The Singers sewed to the bass line in the background—the humming machines lifting, like quilters’ conversation, the curses of life. By late afternoon the flag dresses were done and Violet could only pray that the last payment would come soon and begin the right thread of luck from food to safe apartment, to steady school, to more orders. She should have been happy, but her moods were like evening shadows she couldn’t pin down— low blood sugar, hunger, depression, lack of romance?
“You can always drop in at dinnertime. Just tell me if you all are coming,” Bess laughed.
“My peas and lettuce are ready,” said Nikki.
“Rose petals are good, too,” added Toni.
“Jazz in the Park is tonight,” Malik ventured.
“I can’t wait to get to Pueblo Foods,” Violet declared. “Red beans, bacalao with Sofrito sauce and plantains with cinnamon. I’m gonna make you all the best fish and rice you ever had.”
“Harold said he’d take you,” Bess reminded Violet. Nikki was Bess’s ride home as the shop wound down for the day.
* * * * * * * * *
In next to no time, the orange sun spreads gently through the neighborhood trees. (Good-enough shelters her, they say on the island.) Malik’s parting whisper, a light tease, is what did it: “Girl, you so cute; let’s try tonight.” Violet is almost humming, I like coffee, I like tea; I like the boys and the boys like me.
“Watch your brothers,” Violet says to her oldest, dark-chocolate son, who has finally shown, and she is off.
“For sure,” Dominic answers, mostly to himself, but he soon leaves the other two behind. Sweat and leather; the flex of ankles—juke to the basket. Hoop fantasies are all that tuck in his dreams. On the prairie, drunken bees stumble to their next bergamot.
Around the sewing shop, the quieted machines stare like marionettes waiting to go on. Gathering his magic stones, Roberto watches his younger brother try for a makeshift cape. You must learn to mend, Danny. Then the two are out into the flickering halogen, down the block for Starbursts and Flamin’ Hots. She’ll be home later.
* * * * * * * * * *
Hope unfolded into another day, like a choir reaching for its highest harmony of praise. Bess and Nikki opened the textile curtains at the front of the sewing shop, and a woodland pattern of shade flickered over the sewing tables. But the shop sensed another season coming.
“Those flag dresses were outrageous. Let’s not do that again,” said Bess.
“It might pay the bills and fend off the landlord,” responded Nikki.
“But Violet will lose her soul if she keeps doing those.”
“You got that right.”
“I know Mrs. Carter would just love her collages,” Bess offered.
“Violet is running late?”
“She was going to try and reach Harold to take her shopping, after she dropped the kids at summer camp.”
