In the dark hours of the night, the ancestral spirits of the women who have come before Blackhaired Barbie gather. They drift from their places in time in space, these women of character and fortitude. When they lived, they traveled across oceans. They bit down on sticks as they gave birth. They hunted, they gathered, they fished, and they warred. They danced in the moonlight and spun wool and spun tales.
Now they just show up to snark at me.
"So what's she up to today?" asks washerwoman ancestress. "Did she manage to sort her darks and her lights?"
The ancestress in the belle gown snorts. "You mean did she manage to sort her whites and her blacks? She doesn't own anything other than that."
"One might thing this was a sign of piety," says way freaky religious ancestress, "but this one has not one bit of piety in her considerable body."
They agree this is true and watch as I open up the sewing kit and begin to look at the very destroyed bra I plan to mend. This, of course, gets them all to laughing. They know I can't sew for shit.
"I bet six gold pieces she can't even thread the needle."
"You know she can't. She never can. How many chickens is equal to gold pieces? I've only chickens to bet, a fine irony in that, given that this girl has never even gathered an egg."
"No, she's never gathered an egg, but we all get a fine laugh when she tries to take chicken flesh from the bone, do we not?" They all remember how it looks when I do this and they laugh. They laugh so hard that they neglect to see that yes, you damned dead bitches, I did manage to thread the needle.
The ancestress spirits gather close to watch my work. The bra is pretty banged up, but I can't really justify getting a new one right now. One of the crappy things about losing weight is that you really can't get clothes when you know you're just going to be losing more weight. Why have a perfectly new item you know you may not be wearing in a few months?
"At least she is attempting to be frugal and sensible," remarks the ancestress who murdered her sailor husband. "That is new for her."
"Yes, but she's turning that into Frankenbra like she always does. Has she no concept of a straight line or an even stitching? No wonder she hasn't a husband." Yes, because clearly he'd go naked because I can't sew a damned straight line.
I sat and mended the bra, cussing every time one of the needles would slam into my finger tips. All around me, I could hear the chuckles of my ancestresses. I could feel them rolling their eyes and shaking their heads. I lack so many of their basic skills, skills I still need. I try my best, but I'm pretty sure I will never sew that even, straight line. I'll never get all the meat off the chicken carcass. I'll never clean clothes with spit and a rock or however the hell they did it back then.
Despite all that, the bra got fixed and I feel good about it. The dead women got a laugh . . . and I feel good about that too.
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