The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard by Erin McGraw Page A

mother-in-law, who would not pay me for it.
    The extra work didn't trouble me. My hands trembled now whenever they didn't hold fabric, and I could not stop calculating the difference between the money in my pocket and $110. Behind that amount lay ideas I could not bear to examine too closely, filled with color and bright light and the sweet taste of oranges. The ideas hovered like ghosts in a doorway, and if I did not raise my eyes, I did not have to acknowledge them. Still, I could feel the ideas pulsing when Jack called me out to the barn to sweep, which I'd promised to do three days before. While I was there, he told me to pick the horses' hooves, too, a task I hated.
    My mind fled to lustrous cloth and gleaming thread, exacting dresses that grew more difficult as I grew more skilled. I was seeing lines I had never seen before; for one dress I sewed buckshot into the back of the hem to make it hang the way I wanted. I had opinions now about the placement of a button, the spacing between two rows of trim. Even when I held no cloth between my hands, I thought about the problems posed by a line and a measurement, and I could lose myself for an hour thinking about ways to gather a waistline. I was worse than Mama, whose dreamy nature was nothing more than a vague mind. My mind wasn't vague at all: it locked onto the problem of a drooping armhole and wouldn't let go. Even when I found a solution, I kept wondering, kept turning the problem around—what if I raised the shoulder higher just there? Wouldn't that be even better? Sometimes Lucille's cry felt as if it reached me across miles, and when it did, I was angry to be called back. The ideas that held my attention had no room for anyone other than myself. That thought, above all, I did not think.
    Eight stitches to the inch. For a skirt: one hundred vertical pleats, twenty-four waist darts, nine curved hip darts and four bottom hem pleats. Five blouses to a spool of thread. Three papers of needles for eleven cents. Likewise eleven cents for a dozen thimbles. A housedress for Mrs. Cooper. A trousseau for Mrs. Horne's oldest girl, though she did not yet have a beau. Things happened so quickly, Mrs. Horne observed. It paid to be prepared, she said. So true, I told her, my eyes demurely downcast. Another skirt for Minnie Closter, paid for in nickels.
    Having heard about my skills, Mrs. Trimbull's sister in Topeka sent a package with her measurements and eight yards of black silk. Mr. Cates was finding room in his store for fabrics we had never seen, peau de soie, which we could admire but not pronounce, cloth that glittered over the hand. He smiled whenever I entered the store—or, as he noted once the spring days began to stretch out, when the new baby and I entered the store. "That one's coming in the door ahead of you," he said.
    "This one's in a hurry," I said. True and not true. The baby gained weight alarmingly; my belly felt as if it held a cannon-ball. But unlike Lucille, who had twisted in me like a trout, the new baby moved sluggishly. I should be pleased that this one was not so energetic, I thought, avoiding the words
not right,
avoiding
problem
and
wrong.
I had earned a calm baby. I thought of still water, windless days, the fallow places where nothing grew. Not a family in Mercer County didn't have a child who was simple; Mama called them God's children. Pa called them mouths—they would always eat but never work. I didn't know what Jack called them and saw no point in asking. The baby moved heavily, an old lady turning over in bed. I would find out Jack's opinion as soon as I had to.
    He had avoided me since finding out about the new child, staying away from the womenfolk, like his father. It was my mother-in-law who noted that I was not eating as I had done with Lucille and who stood with her hands on her hips until I drained the glass of buttermilk she gave me, though it tasted like rust and came back up more often than not. Alert as a wolf, she watched