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Mutilated Planets

Susie Gharib

    Trendy mothers were learning how to sew. It was a night school to which many married women madly flocked despite the persistent remonstrance of their marital cocks. They were not after a qualifying certificate. It was the excitement of feeling young again among huge sheets of paper of different colors, elegant measuring tapes, and marking bars of chalk of different shapes. At home, Mariana’s mother had pins scattered all over the place despite her husband’s admonishing warnings which were not unjustified since Mariana eventually had the sole of her right foot impaled by a stray stake. She yelled then plucked it out with her own hand and kept silent about the whole ordeal because it would have infuriated her father who resented this whole craze for unnecessary tailoring. The girls were never short of gorgeous and fashionable dresses but Mariana and her playmates were eager to try the new outfits that mothers were making to crown their new, hard-earned accomplishments.
    The skirt was short and so was the fitting bodice with a couple of pockets adorned with blood red patches of leather. The fabric was dark blue with innumerable circles of red, yellow, and white, a galaxy of proliferate planets. After many alterations and measurements, the day came to wear their attires that would turn playmates into twins and they joyously paraded their elegance in the elfish manner so characteristic of overjoyed children. They frolicked in the dingy hall of the grandmother’s very old house, but looked like butterflies trapped in a long-forgotten and noisome jar.
    With raised eyebrows, the grand matriarch was critically viewing the festivity that the new designs entailed, so when her daughter left the house to buy some more stuff from the market, she called Mariana to her side and closely examined her garb, fingering every stitch, every button and every bit of the well-fitting outfit. She said there was something she wanted to fix but Mariana assured her in a confident manner that everything perfectly fitted and needed no adjustment. She was too elated with her new apparel to allow any unnecessary tampering. The grumpy, old woman insistently asserted that she only needed a couple of minutes to mend an aesthetic flaw in Mariana’s meticulous raiment and wasted no time in disrobing the slender frame. The girl sat shyly in her underwear, tearfully watching her new array, within minutes of wearing it, dissected into separate pieces that the grandmother could never be able to reassemble.
    When Mariana’s mother arrived, she scalded her for shamelessly sitting in her underwear. The girl merely pointed her finger at the old woman’s surgical scissors and the untimely autopsy on her dress that was still in progress. When the mother asked what instigated the shredding of the new garment, the grand matriarch coolly answered that she only meant to enhance her daughter’s aesthetic performance. For days and weeks, Mariana patiently waited for her mother to stitch the amputated attire, watching her friends in flamboyant poses flaunt their Milky Ways, but her array never recovered from the ripper’s slashes. A black hole had sucked in her mutilated planets.

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