Seamstress
First seen in Wheaton College's literary magazine, Kodon, this creative fiction piece began as a spark of inspiration and ended as my first published work. Enjoy!
We all collect pieces of the people around us, you know. It was my response to my friend once, when she teased me about my predisposition to copy her mannerisms. The difference between you and me is I actually mean it.
I realized my ability to create tangible representations of things immaterial one night in high school. A tangle of us had gathered in someone’s basement, lounging on multiple couches and each other. There was nothing unique about the scene; we were simply spending time together. One of my friends said something that set us off laughing, and I wished for a way to capture the moment forever. As I focused on my friends’ smiles, their comfortable co-existence, they took on a golden shimmer around the edges. Under the guise of squeezing the shoulder of the friend next to me, I pulled at the outline. It pulled away like yarn between my fingers. I spent the rest of the night imperceptibly collecting the thread until I had a sizable skein. That golden yarn, with a gorgeous weight and almost-living warmth to it, I knitted into a small pillow. The warmth spread through my chest and to my heart when I hugged it.
The next time I found myself desperate to retain a thing with no material substance, it was one night my sister organized a girls’ night out. She flowed through our party, alight with a joy that extroverts achieve only when socializing. Her ability to make each woman she interacted with feel at ease was on full display, and I stood against the wall wishing to have some of it. As I concentrated, the glittering outline overtook my sister. I pantomimed cutting her out of the air, and what appeared between my fingers was a gauzy, fluttering ghost of fabric in the shape I’d cut. Holding it, my mind flooded with sincere compliments about the woman closest to me. Clutching the fabric in my hand, I thought, Again.
I tucked the gauze from my sister into my ever-present notebook for quick access, then devoted myself to honing my new skill. It took time to get the process right, and I found that a handmade pair of scissors helped me capture precisely the mannerism I wanted. Correctly taking people’s quirks requires such precision; you must focus on the person at just the right angle, or snipping that part of them away hurts them or snags on something else. I learned that when my friend thought I’d pinched her during a hurried attempt to snip her test-taking confidence before an exam. I was more careful after that.
The first time I was able to cut a perfect joke out of my brother, I couldn’t put it down for the rest of the evening. My family had been invited to a New Year’s Eve party, and my older brother and I ended up in the basement of the house with all the other young adults. Neither of us knew anyone there very well, but my brother has never been dissuaded by such situations. He spun a joke to lighten the mood. It caught my eye, and since I had already been focused on him, the snipping came easily. Laughter exploded around me, but I tuned it out. A bit of my brother’s natural charisma, something my anxious brain had coveted for years, sat in my hand. The square of cloth shimmered incandescent in the Christmas lights that hadn’t been taken down yet, tantalizing. This was when the idea of making a patchwork came to me. I could collect these beloved snippets of my loved ones, sew them into something I’d always have with me—a jacket, maybe. After that success, I kept my scissors with me at all times, so I wouldn’t miss the best parts of the people around me.
I took my best friend’s smile. I took my mother’s hospitality. I became rich in personality and had to prioritize what went into my patchwork. I focused on the pieces of my loved ones that I found most desirable, most valuable. I had to cut out the less eye-catching base pieces of myself in order to fit everything, but nobody would miss them. As I learned how best to take pieces of people, the snippets retained more and more of their original essence. I spent hours stitching together the deep red corduroy of my sister’s artistic eye, the pure fleece from my grandmother’s thoughtfulness. I paired sky blue silk from my first love’s eyes with the lavender linen of a childhood friend’s favorite flower.
My bedroom became my haven and collage, the walls covered in swathes of fabric and the floor in pins and measuring tapes. I became a master seamstress. Many of the pieces I had now I’d taken on a whim; not because I needed them, but because I noticed they were traits that were always being complimented by others. The collection swamped my old guitar on its dusty stand and buried my recording equipment. The mess was fine, because only I was allowed into it. My project stayed hidden inside the room at all times. No one was allowed a glimpse until I was complete. To my mother who would poke her head in, the friends who would stop by, my sister even, all I said was, Just wait. Once I’m done, it will be perfect. You will love it. Me.
As I neared completion, I realized I was missing some pieces. The joke from my brother didn’t glitter as brightly without humor next to it, but I’d somehow displaced what had been there before. The discipline I had cut from my high school mentor complimented grace the best, but mine was gone. Instead of searching for what I’d lost of my own, I turned my shears on the girl from my class whose laugh was so effervescent that it would turn your head in a crowd. I snipped away the grace that flowed from my favorite professor. And just to be sure I wouldn’t be short a few pieces, I took a colleague’s quintessential sneeze and a friend’s girlfriend’s trademark eyebrow raise.
My patchwork had started as a multicolored blanket, a comfort to pull around the glaringly obvious parts of me. But then I needed more space to preserve the best parts of others, and what was lost of my old self didn’t add anything anyway. I honed the pieces to a palette of coordinating tones and expanded the patchwork until the only things uncovered were my eyes. The ensemble was complete once I constructed a pair of glasses from the insights of my most trusted loved ones. The pieces glowed like stained glass in their frame. I thought, Perfect. I am ready. There is not a part of me that is not loved, because I have been meticulous in my choosing.
I debuted for my 21st birthday party, but there were an abundance of absences.