The Quilted Woman

Violeta Tevy was six months pregnant with her second child and could not understand why the visions were coming back to her. She knew she would eventually return to the Quilted Woman for help, it was only a matter of time; the Quilted Woman knew Violeta Tevy would return, it was only a matter of material. 

After marriage, and a move to the UK, Violeta made it a cryptic mission to become normal. She had been accepted into a relatively prosaic and pragmatic family and was determined to make the most of it. She learned major things about the UK after living there for 6 months. People could eat an entire fish n’ chips supper on their own and not get sick from the grease that stuck to their insides; Digestives are a cookie not a laxative and it was acceptable in most households to have two or more cups of milky black tea a day. 

Tea in Violeta’s family was used only to cure. Fennel's purpose was to relieve menstruation cramps, marshmallow root for indigestion, licorice tea for sore throats, and even parsley tea was given to settle hormonal teenagers. 

Amongst these kicky discoveries was that thrift shops were referred to as charity shops. And because her daughter grew like bamboo, Violeta resorted to stuffing the baby clothing into polythene sterile smelling bags pushed through the letterbox that read in bold script, ‘no bric-a-brac.’ Then she left the bag to be picked up or drop it off at the local charity shop. Some favored using profits to rehouse abused cats. These stores usually had illustrious cider-painted felines along their walls and frothy scarves in the display windows. Other charity shops sold bitty ruby heart pins to help fund research surrounding heart and circulatory diseases. Violeta was most fond of a charity shop that helped advocate and raise awareness surrounding mental health. She got rid of her own stuff too alongside the baby’s, like the fluffy white sweatshirt she had bought to wear around the house while breastfeeding but had accidentally hacked off too much of its bottom making it a belly shirt. Or a handful of cotton gray and white ribbed tank tops her divorcee-James Morrison-obsessed aunt had passed down to her. She happily chucked dangerously skin-tight flared jeans that had once been paired with a Boca jersey or her country’s national team or Steve Madden space heels. None of these pieces were difficult to part with. 

When Violeta arrived in this country, in late April, she realized that long dresses with sneakers were in fashion and no one wore ponchos in the evening breeze while sipping warm spiced morocho. After two weeks, she took it upon herself to stop wearing her hair in braids. She could remember so clearly the smell of baking bread as her sister braided and re-braided her hair for the thousandth time. Violeta made her repeat it until there were no stray hairs from the bends and the part was symmetrical down her scalp. Her little sister hated this task, but she developed such a skill for it that she made a living off of it for women who had garden-style weddings or were married on beaches. People here did not wear braids to work, pubs, or anywhere really. If they did, it was in a way that was a contained and purposeful mess. If the wind picked up, hairspray filled a passerby’s lungs as the bohemian dirty but actually washed wavy look remained intact. 

It wasn’t just the braids she got rid of. She tried not to talk too much with her husband’s family about how they were spilling things in certain areas of the house because the energy of the land was off in some areas. She learned about choking hazards and suggestions by the NHS, and that many people looked quizzically at her 6 month old’s earrings. She found a gently used flowery winter jacket at the mental health charity shop after she noticed an embroidered cardigan from where she came from on her daughter made people ask where she in fact came from too frequently. No more dragging palo santo sticks through the air when someone new came to visit or left. 

Violeta Tevy just became okay with getting rid of. She didn’t want to be remembered like her own grandmother who moved iced fish and herbs from one province to the next in a suitcase. Violeta did not want to follow in her mother’s footsteps of pretending to believe in academia but relying on aloe and murmuring vengeful curses towards the women who my father gazed at longingly to get by.

Ergo, Violeta stopped saving the mango core and boiling it. Actually, she stopped buying mangos entirely.

Other moms her age opted for jeans ripped at the knee or an ankle peeking through. Their sneakers squeaked and were white or mauve. They used gel nail polish in shades of American blue and faded bubble gum pink and knew how to contour their faces and use foundation. 

Violeta’s face was so sharp that if she contoured too much she looked masculine, and no pharmacies within walking distance sold the foundation she needed unless she spent exactly 32 minutes mixing shades. Instead of mastering the foundation predicament, Violeta Tevy removed the red string from her own wrist and the red thread from her baby’s chubby ankle. 

Her husband was in London for business when the familiar feeling of needing to visit the Quilted Woman crept onto the skin of her left shoulder manifesting itself as a subtle itch post scalding shower. She knew that it would be an expensive and long plane ride and that the money would be better saved for their goal of a new terraced house in the major part of the city. Still, the itch would not dissolve. 

She bought a budget airline ticket and was slapped with an extra $70 to bring along the travel crib and bulky stroller for the baby. Her sister borrowed a battered old car seat from one of her friends who had gotten pregnant young and unplanned. The baby bawled the entire car ride; it was only the second time Violeta had been back to her hometown since marrying and having her daughter. 

Violeta’s sister’s washing machine was in the basement of her pastel-painted house. Clothes were strewn everywhere, some half folded, others on torsos of mannequins. Her sister’s fiance collected all sorts of slush to resell. In a large seafoam tub, which would also double as her daughter’s bathtub for the next few days, Violeta soaked a wad of clothing in boiling grapefruit juice and baking soda. 

“You remind me of Abuela right now,” her sister cackled while simultaneously puffing a spliff that her live-in fiance had rolled a few moments before. Everything had a sweetgrass smell mixed with boiled tomatoes. 

After the grapefruit soak, Violeta rinsed the clothes three times and drained the liquid into the topsy-turvy garden. 

“I have detergent ya know.” Her sister pulled harder at the rolled paper and gave her a toothy smile with watery raspberry lemonade eyes.

“Will you bring me some roses, please?” Her sister shook her head no but returned with wild prairie roses. Violeta pulled off each petal and filled the tub with warm water this time. The petals danced over each other, bumping into the brims of their hats, but still maintaining fearless individual rhythm. The baby began to whimper, and Violeta slept curled beside her daughter.

Early the next morning, a few hours before the baby needed feeding, Violeta Tevy began to fasten the clothing to a makeshift washing line of two towering wooden stakes. Her bleary-eyed sister croaked from the screened-in porch, “Just use the dryer, damnit,” before letting the door slam on itself and shuffling through the kitchen to fill a glass measuring pitcher with dog food that stunk of soggy wet dishtowels and dried cereal. Violeta clipped a periwinkle dress to the line as she stood in the uncut grass. Gaping holes littered the yard from the dog’s digging, and stray lacrosse balls adorned the perimeter. 

All the dresses were dry by half noon so she meticulously folded them, then wrapped everything in her lavender and marigold printed silk kimono style robe. The walk to The Quilted Woman was longer than she had remembered as the roads smelled of old rain and gasoline. 

Before even glancing at the clothing placed on a beat-up wooden table before her, the Quilted Woman asked, “This robe, where did you obtain something so beautiful?” 

“An older man bought it for me when I was 19, and I have…” 

The old woman did not wait for the rest of the answer and continued to sift through the wild garments. She had known Violeta since she was a child, had known how rambunctious she had been as a teenager, how subdued she was now. Violeta’s own grandmother held her mistakes up to the light every time she returned home. She was convinced it was Violeta who had broken her father and forced him to become the man he was today. “The same thing happened to my Renata, my dear Renny…” My grandmother always repeated the same story. “...her conniving sons turned her husband against her. And look what happened to her.” 

Contrarily, the Quilted Woman looked at the young women of her community as flowers that had to wither on their own each season to grow back stronger and more vibrant. 

“I’m surprised you did not come to visit me before your daughter entered this world. I am sure she had many lovely clothes.” The Quilted Woman’s hair had turned from gray to white, and it was longer and curlier than ever. 

“Disculpe, but…well…” Violeta was used to the incompleteness, scattered thoughts, getting rid of them. 

“Well, what mijita? I only have time. I am an old woman after all.” 

Every few years some big shot executive, or well-known fashion designer will approach the old woman about her quilts, and offer her enough money that her generations for all eternity would be financially sound. Never does she budge. She chortles and shouts them off her property all at once. "They've come to offer me buttloads of paper in exchange for our flesh," she cries. Only the kids still peek out of their houses to see all the raucous, the adults had grown tired of the show.

“It is now I need it.” Violeta responds, remembering what she came for.

“And your hija?” 

She is with her Tía. 

“Beautiful she is, your sister.” The old woman brushed the already newly formed creases from the robe. “This robe has very potent memories.” 

All Violeta could do was nod longingly in agreement. She hadn’t told the elderly woman that she couldn’t let go of it until now. “Take it from me, please.” Nor could she admit to herself all that she did or didn’t do while drenched in it. She had brought it with her backpacking through Argentina, and to wrap a bundle of her belongings while escaping unpaid labor in Ambato when she made all those earrings. She forgot that she had worn it while in medical school before realizing she was pregnant or while drinking coffee with a friend’s abusive ex. She twirled in it while painting a self-portrait by the ocean, then again on her honeymoon after a scorching day of jumping over private property fences to snoop at suspicious mansions. She didn’t mention that her husband begged her not to throw out the robe because he loved the memory of moving his hand up along her bare waist. 

“It is beautiful but it burns.” Violeta was not sure if she had said that or if The Quilted Woman had. 

The old woman was watching her intently. The next dress swiftly pulled from the pile was a butterscotch size 2 sundress. “Ah, yes, I remember this. You were bright that day. The community knew you were going to do something maravilloso. Not because of the dress, but because of your paintings. And here, look!” The Quilted Woman let out a chuckle as she ran her hand along with the trim of the dress, where indigo oil paint had stained. “But you chose a different route, didn’t you. Because you were back in town the next year hanging out with the Yaretz boy, sí.” It wasn’t a question. But Violeta felt inclined to confirm anyway. 

“Yes, Señora.” There was not a day that went by that she was not haunted by him and her ghost life with him. She had included the cream-thin waffle shirt she had worn the day they had stopped their own child’s heart. She knew that the old woman would not ask about it. 

With her wrinkled fingers damaged from quilting and time, she dangled a dress by its thin strap. It was covered in patterns of admiral blue, sunflower yellows, juniper greens and vermilion. Looking at the barely-there dress Violeta could vividly remember whipping the dress over her head, the contractions, braless, hopping into an Uber to rush to the hospital to give birth to her daughter. Not until she saw the old fingers juxtaposed against the waxy dripping colors did she recall she had also worn it for the first ultrasound when she saw tears in her husband’s eyes as they listened to the thump-thump of her daughter’s heart. 

Directly beneath the dress, rested the black and white scarf she had once tucked in between her legs to protect the baseball-capped Uber driver’s car seats from becoming drenched with the leaking fluids of childbirth. The car had smelt of the aluminum rim of a recently cracked open energy drink and the seats were spotless. The scarf acted as a makeshift barrier. When the nurses eventually tried to remove it from her sweaty grip, Violeta asked to hold onto it as it was the last piece of clothing she had of her mother’s.  

“Would you like a drink?” The Quilted Woman was now standing. Although she was feeling a little light-headed, Violeta shook her head no. It dawned on her again in that second that the birth of her son was only three months away.

“Sit down, mijita.” The old woman’s hands shook as she brought Violeta peppermint tea on a saucer with a chunk of guava paste slapped on the edge. She placed a periwinkle dress with small white doves embroidered on its trim on her lap.

“And this one was bought for you too, I assume?”

Violeta nodded sheepishly. The Quilted Woman flipped it over with little sentiment to discover the back was entirely non-existent. Revealing and sexy, Violeta had worn it only once to a friend’s birthday dinner at a steakhouse that cost upwards of $100 per person. 

The old woman continued to agitate the pile. Bony fingers passed over an opaque cover-up. The one that always whispered ever so lightly against the floor while walking. Violeta had never worn it outside, but her sister strutted around in it like a peacock for giggles. Then there was the vintage bone bralette that she had worn while beside her first love in bed, the indigo body dress with a fur vest to meet Francisco in a swanky hotel room, where they ate overpriced mini bar mixed nuts and licked champagne. Finally her wedding dress — still thick with the smell of emerald mountains and promises. 

 The Quilted Woman unfolded each item once more, held it up to the light, then against her bosom, did a spin, then forcefully flung each item gently across a velvet burnt orange lounge chair beside her. 

“What is it you need from me now, mija?” 

Violeta needed to rid herself of this material before having a son. She should have done it when she had her daughter, but after the costs of the birth, and the excitement of it all, the clothes just became part of what she carried and packed away. When she met her daughter she was by the ocean, and the warm sea breeze air cleaned her. But a son, a son brought new worries. She was not afraid of the actual act of giving birth; she feared creating a man like the men who had left her aunts, raising a man similar to the ones who had deceived her mother, and birthing a man who would one day rape a woman in war times, or in time itself. 

She had been so many types of women in each of these outfits, all distant from the woman she was raised to be, and yet all the same.

“I need my daughter and my son, and any children I have hereafter to understand me and love me forever.” 

The elderly woman took a sip of her uva tea mixed with the butt of a decaying lemon. She lit a cigarette and brushed her long hair from her face only so that it fell again across her other eye. “I am just the quilt maker, you know this.”

“I know, and I am just a mother.”

“Does this clothing have the sufficient energy of a woman’s life? That you have really lived?” 

Violeta nodded ferociously. She was sure. “Thank you for accepting these pieces for your quilts.” 

The old woman waved her hand, swatting away an imaginary bee. “I see you happening, and your patterns."

A barely noticeable drizzle of rain began as Violeta Tevy walked down the concrete steps into the courtyard back into the world where energy was not talked about so blatantly and objects were just things to be bought or sold. Her daughter was drawing with a white crayon on a white journal paper and the house smelled of black coffee in a french press. Her sister flung her a knowing smile, and they tilted their heads back and laughed in synchronicity. Violeta Tevy thought about making quilts, maybe one for her newborn baby depicting the sun as it peeks through mountains.