Tiny Squares by Shannon Murdoch

Today she is wearing yellow. Yellow dress, yellow hat, and a buttercup yellow scrunchie around her ankle. Today is a good day.

‘Hello there!’ I say too loudly. Not quite a scream but well on its way. She doesn’t respond, her concentration completely focused on a small square of bright wool. She rubs it between thumb and forefinger. Her intensity is like a surgeon excising a small, stubborn tumour.

I stand in the doorway, all brown and moss green. A dull pocket in her yellow glow. ‘Your dress is like the sun,’ I say. Louder, for reasons I don’t fully understand. Rub rub rub she goes, wearing down the intricate pattern of tiny knots. ‘And your hat is simply magnificent.’

I have to stop myself from speaking to her as if she is a complete idiot. She’s not and never has been.

Rub rub rub she goes as I sit down across from her and unload the details of my week to her numb ears. Small, forgettable stories about meetings that should have been emails, and a cooking disaster that I’m still scrubbing clean. Rub rub rub, she continues as I throw words at her about nothing and everything and whatever exists in between. Her ice-hard indifference repels them all.

I don’t tell her that my husband has left, and that my teenage son threatens to join him at moments he knows will crack me right open. I don’t tell her that I’m sad all the time, that I have taken to spontaneously sobbing in public bathrooms all over this damn city. I certainly don’t tell her that I both envy her and hate her for this perfect world of selfish bliss she has burrowed down into.  

Rub rub rub she goes. This little square is holding strong but it won’t be long now until it frays beneath the warm and steady rub rub rub of her old, strong hands. Hands gnarled from decades of bending and twisting wool with a small, thick needle. Hands muscled from sewing these little squares into perfect, haphazard quilts. Warming every generation of her family.

I don’t tell her my husband took one of her quilts when he left on a Tuesday night, telling me he was too lonely to call himself a married man. I don’t tell her so much and my words run out too fast. I chide myself for looking at the clock that sits on her bedside table and frowning. I know I have to stay for at least an hour to avoid the passive-aggressive comments the staff love to hand out.

Family is so important.

They do so much better when their family is involved.

What is left for them but family?

I sit up straighter and launch into a full-throttled rant about my son. I tell her that he is now thinking about doing architecture at university, but I think it is just because there is a pretty-to-him girl in his drawing class that is thinking about doing architecture at university.

I laugh to fill up the space and without thinking I reach for her hand. The slap comes quicker than gravity could ever explain. The clock ticks long, dizzying seconds before the sting hits my face. Tears immediately threaten to spill, and I fight the urge to scream at her. Call her all the bad words. Beg her to come back to me, come back from this forest of confusion she now calls home, come back, please please please, and be the woman who used to call me magic.

You are pure magic to me, child of mine.

Rub rub rub. She continues and will continue until there is nothing but fuzzy threads whisked away by the wind. I will then go and cut another square from my quilt for her to rub rub rub away. As my quilt disappears, I tell myself that if she could love me, she would. I tell myself I know that to be true.

Shannon Murdoch

Image: Hand crocheted quilt. Made by Doris Lambert more than 50 years ago. Multiple coloured squares sewn together. From dd