Dirty Little Secrets - C. J. Omololu [48]
“Here,” Mom had said softly, taking the floppy, unstuffed bear from my lap. “Just put the needle in a little ways, like this.” I could feel the warmth of her body straight from the shower, and her wet hair tickled my chin as she bent over our work. We sat in a cleared space on the living room couch, piles of newspapers and scraps of quilting fabric surrounding the small, folding TV tray that held our supplies. “You want to try?”
She handed the brown fabric back to me, the needle sticking up at an angle. “Just put your finger behind the fabric where you want the stitch to go,” Mom said, watching my fingers as I worked. Beside her tight, tiny stitches, mine looked like something that would have held Frankenstein’s monster together. “That’s good. Just try to get them a little bit closer together.”
I tried to concentrate even harder, wanting my stitches to match hers so she’d be proud of me. “You mean like th—? Ow!” I cried, the sharp end of the needle making a searing stab at my finger.
“Oh, let me see,” Mom said, pulling my finger into her lap. She dabbed at it with the edge of her shirt. “I think you’ll live.” Mom smiled at me. “Congratulations. You are now an official member of the top secret quilting society.”
I dabbed at the mark in the middle of my finger. “What’s that?” I was mad that I’d done something so stupid and wrecked what we were doing.
“Hold on a minute,” Mom said, and jumped up to rummage in the big tote bag she kept next to the recliner. “I know it’s in here somewhere.” She pawed through material and thread, and dug way down to the bottom. “Aha! I knew I’d seen it,” she said, and held out something small and round.
I took it and held it up to the dim light. It was like a tiny metal hat with dents all over the top and a pretty painted blue picture of windmills all around the base. “What is it?”
“Lucy Tompkins! Are you telling me that you don’t know a thimble when you see one?”
I shrugged, trying to keep her in a good mood. I held it back out to her. “It’s pretty.”
Mom laughed. “It is pretty,” she said, and took it back to look it over more carefully. “It was my mother’s, and she gave it to me when she taught me to sew. You put it on your finger like this.” She popped it on the end of her pointer finger. “And then the needles won’t stick you.”
I gave her a small smile. “Cool.”
She held up my injured finger and set the little thimble on the end. “Now it’s yours,” she said.
It took a little while to get used to wearing it, but I didn’t poke myself again.
I hadn’t thought of that thimble in years. Somewhere, in some box or bag or green bin, was an antique thimble that I’d probably never see again.
TJ held out his hand for the bear. “So, do I get to keep him?”
I held Teddy B. a little tighter. He was physical proof that things hadn’t always been this bad. “You know what, T? Let’s find something else for you to keep. I think I’m going to hang on to this for a while.”
“Fine,” he said, and started grabbing things out of the box again.
I tucked Teddy B. into the front of my jacket and bent down to see what else was in the box. On one side my name was written in black marker that flowed with my mother’s handwriting.
Taking a handful of soggy papers out of the box, I could see they were a mix of kindergarten drawings, report cards, and those meaningless paper certificates you get for completing a reading program or passing Tadpole swim lessons at the Y. Mom must have put everything in here to save for when I got older. And now everything was destroyed. She had fifty plastic bins in this house full of pristine crap—why couldn’t she actually put something meaningful in them? Like a special silver and blue thimble? Or my childhood?
I was scraping the pieces of cardboard off the soggy rug when I heard a yelp and a crash, as a large stack of books and papers toppled to the floor. “TJ! Are you okay?” I jumped up and ran over to him.
He was sitting on the floor surrounded by an avalanche of books. “I’m okay,” he said, but I could