The Weaver and Other Hundreds — Avah Dodson
In the clearing, the shadow nymph eyes the girl, its gangly, knobby limbs splayed. Crooked teeth protrude from its lips. Brambleberry juice stains its maw.
The girl’s face is stained with blood. Her father has been on another drunken rampage, bruising her body with his fists. On such days, she flees into the thicket, though never past dusk, lest her absence reignite her father’s wrath.
Light fades as dusk passes. The shadow nymph smiles malevolently. Are you lost?
But this girl knows malevolence, and she is not lost. The blood on her face is not her own.
She smiles back.
_____
I’m sorry, was all she said, after she threw the wine glass that scarred Hannah’s legs. And after she was hospitalized a second time for overdosing. And the night she left us forever.
Hannah always resented Dad for not being able to pick up the pieces. I’m sorry, he’d say, when his best wasn’t enough, his voice echoing our small-town desperation.
Before Hannah boards her plane for NYU, she unclasps the pendant Mom gave her and folds it into my hand. I rub my thumb over it the way she would, then look up to her. I’m sorry, she says.
_____
The florist asks where I take the six dollars of peonies every Saturday. I smile without my eyes, explain that I give them to you, to be close, to breathe in deep. She says you’re lucky to get flowers every week. I nod, but not in agreement. You are lost to them. Six dollars from my wallet every Saturday, then a six-minute walk to the cemetery, where the flowers wither six feet over your heart. Sometimes, what hurts the most is remembering the way you breathed—as if every inhale was a bouquet of peonies, sweet and soft and whole.
_____
The Tesla whirs to a stop. She strides into the Goodwill with a designer bag slung over her shoulder. The bag contains a cashmere sweater, still tagged.
She does not notice the one in ragged sweats shuffling inside with constrained despair, a castaway caught in the waves, searching for solid land or golden sails.
Their eyes meet. She suddenly feels out of place. The cashmere spills out onto the counter, and she reaches to secure it. Next to her, hollowed eyes glimpse the weave and long to feel its softness.
Manicured nails and weathered, grimy fingertips briefly touch, then part.
_____
She notices how he always polishes his plate, not a smear or crumb left behind. He says something about not wanting to waste food.
He looks at the pristine porcelain and remembers being too full to finish dinner, his uncle’s red rage, the shattered plate, white shards mixed with bits of food. He sees one last grain of rice sticking to the plate’s edge, horribly out of place, and quickly pries it free with a wave of relief. He feels her gaze and looks up, suddenly ashamed.
But she had an uncle too. She touches his hand, sad and knowing.
_____
They sit next to me at the sewing table, unspooling colored threads with their hands—hands bloodied, hands abandoned, hands holding flowers, hands immaculate, hands reaching out to touch other hands.
Most of these threads I have held before. But, today, my hands are empty. Today, I am here for them.
I grab the old man’s thread: thin and pale and frayed. Then the girl’s: thick and red and resilient. Then the uptowner’s: plush and silver and gauzy. Then the others. I roll them between my fingers to remember their coarse softness. I tug. I twist. I tie.
I weave.
Avah Dodson’s works have won recognition in the Adroit Prize for Prose, YoungArts Competition, Scholastic Writing Awards (National Gold Medalist), Sacramento Literary Review Short Story Contest, Patty Friedman Writing Competition, Bluefire 1,000 Words Contest, Royal Nonesuch Humor Contest, Storytellers of Tomorrow Contest, WOW! Short Story Contest, and Kay Snow Contest, among others, and have appeared in The Louisville Review, Press Pause, Sacramento Literary Review, Blue Marble Review, Incandescent Review, Echo Lit, Parallax, The Milking Cat, Voices de la Luna, Apprentice Writer, Stone Soup Magazine, Skipping Stones Magazine, DePaul’s Blue Book: Best American High School Writing, and others. She is a graduate of the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop and is currently Director of the Creative Writing Team for Incandescent Review. She lives in California.