Close Work

by Lisa Suhair Majaj 


My mother kept supplies for hand sewing
in an old Marsh and Wheeling cigar box
my father must have brought home, though
I don’t remember him smoking cigars much—
I don’t remember much in general
from those years, and he was gone so often.
The cardboard box held bits of rickrack
and ribbon, iron-on mending tape, spools
of thread, packets of needles, boxes of pins,
paper sleeves of snaps and hooks, buttons
and buckles carefully cut off of worn items
to use again. In those days we saved everything—
I still haven’t lost the habit. Afternoons,
when she wasn’t busy at her green Singer machine
stitching up skirts for herself, the matching outfits
she sewed my sister and me, clothes for our dolls,
she’d take the Marsh and Wheeler box outside
to the front porch, along with a cup of coffee
and the mending basket, to do her close work
in better light. I’d follow her there with a comic book
or toy, settling into my child-size rocking chair
to rock and read or brush my doll’s hair. Meanwhile,
she’d adjust herself on the hard green couch,
bend to her basket, select a skirt with a loose hem,
or a shirt with a missing button, or my pink cloth rabbit
that was always leaking stuffing from its paws.
Then she’d open the Marsh and Wheeler box
to choose what she needed–the best shade
of thread, the right size of needle. It was
usually quiet, though there might be sounds
from the neighbors—people calling, children
crying, radio stations playing music or news—
filtering into that calm space we shared:
my mother doing her close work, me doing mine.
Every once in a while she’d raise her head,
gaze out at the jasmine releasing flowers
to the walk, sigh and bend again to her task,
her needle slipping carefully in and out of the fabric
as if she could stitch the gaps in our family
together, those ripped places I had no words for;
as if through the careful labor of close work
she could mend what was torn, keep us whole.  


* * * * *

Lisa Suhair Majaj is author of Geographies of Light (Del Sol Press Poetry Prize winner) and two children’s books, as well as creative nonfiction and literary analysis. Her writing has been widely published and translated into several languages, and appears in different venues, including the 2016 exhibition Aftermath: The Fallout of War—America and the Middle East (Harn Museum of Art). She lives in Cyprus.