Blue Cotton Work Shirts Stitched Together for a Spring Dance
It had no lace, no silk ribbons, and no glittering beads like the dresses I had seen in the catalogs the other girls carried through the hallways.
It was a heavy, clean patchwork of blue, gray, and green cotton, the seams double-stitched with thick gray thread to make them strong.
It looked like the quilts my grandmother used to keep on the spare beds in the winter.
“Try it on,” Clara said, stepping back from the machine as the clock in the hall struck five.
We walked into her small bedroom, where a full-length mirror with a chipped gilt frame stood in the corner.
I pulled the heavy cotton over my head, the smell of laundry soap and cedar filling my nose as the fabric settled against my shoulders.
Clara reached behind me to pull the metal zipper closed, her fingers working quickly up my spine.
“Stand back,” she said, her voice softening.
I looked into the glass.
The green panel from my father’s library shirt sat squarely over my chest, surrounded by the deep blue cotton of his daily work uniforms.
