Learning to Sew

Linda Boroff

Of all Deirdre’s classes, sewing is far and away the worst.

Here, she and Karen the Freak share a table — easy targets
for the teacher. Mrs. Grady, a living needle of a woman, has
shrunk and sharpened with age, unlike Mrs. Maxwell the
cooking teacher, who is plump, creamy and pleasant, like one
of her own white sauces.

The class is learning how to get dressed: Mrs. Grady stands

before them in a navy blue suit. Fixing her audience with a
vulturous stare, she leans into a white Playtex bra suspended
between her talons.

“Now girls, bend forward and let your bust faaaaaallllll into the
cup,” she commands, evoking for Deirdre a suicide plunge
from a skyscraper, or the apogee and perigee of Wile E.
Coyote. Deirdre thinks about her own “starter” bra, whose
empty cups gape before her each morning like the excavation
sites for two sports stadia. It is a struggle to even imagine the
substantial, pendulous weight, the swelling, supercharged
mystery of real breasts.

At twelve, Deirdre is a tall, sallow girl with large brown eyes

and dark, truculent hair. She dreams of someday replacing her
bony nose with a pert, inclined plane like that of Sandra Dee.

On Friday night, Deirdre attends her first dance, spending four

unbroken hours seated mutely in the shadows of the school
gymnasium on a folding chair. Beside her, as usual, sits Karen
the Freak. Stocky and flat-chested, Karen has the short arms,
thick neck, and round head of a kindergarten sculpture.
Coarse brown hair hangs in uneven rags from a wobbly center
part, revealing low-set ears with heavy lobes. Gappy front
teeth protrude in an overbite. She is wearing a wrinkled white
blouse, plaid pleated skirt, and dirty white sneakers with no
socks. Frankly staring, Deirdre feels perversely grateful. At
least she is not a certifiable freak. Her compassion, triggered
easily enough by squashed birds and rodents, arises much
more slowly for people and often requires prodding.
Before them, couples move hesitantly through the
reverberating twilight in clumsy unison, like lame animals.
Above loom basketball hoops and fluorescent tubes
suspended from aluminum girders. The floor is painted with
yellow, green, and blue lines; mysterious boundaries for
unknown games played by incomprehensible rules. The music
is a dirge of adolescent despair: Why was I born too late?
You've gone from me, oh woe, tragedy. Are you somewhere
up above and are you still my oh-wone true love? Rising stiffly
as the dance ends, Deirdre realizes that a dull, yearning ache
deep within her is not destined to go away soon.

Their semester project in sewing class is to make a skirt, a

task as daunting for Deirdre and Karen as a successful
satellite launch appears to be for NASA.. Cutting out her
pattern, Deirdre recalls a recent Vanguard launch, the rocket
soaring aloft on a portentous gush of flame, only to crumple
back seconds later and lie sillily on its side, writhing and
spurting like a fizzled firecracker. Even NASA isn’t perfect, she
thinks. But NASA does not have to answer to Mrs. Grady.

Dully apprehensive, the girls labor away, dreading the

inevitable blunder — the fabric marked on the wrong side, a
seam pinked too close — that will bring down the celestial
wrath. Deirdre hardly dares to glance up from her demon of a
sewing machine, pursuing her hands with its single sharp
tooth, insatiably gobbling up yards of cloth as if intent on
reaching Deirdre herself, piercing bone, flesh and gristle as
punishment for her clumsy basting.

Karen’s skirt is bright yellow, with a print of red flowers in

orange flowerpots. Deirdre can tell by the way she holds it to
her body that she is proud of it — crooked seams, wavy
hemline and all. Mrs. Grady, noting her enthusiasm, treats
Karen a little more kindly, leaving her reservoir of malice
proportionately fuller for Deirdre.

In fact, Deirdre’s only refuge is the dressing room, where she

is reading a smuggled copy of Marjorie Morningstar Whenever
she dares, she brings her skirt into the curtained room for a
“fitting,” the book secreted beneath.

William Tecumseh Sherman Junior-Senior High has expanded

hurriedly to accommodate the avalanche of postwar babies.
Masses of them now scurry about the green and pink “new
school” chattering in high, uncertain voices. Their sheer
numbers overwhelm the senior high students, confined like an
afterthought to the khaki stucco old school. As if aware that
they have missed some demographic boat, the older kids
slouch against the walls, surveying the newcomer hordes with
disdainful, put-upon sufferance.

Deirdre's home room teacher, Mr. Buchelman, also teaches

science. His sparse crew-cut resembles the posterior of
Deirdre’s old teddy bear and he wears black-rimmed mission-
control eyeglasses. Like many men in the early nineteen-
sixties, he is thirtyish but seems middle-aged. An ample
stomach diverts his forward motion into a mild sideways lurch,
as if demonstrating some scientific principle of mass versus
momentum.

“What a twink,” Steve Osby hisses to Billy Lefebre.

Billy holds his thumb and index finger together in a circle and
waves his other fingers. “Flying asshole,” he replies. Staring
numbly about like refugees, the students sprawl and squirm in
graffiti-scarred wooden desks. Beyond the stern, narrow
windowpanes mocks a deep blue Minneapolis sky.

“Hey,” hisses Billy to Steve, “check out the freak.”

Steve leans toward Karen. “’Scuse me,“ he says, “can I ask

you a question?” Karen nods and smiles. “What planet did you
come from?” Karen’s smile freezes, and she fixes both boys
with a blank, blue stare.

Preoccupied with his bacteria cocktails, Mr. Buchelman

benignly neglects his homeroom, which soon reverts to a
preadolescent jungle, with Karen the chief prey. The moment
she enters, Billy and Steve set upon her, arping like a couple
of Brylcreemed sea lions. They then commence a free-
associative heckling, trumping each other in jokes and puns.
Sometimes they steal her notebook and read her clumsy
homework aloud. For anyone feeling insecure or nasty, Karen
is a convenient target. Incapable of defending herself, she
waves her arms, as if at a cloud of gnats, and covers her ears.

Every day, Karen fades noticeably by third period, rubbing her

eyes with chubby fists, resting her head on her arms. Their
social studies teacher, Mr. Devlin, has a long stinger of a nose
and narrow, yellowish eyes that land on student after student
like wasps. He paces the room, pounding his fist into his palm:
Did they realize that communist revolts were going on at this
very moment in Indochina? He stabs with his finger at a small
green country on the pull-down map: Vietnam. America must
take a stand before communism crosses the Pacific — his
palm sweeps through Micronesia, grazes Australia, and
obliterates Newfoundland — to devour our way of life!

The students sit in three long rows before Mr. Devlin's desk.
Karen, in the far right corner of the last row, is enviably
situated for neglect, while Deirdre, in the front row, faces Mr.
Devlin square-on. To Deirdre’s left lurks the two-headed
monster, Billy-and-Steve. When the lunch bell finally rings,
Karen leaps to her feet and charges first out the door.

In the teeming cafeteria, Deirdre and her friend Jill slide their
trays down a tubular aluminum pathway to the cashier, then
navigate the aisles to a table near the back door. Karen
lurches past with her loaded tray, in search of a place to sit.
Several tables wave her away.

Meanwhile, the popular girls have actually pushed two tables

together to accommodate all their friends. Older boys join
them, slinging their letter jackets across the backs of chairs.
Jill and Deirdre stare like slaves at a royal coronation.

“How are the boys in your classes?” Jill pokes disconsolately

at her pizza.

Deirdre thinks of Billy and Steve. “Appalling,” she replies,

which for Jill is the final straw. She lays down her fork.

“Dizzy, speak English. How do you expect to be popular if

you're always using words that nobody even knows what they
mean?”

“Okay okay.”

But despite her efforts, Deirdre’s worst fears of social failure

come to pass, and she finds herself paired with Karen any
time choice is permitted the other students. Thus, they
become dancing partners in phys. ed and seatmates in
homeroom. They even lunch at the same table, along with
Willy Mowg, a boy only four feet tall; an American Indian girl;
twins with cerebral palsy; and Bruce Dilman the genius. Bruce
is a chilly, obsessive boy with eyes the color of mercury.
Whenever he achieves a perfect score, a wisp of smile fleets
across his mouth, hovers uncertainly as if marooned in
unfamiliar terrain, and vanishes.

The Cuban Missile Crisis arrives. Deirdre, her parents, and

her younger sister Fran ride it out at a cousin's house,
everyone eating “like there's no tomorrow,” her father jokes.

“That's not funny, Hiram,” snaps her mother.

“I hope,” Deirdre whispers to Fran, “I don't have to die a

virgin.” After reading The Sun Also Rises, she has concluded
that she really belongs in 1920's Paris, sipping absinthe at
Harry's Bar and sleeping with matadors.

The family stares at the television, at a blurry photo of some

whitish lumps circled with black crayon: Irrefutable Proof. For
all they know, they could be looking at an X-ray of the
descending colon rather than the impending demise of
civilization.

The crisis ends. The world has formulated no monumental

insights, achieved no catharsis, reached no spiritual epiphany.
Like wildebeest that have managed to be ignored during a lion
hunt, they are lucky this time, that is all.

Winter mornings, massive cars with names like Star Chief and
Roadmaster lumber up and down icy, grimy streets to
disgorge their carpools. Pupating in wool and fur, the students
plod through smoky exhausts and up the stairs into
superheated fluorescent classrooms. Deirdre trudges the halls
in a gothic stupor, reflecting on her unsuitability to life in this
culture. Her only comfort is English class, where the teacher
has given her poem — about the emotions of a young woman
watching a bullfight — an A.

In sewing class, she sneaks her book into the dressing room
and discovers Marjorie Morningstar losing her virginity to her
boyfriend Noel. Deirdre reads greedily, recklessly, trying to
imagine herself that way with Bruce Dilman. Riveted by guilty
fascination, she loses track of time and is thus discovered by
Mrs. Grady, who sneaks up and yanks the curtain aside like a
Victorian gumshoe.

“What’s going on in here?“

“Nothing!”

Mrs. Grady advances, seizes the book, and reads the open
page.

“And what is this filth?“

“It’s not!“

Protesting her innocence, Deirdre is dragged from the

dressing room by her arm. The book is confiscated and sent
with a note to the principal. For her deception and depravity,
she receives an automatic F on her skirt and is barred from
the end-of-semester fashion show.

Face hot and flushed, heart pounding, hands icy, she faces
the silent, gawking classroom. She is a criminal, and her life is
ruined, almost as if she had lost her own virginity. She thinks
suddenly of Mary, Queen of Scots. Like Mary, all that is left
her now is to die well. Amid gasps of horror, she seizes her
flowered skirt, wads it into a ball, pins sticking her hands, and
hurls it into the wastebasket. Mrs. Grady, perched balefully on
her desk, announces that since Miss Deirdre Fisch cares so
little, her entire semester grade will now be an F.

“Don’t worry,” Karen tells her as the bell rings. “I get lots of Fs
too.”

In social studies, Mr. Devlin turns on a film. This will run over
into your lunch period, he warns, but if you care enough about
your country, you may stay. Deirdre subsides gratefully into
the dark. Oh Bruce, my fate, she whispers.

As usual, the film is about communism, beginning with the

standard map of its spread across Europe, China and Asia. To
Deirdre it looks as if the world is having a period: the red stain
soaking East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia . . . a big
blot on Cuba, over to Korea, oozing across Laos.

She thinks of her own period lurking in her womb, awaiting its
hormone trigger to do her in someday in the white skirt it will
be just her luck to wear. On the screen, Lenin harangues a
crowd of babushkas; Stalin, a smug walrus, nods at his tanks
rolling past. The lunch bell rings.

There is a stir, which quickly subsides as the class recalls the

sacrifice asked of it. Karen alone leaps to her feet, notebook
spilling papers, and begins to labor toward the door in the
twilight. As she crosses the projector beam, her profile
eclipses that of John Foster Dulles.

Slowly, Mr. Devlin rises, strides to the projector and flicks it off.
Steve Osby leaps to turn on the lights. Karen freezes.

“Of all the people,” Mr. Devlin begins quietly, like a gourmet
nudging a quail egg with his fork, “who need this film, you,” he
points at Karen, “need it the most. Your grades are the lowest
in the class . . . ” he pauses, eyes closed, “And you're the first
out the door!” The detonation nearly lifts both his feet from the
ground. The class flinches and ducks. Karen backs up, wheels
and flees to her desk. The skirt she has been sewing falls
from under her notebook and in her panic, she treads on it.
Mr. Devlin twists the projector back on, Steve turns off the
lights, and Khrushchev finishes pounding his shoe.

Huddled in her seat, Deirdre thinks suddenly of missile silos,

and of affronts that are not to be endured, even if the world
has to end. She rises, heart pounding like Russian artillery

“Mr. Devlin, Karen didn't understand.”

“She understands now. Sit down, Deirdre.”

But Deirdre remains standing. The class draws in its breath.

Knees wobbling, Deirdre walks to the center of the room,
picks up the skirt, shakes it out and folds it neatly in quarters.
On the way to Karen’s desk, she bumps into the projector
cord, jerking the plug from the wall. A whole cadre of Soviet
guided missiles vanishes instantly, the voice-over decaying
into silence. Karen looks up at Deirdre, takes her skirt, and
bursts into tears.

Deirdre could never recall what happened next, just as she

could not remember the fashion show or her sewing grade, or
even what became of Marjorie Morningstar. High school
seemed to fade away, like the roar of a crowd being left in the
distance. Years later, she spotted Karen hanging around one
of the malls, wearing a lot of iridescent blue eye makeup, a
short, tight dress stretched over her ungainly body. Her hair
had been teased into a conical croquette and bleached to a
shade one could easily associate with nuclear Armageddon.

Linda Boroff's
. . . life has taken her from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, to
Berkeley and Santa Cruz, and now to Silicon Valley. Her
fiction has been published in Epoch, Prism International, In
Posse Review, Cimarron Review, Pig Iron Malt, Eyeshot, The
Fiction Warehouse, 24:7, The Pedestal, Outsider Ink,
Storyglossia, The ShadowShow, Summerset Review, The
Small Pond Magazine, Artisan, and others. She is now writing
comedy spec screenplays.

In Posse: Potentially, might be . . .

Return