The Embroiderer Illustration copy

THE EMBROIDERER

S.P.Reid

I was born in a small city in Eastern Ontario. Approximately, 40 km outside of the city is a village named Rum Barrow. While you are driving through on the old dirt road you will pass an old-looking shack made of faded willow board slates. It hasn’t been occupied since 1837. The land now fosters old farm plots wildly overgrown and settled in endless weather-whipped reprise. Every year an old wood and wire fence goes up and in the spring it comes back down. In the summer time it never fails to catch by-passer’s eyes with its empty, haunted falling apart condition.

Some are afraid of what is known as ‘The Plum House’. Some are too curious; such as the locals who feel it is their birthright to trail blaze the private grounds. They peek into shattered windows and even break into the house late at night. The truth is, that inside the old shack lived a woman. A daughter. A wife. An embroiderer. This is her story as it has been told to me.

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The breathless slow-born howls could be heard for miles that harvest moon lit night. In the short distance from the house of the woman mourning, the wolf pack froze still and turned down their heads and ears. Even the rabbit they had been hunting stopped and despite being short of breath from the chase let out a painful scream as if something had grabbed it by its tail. Inside the house the woman named Petti Plum laid on her bed desperately gripping onto her dead husbands body.

Grin Plum was dressed in long dark cotton slacks with suspenders attached and tenderly placed over his shoulders. Under his intricately embroidered suspenders the man wore a light-weight, loose cotton shirt rolled up to his elbows.

On the dresser sat Grin’s straw hat, it was placed there after every harvest was reaped. On the cotton-dressed old wrought iron bed the man’s tall broad build and lanky limbs still gently embraced the woman’s right side. His knees were slightly bent inwards towards hers and his head had settled into the pillow. His blue eyes were fixed and locked into a stone cold deep grey and his mouth fell agape. Petti tried to turn down his eyelids and close his mouth for the hope of pretending he was asleep, but he had been dead for a couple of hours now and had become frigid and stiff. She was in shock, and not unlike a fever, her numb composure took hours to break.

She caressed her left hand over and around the right side of Grin’s face and swept his hair away from his narrow features while trailing her hand behind his ear. Then, for one last time, she closed her eyes and slept by his side.

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When Petti awoke the next morning from the deep chill of death, this sobering reality had her questioning how long her husband Grin had been dead for? She mustered together every ounce of energy she could find, crawled out of bed and sailed like a ship in the night to observe the time on their wooden clock located in the living room. After doing poor math on her shaky fingers a couple of times she came to the conclusion that Grin had been dead for more than ten hours. Without blinking she went to the kitchen and opened the back door, slipped on her husbands working boots and stepped down the stone stairs before walking to the shed. The shed had not been touched since Grin last closed the door that last day of harvest. With a calm disposition Petti grabbed the wheelbarrow with both hands and walked it forward and out the door until it was pushed up perfectly against the side of the steps.

When the wind picked up Petti withstood the cold gust against her back, she appeared unaffected as her hair whipped her face. After the barrow was in place she slowly climbed back up the steps and into the house leaving the door wide open as she continued into the bedroom.

Standing in the threshold, Petti’s eyes moved around the bed before she walked over to the wrought iron frame and peeled back the quilt exposing a top and bottom cotton sheet. She tied the corners of the top and bottom sheet together working around Grins handsome corpse all the while ignoring the smell that was emanating from his rotting mortality.

She then stood next to Grins side of the bed and pulled the sheet towards her as hard as she could, positioning his stiff body on the edge of the mattress. She also took the pillows from the bed and positioned them on the floor to break Grin’s fall. Still wearing Grins boots, Petti then untucked the right side of the bed and pulled the bottom sheet taught up and towards his body until she was lifting his weight. Breathing heavy and letting out sharp shots of heavy breath she held the top sheet firmly as to help steer and position his body as best she could. Petti then fully rolled Grins body off the bed and unto the floor.

Once Petti caught her breath and her heartbeat settled back into a regular pace she observed the house had a muted silence once more. Pushing on she stepped off the bed and made loud clunking noises with Grins boots as she walked over to the left side of the bed where he lay, bent down and firmly grasped the two knots she had previously made in the sheets near his feet. She took a deep breath and began to pull his weight. Over the next 40 minutes she took intervals of pulling and taking breaks until she found herself finally at the open door. Petti pondered for a moment the best way to get Grins body into the wheel barrow. This was the part she had been dreading.

Petti moved down the stone steps and began to gently pull on Grins feet until his body finally succumbed to gravity and slipped downwards onto the stone steps. His head made a sound so disturbing to Petti as it hit the step she had to turn away to regroup her thoughts and put her feelings aside.

She wouldn’t allow herself to feel one ounce of anything until their agreement was carried out. She turned back to find Grin’s legs and torso were sagging out of the death sheets so she climbed the steps careful not to step on Grin and pushed his body over into the wheel barrow as best as she could. The sound of his limbs breaking until finally settling into the small space of the wheel barrow was horrific for her to hear. Petti tried her very best to focus as she could feel her emotions beginning to surface. She stepped down the stairs bent his legs and arms as best she could to fit inside the wheel barrow and ushered Grin to the garden placing him on the earth by tipping the barrow as he himself had shown her.

Once Petti finally arranged Grins body onto their garden plot she lost control of herself and dropped to her knees and began to cry. Angry and alone she poured oil lamp over his body and around the overgrown honey-bleached grass as Grin had instructed and set the plot a blaze.

The sun was setting as the light from the flames reflected on her face and body. She cried and cried until her hair became soaked. She felt empty. Her head throbbed continually as her breathing kept a quiver. Petti’s muscles became sore and achy from pulling Grin’s dead weight earlier and from embracing her own body. Her bones felt as though they’d gone to jelly as she gave into the feeling of her body turning numb.

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When friends began dropping by with food and gifts of comfort she welcomed them with a polite opened door and then excused herself without coming back into the room. When she finally made a return her friends were long gone, but she found herself in the company of endless plates of triangle sandwiches, deviled eggs, beets and potato salad.

It took almost 4 days after Grin’s death for Petti to realize she was hungry. By that time the food had gone bad or grown moldy, so she stepped downstairs into the cold storage from the kitchen in a trance like state and carefully chose a jar of tomato butter that Grin had made from his tomatoes. They had been stewed and strained with onions then boiled, he added sugar to sweeten and thicken the batch.

She also grabbed one of his potatoes that he grew that same summer. This is all she wanted. The comfort of a homemade meal and the taste of something cared for by his hands.

She peeled the potato with the paring knife and then cut it into quarters. Petti then rinsed the quarters with cold water a few times until there were, no more ‘clouds’ in the pot.

After filling the pot with water above the potatoes she placed it on the wood stove and made a fire. While she waited for her dinner to cook she stared at the distorted reflection of herself in the mason jar lid. Her face was smudged with black match eyeliner. Her lips were an agitated pale red that were once stained with beet dye and the curls in her hair had succumb to gravity.

While the potatoes boiled she gathered up the energy to throw the moldy fur hill of triangle offerings into the organic pile outside. Standing in front of the pile and without concern Petti just threw all the dishes together without separating or scraping them, for a moment she could see Grin working in the garden and wearing his hat. This reminded her of his hat on the dresser in the bedroom and she ran into the house in quiet desperation.

Petti couldn’t wait to get into the bedroom and retrieve Grin’s hat. Instinctively, she turned it upside down and smelled it with her face fully encompassed; in the cave-like escape she took in his smell. Instantly she began to cry uncontrollably, it smelled intimately of their hard-working summers together and Grin’s hair. Falling to floor, she heard the sound of the hot water hitting the stove and was brought back to her feet. She held the hat to her chest and swiftly charged back into the kitchen because it was extremely important to her that the potatoes were properly cared for.

Petti knew the potatoes were done because her fork slid effortlessly through the quartered root vegetable; she placed them on a clean plate on the table. She now addressed the challenge of opening the sealed Mason jar.

At first she tried Grin’s trick of turning it upside down and spanking the bottom to pop the lid. When that didn’t work she tried opening it by herself until she gave up and hit the lid with a butter knife. When this method finally got it open, she smirked at the mangled collar of the lid.

Petti then poured the tomato butter over her steaming hot potatoes. It was at that point when she pushed her plate, fork and knife to Grin’s side and sat in his seat; it felt like sitting in his lap she thought.

Petti took her fork, mashed down the first quarter and soaked up the extra tomato butter pooled around her plate. As she picked up her fork she blew on it gently and took a bite, sliding Grin’s labour of her fork and into her mouth. Petti closed her eyes and took in the earthy taste. Simultaneously, she smelled his hat and was taken away by her internal slide show of images. First he is planting, then nurturing and then she’s beside him harvesting. She hears him say inside her head, “Keep the ones with the eyes. They’re for planting.”

Her hunger became ignited. She mashed down the second quarter of the potato into the tomato butter and slid it into her mouth. Smelling his hat again and crying as she chewed, she then see’s him cleaning his earth-stained hands at the basin.

The third and fourth quarter went down so fast, that she found herself unsatisfied and starving for more. Her hunger drove her back into the cold storage for more potatoes. She dove her hand into the potato sack and pulled out three. Once again she peeled and quartered the potatoes, rinsed them until the water became clean and free of clouds and boiled them. Once she could put her fork through she strained the water and placed them on her plate and poured the tomato butter over the potatoes. Famished for Grin, she devoured the plateful of potatoes and sat in his chair. Now her hunger subsided, she broke down once more, slipping off the chair and sliding onto the floor in pain once again holding his hat. This time she let her tears flow as she remembered his final words to her.

“Put your dress on. The purple one. I love that one.”

Petti had imported the silk worms from Japan for that wedding dress. She had hand boiled the silk sacs, spun and dyed them herself by soaking the fiber in Grin’s grape-skin dye. The embroidery was of the summer days they spent in the field reading to one another – especially one poem – ‘Under the Willow Shades’. The embroidery on the dress was made up of a weeping willow and two figures beneath the tree flanked by clovers, wild daisies, goldenrod and buttercups.

Grin had an interest for natural knowledge. He was self-taught and Petti loved that.

She remembered him saying that night as he was dying, “You’ll always be my girl. Remember when we met in the woods? You were ripping the burrs from your hair – so concerned that your mother would cut them out again.”

“I remember,” Petti replied with a sad undertone as she held Grin’s head with both hands staring into him and kissing him repeatedly while pulling her body closer to his.

“You were holding rocks and wild flowers in your dress. When you saw me, I’ll never forget your face! You looked at me like you’d known me for years. You said “Hi!” and smiled the most contagious smile. I helped you with the burrs and asked you what you were doing in the woods alone? You just pulled the flowers from your dress without breaking eye contact and so I asked, Well do you know what you have there?”

…”I said I don’t know but they’re beautiful.”

“Yes, and I said, well, that there is clover, wild daisy and golden rod.”

Petti began to cry again. The tears now felt like fire against her raw eyelids and cheeks.

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Petti had been spinning and looming her whole life. She hand-made the fabric for her clothes and Grin’s clothes as well as towels and linens.

Grin had died in the fall – time passed – it was now spring. Petti ate nothing but what Grin had grown, pickled or canned. She ate his beets, carrots, onions and potatoes. There were grains hulled that she eventually grew strong enough to grind and make flour and meals with. It was a late spring day when she came outside to throw her lunch scraps on the organic pile. As she passed by Grin’s grave garden she blew a kiss towards the ground. While taking a final glance before moving past to the organic pile, she noticed something.

She continued to walk over to scrape her plates but while doing so couldn’t help looking back with curious intrigue. As she walked back she found herself staring intensely at what was a clover, one wild daisy and some goldenrod.

The wind played static sounds on the field as Petti stood still staring for what seemed like hours. She never liked gardening but now craved her hands in the soil. For the next 6 months all she did was tend to the garden and recreate memories with Grin in her cross-stitch…. in the past Grin had provided Petti with a variety of colours from his beet and onion skins. He used greens, tea as well as wine.

Petti had used almost all of it up. Now she had to make her own. The first harvest agter Grin’s death had been a success. She wore his hat, shirt and overalls while pulling, cleaning, pickling and jarring. And like his hand written notes stated she saved the skins for dying her white cotton thread.

It had been one year since Grin died. Through the year she worked tirelessly as a farmer during the day and a craftswoman at night. Her work surrounded her with memories of when Grin was alive. Portraits of him, different angles of where they met, pictures of her table with mason jars full of tomato butter flanked by potatoes. She drew and stitched every memory she could lose herself in. She even made secret letters to him by disguising the words into designs.

This one evening she would make a special dinner; one that would honour her husband’s tradition and her recovery. Reminiscing on the first meal after Grin’s death that brought her back to life and gave her strength she went to the cold storage behind the white wooden door in the kitchen and took a jar of tomato butter. She also grabbed one potato that she grew from her husbands grave garden.

She peeled the potato with a paring knife and began to think about how far she’d come in a year. She looked at her loomed and embroidered creations through the threshold and into the living room. Diving into her thoughts of the past once more she is interrupted by the feeling of the sharp metal blade of the knife cut into her left hand. She had no choice but to physically pull the knife out with her right hand. Cutting into the fatty part of the thumb and palm created alarm for Petti. She hadn’t been working all year. Hadn’t sold anything. She couldn’t afford a doctor because she had used her money to buy thread – her only true release from the pain of Grin’s death.

Bravely she held her hand close to her face so that she could see the damage. Her cut was deep and she knew she needed suchers. Without doubt or fear Petti found the thinnest, sharpest needle she could find in her sewing basket and then lit a candle. She went into her top drawer of her dresser in her bedroom and found that the only threads she had left were coloured. Looking over at the colours she thought about using the onionskin dyed thread but then decided to used the beet-skin stained one instead.

Petti threaded the needle and then held the sharp end of it into the flame. After counting to five she removed it from the flame and pierced it through the two separated pieces of flesh. Her head throbbed with pain as her tears fell. “I can do this!” she said a loud and continued the process again and again until she had what looked like a deep pink tree branch embroidered onto her palm and thumb.

She then began to feel the surge of vibrations almost immediately in her head…at first it felt as though she was going to faint. Petti felt her lips grow numb, her scalp began to tickle and her eyelids closed. Then for a moment she felt warmth not unlike an eastern Ontario summers morning waking up in Grin’s arms. She then heard his voice and saw the branch he carved their names into before asking her to marry him.

The hallucinations and hyper-real emotions stayed with Petti Plum for two hours while she remained on the floor. She drifted in and out of life as it was and into a life as it had been. One moment she was staring into the wooden ceiling beams and the next moment she was transported back in time walking into the woods with Grin playfully tying dandelion necklaces around tree trunks. Then she heard her voice saying, “This one…this is where we first met. Remember Grin? And this is where you told me to wrap my arms and squeeze if it hurt when you were trying to gently pull out the burrs.” Then she was transported back to the reality of lying on the living room floor where the sound of her breathing became out staged by a thunderstorm.

The lightening flickered on and off inside the small living space… “The angels are bowling Pretty Petti”…she heard Grin’s voice calm her down… “And what about when the lightening comes Grin?” she asked a loud… “Oh those are fireworks sissy…two teams were playing the good guys and the bad guys…looks like the good guys won AGAIN!”… his enthusiasm was contagious as Petti saw him run towards her and swoop her up in his right arm and throw her playfully on their bed…and then she came back to her reality of laying alone on the floor.

No Grin. No more thunder and lightening. Just Petti. Alone.

Petti would cry but she felt numb as she walked herself to bed. She let the candle burn in hopes that it would catch the house on fire. But it did not.

In fact, it never burnt down. Petti would go on to embroider her whole body with Grin’s grave garden dyed thread so that she could relive all of their memories.

Done