Gloves

Cindy had been gifted from youth with a hateful sort of magic. It was unlike the magic of anyone else in the family; in fact, as far as she knew, it was unlike the magic of anyone else in the world, maybe even the universe. Many young girls might have been thrilled to find themselves so unique, but not Cindy. No, Cindy was not thrilled at all. Because with her magic, that hateful magic, came with a horrible necessity. A practice that had to be kept up all day, every day. Something that no one, but no one, should have to do, especially not all day, every day. 

You see, because of her unwelcome blessing, Cindy had to wear gloves. 

And she hated gloves.

She hated how the cotton ones would fray after just a few weeks of use, becoming a thinning patchwork of slowly unraveling threads. She hated how they would get wet in the rain, in the shower, or even when eating soup. She hated how the other school children could eat fries and nuggets with their hands while Cindy had to spear each one with a fork, lest she ruin (yet another pair) of horrible, horrible gloves.

Her magic? Oh, well, it was nothing special, really. Or at least that’s what Cindy would say if you asked her. She could turn things into gold. In other words, she could turn things into shinier, harder things. 

It was pretty enough, she supposed, when she ran her hands through a thick snowfall and saw golden flakes twinkling against a pale winter sky. It was nice enough, she supposed, when she made Mom’s necklaces or Dad’s watches a different color, the chains and clamps clinking like music at her touch. It was fun enough, she supposed, when she transformed something like a napkin or a marshmallow into a firm metal chunk and chucked it at her brother.

But was it worth it? Absolutely not. 

It wasn’t worth the discarded piles of leather and cotton and wool monstrosities splattered across the house. It wasn’t worth being late to school because her parents would painstakingly check, every morning, for holes exposing her hands. It wasn’t worth the longing looks at nail polish at the drugstore or the odd looks she got when she went to shake hands. She couldn’t even show off for the other kids at school by making their pencil pouches gold or performing some other metallic feat because her family magic was supposed to be secret. 

And, really, all this hassle was one person’s fault. 

Cindy’s grandmother was the one who made Cindy’s gloves for her. She knitted red mittens, sewed together softened leather, and carefully picked pieces of patterned cloth. Whenever Cindy visited her grandmother, she watched her weathered hands dance with needle and thread with dread.

On one such afternoon, Cindy was reclining in an armchair next to her grandmother with a mug of cinnamon tea in her glove-striped hands, keeping one eye on the TV and the other on the pile of cloth in grandmother’s lap. The flickering screen displayed a group of neon cartoon characters giggling together in a circle. Cindy’s own reflection shone over them, a mass of red hair with a small, round face peeking out. Noticing it, she grinned, but deflated when she inevitably caught sight of her gloves. Sighing, she began to think hard. 

Tomorrow, you see, was school picture day. All the other girls had been chattering about how they would do their hair and what tops they would wear. There was talk of the best hair brushes, the coolest stores, and the merits of headbands over hair ties. In short, everyone was out to look their best. 

Cindy knew that whatever garish gauze she would have draped over her hands tomorrow would not appear in her photograph. She knew that. She also knew, however, that some of the other girls talked about her in whispers. She had heard them once, chattering by the swings. “What’s wrong with her hands?” they’d giggle and shoot Cindy half-glances. She had glared at them, but inside, a quiet part of her had agreed. There was something wrong with her hands. They made things stupidly shiny, so she had to wear stupid gloves. 

Tomorrow, everyone would be looking their best, and she wanted to look her best too. Initially, she had just planned on wrangling her hair into a ponytail and wearing her favorite blue top, but now she looked down at her hands. The blue, green, and red stripes plastered over them were wearing away at the edges. A little hole was beginning to form at the tip of her pinkie finger. These were no good; there was no way her parents would let her wear them to school.

She looked over at her grandmother, who was humming to herself while sewing a particularly interesting new pair. It featured a pattern of pink and blue butterflies, which were slowly being distorted as the fabric overlapped. Her grandmother had magic too. But unlike Cindy’s magic, her grandmother’s magic was both useful and didn’t require wearing gloves. She could make things that, when worn or touched, would stop other people’s magic. Cindy didn’t know anyone else who could do that in the family, the world, or probably even the universe.

So that afternoon, her thoughts began to drift in a dangerous direction. If her grandmother were… unavailable, there would be no one to make gloves for her. What would her parents do if she had no gloves to wear? Surely, they wouldn’t let her miss school. She could go in for picture day with her slightly pale but otherwise perfectly normal hands on full display. She could be glove-less. Her heart leaped at the thought. Slowly, finger by finger, she began to take her gloves off. 

Now, you might think Cindy selfish for what she did next. Callous and heartless, perhaps. But Cindy, you see, was only seven. With great power comes great stupidity, and seven-year-olds are not known for their outstanding intellect in the first place. And you must remember, Cindy came from a magical household with a very magical extended family. The thought that anything she did might be permanent never crossed her mind. She’d intended it as a temporary stopgap; surely there would be someone, somewhere, to turn her grandmother back to her warm, wrinkly self. Just not before picture day. 

Having mostly just that last part in mind, Cindy looked down at her hands in contemplation. She peeked over to the armchair next to her. Her grandmother seemed quite focused on some complicated stitch, so Cindy slowly began to prop herself up on her armrest. There was a slight gap between the chairs. Perched at the very edge of hers, Cindy took a deep breath. Then, her hand shot out to breach it. At the same moment, her grandmother paused in her sewing to turn, sensing Cindy’s shuffling. And she was confronted with the sight of two little gloveless hands stretching towards her. 

For a moment, time froze. The hands. The chairs. The grandmother and her mouth wide open. The girl and her precarious perch. 

“No, Cindy!” her grandmother’s shrill voice broke the silence, and Cindy quickly jerked back. Too quickly. Her chair tipped to the side, and Cindy – in an unthinking attempt to catch her fall – grabbed her grandmother’s arm. She found it an excellent anchor – solid and hard as a monkey bar on the playground. 

Regaining her footing, Cindy looked up, her mouth going very dry. She snatched her gloves back and yanked them on. But the damage had been done. Her grandmother glistened in the afternoon sunlight, her wide eyes framed by glittering golden lashes, her lips cracked into divots, her short hair no longer white. The blue and pink butterflies now fluttered against a metal lump of cable-knit sweater. 

Cindy panicked. Her heart was pounding, her skin prickling; she knew she had to fix this somehow. Her grandmother couldn’t stay gold forever. Who would make her tea, and let her watch TV for as long as she wanted, and buy her ice cream even when Mom said no? 

Feeling sick with shame, Cindy resolved to find the family member who could reverse this. There had to be one. 

But in the meantime, no one could know. The trouble she would get in! She had to run. She collected her backpack from the foyer and threw on her sneakers. Then she paused, looking back at the living room hesitantly. Taking her sneakers back off, she ran over and snapped the blinds closed, then looked at her golden grandmother in consternation. Her eyes settled on a blanket draped over one of the chairs, and she threw it over her grandmother, tucking the edges around her waist and legs. She nodded to herself, then left, dashing out of grandmother’s house and down the couple blocks it took her to get home. 

In her room, the McIntire Family Index sat on her desk. She had been looking through the other night for her family tree project. She flipped it open and began to scan for family members who didn’t have the word “deceased” printed next to their names. The type of magic they could do was listed under each name. Cindy had omitted this information while working on her project but now read through it carefully. It took a few minutes for her to realize that she didn’t understand a lot of the words she was having to sound out, such as “Scrying” and “Aerokinesis.” 

She thought for a moment, then ran to the living room bookshelf to grab the McIntire Magic Dictionary, which Aunt Isabel had gifted them with a couple of Christmases ago. With it in hand, she began the tedious work of looking through the books name by name, magic by magic. When her Mom called her down for dinner, she ate with the dictionary resting on her lap under the table. She stayed up way past bedtime, eventually falling asleep between the pages of the Index. 

When her Mom came in to wake her up for school the next morning, she was surprised to find Cindy asleep at her desk, but Cindy mumbled something about finishing a project, and her Mom’s worry was displaced by pride in Cindy’s studious diligence. Hair a mess and eyes bleary, Cindy flung on the first t-shirt she could find and returned to her desk. She still hadn’t found anyone of use and was determined to read until the minute she had to leave for school. However, when her Mom started using her full name to call her downstairs, she knew it was time to go. Beyond that, she was beginning to lose hope. She had read through so many names, and her head was swimming with big words, but she still had nothing to show for it! 

With a heavy heart, she dragged her feet down the stairs. At the breakfast table, her Dad laughed at something her brother had said while Cindy ate her Cheerios and despaired. What if there was no one who could help? What if her grandmother would just stay gold? She wouldn’t have anyone to make her cinnamon tea ever again. And, Cindy realized, she wouldn’t ever have a pair of new gloves. The hole in these stripy ones would grow bigger and bigger, and then everything her pinky touched would turn to gold. What if, she thought with growing horror, she turned her Mom and Dad and Brother into gold too? She would be all alone in the family, the world, and maybe even the universe. Without her grandmother, there was nothing to stop her horrible, hateful magic. 

Except, perhaps, a backup pair of gloves? 

“Dad…” Cindy piped up, interrupting whatever unimportant conversation he had been having with her brother, “My gloves have got a hole in them, and grandma, um… she didn’t have any new ones ready yesterday… do we maybe have any extras?”

“She didn’t have any new ones ready? Really?” her Dad mused, rubbing the stubble on his chin thoughtfully, “Well, I think we might have a couple of spares somewhere…” 

Cindy perked up hopefully as her Dad went to the basement to check. Her brother gave her an annoyed look for interrupting, but she barely noticed. She held her breath as she heard the characteristically heavy thumps of her Dad coming back upstairs. There had to be an extra pair or two. There had to. 

Her Dad rounded the corner with a giant laundry bucket cradled in his arms. Cindy was out of her chair and scrambling over seconds later. 

The bucket was filled to the brim with gloves. 

Yellow gloves with green fingertips. Red gloves with white polka dots. Brash blues and torrid browns, pink pleather and glittering yarn, thick winter wool, and delicate party satin. Her Dad said something about his mother certainly being prepared, but Cindy wasn’t listening. She seized the basket and began to dig through it in wonder. Never, ever had she been so happy to see this many pairs of gloves. The plan budding in her head began to unfurl its petals. Maybe, just maybe, this could work. 

She trotted out of the kitchen, cereal forgotten. Before anyone could ask too many questions, she shoved open the front door with her shoulder and began to haul the bucket out of the house and down the street as fast as she could. She didn’t stop to put on sneakers, and her bare feet slapped against the hot summer sidewalk as she waddled along, her wide load making it difficult to walk too fast. Still, she made good pace, and by the time her mother was leaning out the door to call after her, she was halfway to her grandmother’s house. Soon, it rose up in front of her, all red brick and white fence. She swung open the door, which she had left unlocked the day before. Whoops. 

After cleaning off her bare feet on the doormat, Cindy proceeded into the living room. Everything was just as she’d left it, the closed drapes letting in wisps of morning light, the Power Puff Girls playing on the TV, and the blanket draped over the lump of her grandmother. She whipped it off and took a deep breath as she surveyed the surprised golden form before her.

Then, she began to pile on the gloves. 

She tied them into bands around her grandmother’s wrists and elbows and forearms and shoulders. She strung together long ropes to twine them around her legs and waist and torso. She tugged large mittens over her grandmother’s slipped feet and made a glove scarf to go around her neck. She cut holes in mittens to fashion eye and face masks. Finally, she topped it all off with a small mountain of gloves to make a hat. Satisfied with her handiwork, she stepped back, mouth dry and hands shaking with anticipation.

Nothing happened.

Her grandmother remained a large metallic lump, except now it was covered with dozens of gloves. Cindy felt tears begin to prick in her eyes. She had failed. Her grandmother would be gold forever, and it was all because of Cindy and her stupid picture day. Through her blurring sight, all she saw was colorful smudges of orange and yellow and pink and blue and gold and green and – 

She blinked the tears away, focusing on the little golden patch. She had missed a spot on her grandmother’s wrist. Seizing another glove from the few scattered on the bottom of the bucket, she slapped it on the offending bit of metal. 

And felt a muscle twitch through the layers of fabric. 

Cindy narrowed her eyes, not sure whether she was kidding herself or not. She thought she felt a growing warmth underneath the palm of her hand. She thought she saw some of the gloves stirring. 

Then, she was sure she saw the blue and pink butterfly fabric fall to the ground as her grandmother’s hands let go of it and reached up to pull the glove eye mask off. Cindy looked up to find her grandmother’s eyes their normal watery blue. They were not gold. They were also definitely not happy. 

But Cindy was. She threw herself into the armchair, buried her face in her grandmother’s shoulder, and began to sob. She was sorry, and she said it over and over again. Her grandmother’s arms reached out to return the hug, and they held each other for a long, warm moment before Cindy finally pulled away, stepping back from the armchair and looking down at her feet. 

Many pairs of gloves were falling to the floor as her grandmother untangled herself. But one pair was being picked up; the pink and blue butterflies, almost finished. Cindy looked up to find her grandmother frowning at them, needle in hand. 

“Run upstairs, child,” she said, “And fetch me the blue shirt with the embroidery from your aunt’s old room. It should be hanging in the closet, towards the right.”

Cindy stared at her. 

“Hurry!”

Still afraid she would get in trouble, Cindy ran to do as she was bidden, picking the first blue top she found and sprinting back downstairs. 

“There,” her grandmother mumbled to herself as Cindy proffered the shirt. In turn, her grandmother held up the new pair of gloves. The shades matched. The shirt, Cindy now noticed, had blue and pink butterflies stitched across the collar, delicate and small. It looked as though the butterflies had flown from the gloves to the shirt and decided to stay there, settling down and posing prettily. 

Her grandmother folded the shirt and placed the gloves neatly over it. She placed a couple of butterfly hair clips, blue and pink, on top. Cindy looked from the stack to her grandmother, then back to the stack. 

Then, she realized something, something very important. 

She was going to be late for picture day.