Blue Cotton Work Shirts Stitched Together for a Spring Dance
The cardboard box from the high school sat on the mattress of the single bed in Clara’s spare room the next morning.
Clara, my maternal aunt, had already cleared a space on the dresser, her small sewing pins catching the weak light where she had pinned them to her collar. She reached into the box and lifted out a pair of heavy rubber overshoes, setting them quietly on the floor.
“They had these in his locker,” Clara said, her voice dropping into that rapid, breathless register she used when she wanted to keep from pausing. “And three cans of paste wax. The principal said we should keep the wax, but I told him we have no use for school-grade polish.”
I reached past her into the cardboard depth, my fingers brushing against coarse, familiar fabric. I pulled out a stack of four blue cotton work shirts, each one washed so many times the chambray had turned the color of a winter sky.
“He always kept spares in the basement,” I said, running my thumb over a white plastic button that was chipped in half.
