angling in through the windows, the rectangular shadows on the pine slats. The air was alive with millions of glowing dust motes. “It’s like miniature fairies,” Bev whispered.
Bev watched Grandma’s foot on the old-fashioned sewing machine treadle and listened to its whirring. She was fascinated by the way the thread spun off the spool, the weblike pattern it made between spindle and needle, the hidden bobbin under the metal plate. After a while she picked up the cross-stitch hoop Grandma had prepared for her. Grandma had threaded the needle with green thread for the leaf pattern and showed her how to make a knot using spit. She giggled quietly to herself remembering this and concentrated on pulling the needle up and down exactly on the little exes, her lips pressed tightly together, her dark hair wispy in the dusty sunlight.
Ruth paused to adjust the fabric and watched Bev complete several perfect green stitches. She worried that Bev’s mother, Jude, was neglectful. That she worked too much, had colleagues and commitments but no real friends. She was afraid that Jude never intended to have a child, that Bev was an unwanted surprise.
“I think you and I both sometimes lose our temper.”
Bev’s eyebrows curled in. “You mean like when you got mad at Mommy?”
“Yes. Like that. So, sometimes I have to try extra hard to remember to take deep breaths when I feel like that.”
“But it’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair, Sweetheart?”
“How come Sally didn’t get in trouble for throwing the game?”
Ruth resumed sewing before explaining, “Well, sometimes getting in trouble doesn’t help Sally not do it again.”
“How come?”
Ruth asked, “Do you want to see what I’m making? Come.” She patted her knees and pulled Bev into her lap, then held up a crumpled pattern package, showing Bev the image of a girl wearing a dress with a twirly skirt and a big smile.
“That’s so pretty!”
“I’m glad you like it. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I’m making it for you!”
“You are? You mean with this?” Bev asked, lightly touching the blue fabric lying across the sewing table.
“Yes, exactly.”
“But it looks different from the picture.”
“That’s because I’m using different material than what’s on the picture. I call this color sky blue, and I’m also using that pink for some parts,” she continued, pointing to the folded rose fabric on the nearby bench. “And see how this yellow thread looks on the blue? That’s called contrast. It will look kind of golden on the sleeves.”
“That’s what I thought too, the yellow looks kind of golden.”
“You have a good eye!”
Bev blushed and asked, “Are you making one for Sally too?”
“Not right now.”
“How do you know it will fit me?”
“Well, remember when I said I was measuring you?
“Oh yeah.” Bev remembered Grandma’s tickly touching with the red ribbon that had white numbers on it.
“Well, that was to make sure the dress will fit your body.”
Bev started laughing, and shouted “What if our bodies were see through? Like the front of the washing machine! Then you could see what the dress would look like on me by holding it up in back of me!”
Grandma laughed. “You are so silly!” She continued, “I’m ready to start sewing again. You can stay in my lap and watch if you sit very still and don’t touch.”
They were silent, the woman concentrating on her seam, and the girl watching the woman’s hands and the smooth movement of needle and cloth. Ruth could feel Bev’s body relaxing against her and kept her foot moving the treadle in an even, unrushed tempo.
Their reverie was interrupted by the sound of the kitchen door opening and slamming shut downstairs, followed by loud crying. The sewing machine slowed and gradually stopped.
Bev realized her mother had arrived, but her attention was hijacked by the progression of Sally’s tantrum. Even though Bev knew that Sally was not “normal,” and had heard words like “slow” and “delayed” and “impaired,” she didn’t understand why the grownups were extra nice to her. Ruth held Bev a little more tightly against herself.
“I’m ready to get down,” Bev declared when Sally stopped crying, using her most polite grownup voice.
“OK. Let’s put the light on so you can see what you’re doing! It’s getting kind of dark, and I don’t want you to accidentally cross stitch your fingers!”
Bev jumped into the couch laughing and said “OK, I won’t!”
Ruth turned the lamp on against the fading sunlight, and the glowing dust fairies disappeared. She retrieved the needle hanging from the cross-stitch frame and returned it to Bev, careful and concerned.
Bev wondered what it would feel like to float in the air, if fairies were real, if Grandma could do magic, what would happen if her mother died. After a while she started to feel trapped by the cushions and bored with the cross stitch.
“Are you Mommy’s Mommy?”
Ruth easily followed this abrupt change of topic.
“Yes. And I’m your Aunt Susan’s Mommy too. That means I’m your grandma and Sally’s grandma.”
Bev understood that her mother and her Aunt Susan were sisters, which of course she had been told, but realized now that they were, shockingly, already sisters when they were little girls.
“Did you make dresses for them?”
“Yes, sometimes, but I was so busy when they were little, I didn’t always have time.”
“You were busy taking care of them?”
“Yes, and I also had a job, so I really had a lot to do.”
Bev thought about her Mom, who she knew had a “big job.” She didn’t know what that meant, and her mind wandered. Her imagination had brought her to a seemingly insoluble problem the day before, and she returned to picking at the knot of what she would later learn echoed a well-known philosophical conundrum. She wanted to know what it would be like to be a butterfly. But, if she had the magic to turn herself into a butterfly, what if, as a butterfly, she wouldn’t know to turn herself back into a human? On the other hand, if she were a butterfly with a human brain, she’d remember to turn herself back into a girl, but wouldn’t be a real butterfly.
She became confused by her own thinking and wrestled herself out of the couch to stand next to her grandmother at the sewing table.
Ruth put an arm around her, enfolding her this time in a loose hug – safe but not suffocating. Bev leaned in, her face against the soft skin of Grandma’s neck. She could hear the breeze in the trees outside, and smell, faintly, the fabric softener in Grandma’s clothes. She heard the telltale creak of the attic door opening, squeezed her eyes shut, and waited for her mother’s voice.
“What are you two up to?”
Grandma said quietly “We’re just taking a break from our sewing.”
“It’s good timing then. Bev honey, let’s head home.”
Bev looked at her mother and leaned back slightly into her grandmother. She noticed for the first time that her mom and her aunt looked alike, that they shared thin, arched eyebrows, dark brown eyes and hair, full lips, and matching circles under their eyes.
“Does Sally get to stay?”
Jude’s eyes shifted sharply from Bev to her own mother, and she answered Bev while holding Ruth’s gaze. “Yes, she is for tonight.” She explained with a white lie, “Aunt Susan has a meeting tonight, so Grandma is babysitting.” Ruth’s expression didn’t change, but she kept Bev in the warm pocket of her embrace.
Bev knew her mother would be annoyed if she cried, so she pressed her fingers against her closed eyelids, trying to trap the tears there. She knew that when they got home, her mother would make her a hamburger and frozen peas and sit in silence while Bev ate. She would supervise a perfunctory washing up and then fall asleep while reading Bev a bedtime story. Finally, she would check the nightlight, tuck Bev in and give her a quick kiss on the forehead before closing the door with a gentle but decisive click.
“It’s not fair,” Bev croaked, her throat closing up in solidarity with her eyelids.
Jude blinked hard and snapped “So you’re crying because you’re forced to come home with me, your mother?”
Ruth clucked her tongue and said, “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” spinning Bev around and gathering her in more closely. She wanted her daughter to be kinder. She wanted to be kinder to her daughter. She whispered, “It’s all right, you can have a sleepover another time.” Bev nodded wetly into the silky shallows of Grandma’s collarbone. She imagined herself as a butterfly, even though she couldn’t be a real one, flying over to Grandma’s any time she wanted.
“I love you very, very much. And I’ll see you soon.”
“OK,” Bev replied in a whisper. She settled herself with a big breath in and out, and wondered if there was something wrong with her for loving her grandmother more than her mother. But she knew what was expected. She gave Grandma a firm kiss on the cheek, stepped away, and took her mother’s hand. Jude bent to give Bev a kiss on the head and told her mother thanks and good night before heading out the door. Ruth rose and stood by the window, watching her daughter and granddaughter get in the car and drive away, keeping an eye on them for as long as she could.
Leslie Weber was a classical flutist before working as a fundraiser and non-profit executive for more than 35 years. Fiction writing is her most recent chapter, and her work can so far be seen in ephemeras Literary Magazine. She is a long-time resident of Brooklyn, New York.