A Sonnet in Needlepoint

A Sonnet in Needlepoint

By Heather Ann Martinez

It was the end of spring and the beginning of summer. Evie said good-bye to Linus as he boarded the plane. They both wanted different things. That was what they told themselves and one another. It was not what their parents hoped for them. They knew they could have stayed in an assumed engagement for another year to appease their parents and the society they had grown accustomed to. Linus decided his talents were better served in under developed countries. He had been a doctor for several years and was studying to be a neurosurgeon when he was injured playing tackle football at Thanksgiving the year before. The movement he often took for granted in three of the fingers on his right hand he no longer enjoyed. Every movement he now took was shaky and deliberate. He had to will it to happen. He worked with physical therapists and had multiple surgeries but never regained his fine-tune motor skills. He thought he could teach interns and first year residents in under served areas of the world. Unlike Evie, Linus was always thinking of how he could help others. Even though he lost a lot in his right hand, he thought a lot about what he could do to benefit humanity.

For Evie, parting had more to do with where she wanted to be in social status. She didn’t want to just be on the arm of a doctor. She wanted to be on the arm of a doctor that would take care of all of her needs. Linus wanted to practice medicine in places that didn’t have running water or abundant amounts of toilet paper. Linus would tell Evie that they had so much and there were thousands of people in the world who had very little. Evie was not impressed. She thought that everyone had the same opportunities she had but did not work hard enough for the things they wanted.  Evie had never visited a nursing home, a homeless shelter, or really gotten to know someone who did not have her skin color. There was a guest lecturer at the university she attended who was of Asian background, but Evie did not hear her talk about how difficult it was to be an Asian-American woman in her field. Evie did not know very much about discrimination or how the rest of the world did not have the comforts she enjoyed. In many ways, she was oblivious to the world around her. Her parents had scheduled most of her childhood. Evie attended boarding school through high school. She did not associate with any of the token scholarship kids. She knew what was expected of her, and she aimed higher than what her parents thought she should achieve. All of that was about to change though. Everything Evie, her parents, her teachers and community thought she should do was about to change.

A letter came in the mail. It was from Linus’s grandfather. Linus died somewhere in Africa. The family was never able to recover his body. His grandfather wanted to invite Evie to a memorial service the family would be having to honor the work Linus had done. Evie was devastated. Her mother asked her if everything was all right, and Evie knew better than to shed a tear publicly. Her parents did not express their emotions very often and she knew they would not know how to handle Evie expressing emotions for someone she cared about. Evie decided to go for a drive. She didn’t like her mother asking about how she was doing. She wanted to get as far away from her parents, her neighbors and the expectations as she could. Evie drove for an hour. She realized that she was not familiar with the area she was in. There were storefronts that were boarded up. There were darker skinned people walking to the bus stop. There were homeless people pushing grocery carts. The streets were filled with debris. Evie was stopped at a red light and then the light turned green. Evie’s car didn’t move. She tried to turn the engine off and on again and managed to pull the car over to a side street. The car died. Evie had left her phone and could not contact roadside assistance through her car’s onboard service. She was stuck.

As Evie sat in the car and realized she didn’t have her phone or any way of contacting anyone for help, she heard singing coming from a church. It was a little after ten in the morning on a Wednesday. Evie got out of the car. She hoped that someone in the church had a phone she could use. The church building had stained glass windows, a canopy of ivy overgrown over the doorway, and a broken latch on the door. Evie slowly walked up the five steps. She followed the singing. She passed by several tables full of yarn, quilts, patchwork pieces, fabric and patterns. Then she saw the people singing in a room. They were people of different colors, ages and socio-economic status. An older gentleman smiled at Evie when she walked in. It was very obvious she was out of place. He asked her if he could help her. She explained that her car broke down and that she needed to call for help. The gentleman named Ron followed Evie out to her car. He called a friend who towed the car to a nearby garage to be repaired. Evie asked him how she could repay him for helping her and how much it would cost to repair her car.

Ron asked, “Do you hear that Evie?”

The others were still singing inside.

“You mean the singing?” Evie asked.

“Yes, they are singing a poem, a sonnet if you will. They are singing about the troubles we have had here. We have all struggled. We have tried so hard to teach our young people to love instead of hate. We have worked our fingers to the bone to put food on our tables. We have worked for as little as $1.50 an hour knowing the white man down the street was paid $3.50 an hour for the same work.”

Evie was astonished. No one had ever talked to her like this. Ron told her that one of the children in the neighborhood died a week earlier. He said all that child wanted to do was sew quilts for the people in the nursing home on Maple Avenue. Ron pointed in the direction of the nursing home. He told her that everyone in the neighborhood collected fabric, patches, quilts, patterns, yarn, thread and needles to sew quilt and knit blankets for everyone in the nursing home. Evie asked if the people singing were going to work on the quilts. Ron said some of them will work on the quilts. Some of them are going to have coffee with the residents of the nursing home and gift each one a quilt. He told Evie that that is what they do. They help one another. Ron told her that she got stuck in his backyard. As such, she was his guest. He said that his friend would fix her car, charge her for parts and labor. He said all would be done at a fair price. He said that he didn’t want Evie to miss the music. He didn’t want her to miss the stories of how they persevered despite losing a child and all that child’s dream meant to them. When the music stopped, Ron introduced Evie to the other men and women who were singing. Evie asked what she could do to help. One of the women handed Evie a needle and thread and a stack of patches. She showed her the pattern and how to sew a patchwork quilt. Evie came back every day for the next three weeks to help with each quilt. She helped with over a dozen quilts and then delivered them to the nursing home residents. When Evie got to the nursing home, she was ushered into the dining hall carrying the quilts. She set the quilts on a chair and was told the residents would be wheeled or guided in to the dining room in a few minutes.

Evie took the opportunity to look more closely at all of the photographs on the walls of the dining room. She couldn’t believe her eyes. Linus was in many of the photographs at Christmas parties, in Halloween costumes, eating cake, playing chess, and handing out new socks. Although Linus was gone, his legacy had carried on. Later, Evie asked Ron if he had ever met Linus. Ron said he had. When Linus was a medical student, his car had broken down in the middle of the street much like Evie’s. It didn’t take long for Linus to hear the music. It didn’t take long for Linus to figure out what he could do with one injured hand and a heart for every resident on this rock we call earth.

A month later, Evie went down to the corner of Maple and Forest. The church was boarded up. It looked as though it had caught on fire. Ron was walking around the corner talking on his cell phone when he saw Evie. He smiled. Evie asked him how she could help.