February 2020 Flash Lit 6 – On your feet

“’Curiouser and curiouser!’ cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).  ‘Now I’m opening out like the largest telescope that ever was!  Good-bye, feet!’ (for when she looked down at her feet, they seemed to be almost out of sight, they were getting so far off).”  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 2

The sewing machine needle thunked up and down through the fabric with an iambic beat, appropriately enough since it was the little two-toed foot that held the fabric firmly as the feed dog moved it along.  Lou was getting so tall so quickly.  Maria hoped that she had left enough hem in the pants so they’d fit for a while.  She could always lengthen them, of course, but she remembered feeling embarrassed, herself, at the wear line where the old hem had ended on her own lengthened pants.  Lou should never be embarrassed.

And yet, she knew he was.  He was an odd child, narrow-faced, wide-eyed.  His hair, fine and curly, tended to elf-locks if she wasn’t careful to comb out all the tangles.  She was the one who got impatient with the grooming—Lou wanted everything to be perfect.  That sort of fastidiousness invited violence on the playground.

Maria decided that she’d figure out how to get him new pants rather than lengthen these when he grew.  It would be better than facing the sad resignation in his gray eyes and the squaring of his thin shoulders as he worried.

Her worries paled in comparison with his.  He worried about, among other things, prime numbers, caterpillar metamorphosis, the effect of pepper on sneezes and vice versa, falling, tardiness, and why playing card kings and queens had two heads.  When she was seven, Maria had only worried about vampire bats, and that only at night in bed, but even then she knew that pulling up the blanket over her shoulders would protect her.

A few snips of the big silver scissors to trim the last threads and the pants were finished.  Maria turned to the ironing board for a final pressing and found that Lou was awake, lingering in the doorway.  “It’s the middle of the night, love,” she said.  “Let me tuck you back in.”

“I like to watch the needle shine when you sew,” he said.  “And the machine hums like you do.”

Maria scooped him up and held him close.  She carried him back to bed under the glow-in-the-dark stars on his bedroom ceiling.  She made sure to tuck the blanket around his pink-toed feet and over his shoulders in the rabbit-pattern jammies.