Clementine
Clementine bent over her machine. She had spent the morning churning fabric through the space of a centimeter, sewing the main body of the dress together, doubling over the hems and checking every seam.
She looked up. The roof was open in a square, sunlight white through the late afternoon clouds. It was still too hot. She’d wiped the sweat off her nose, chalk from her fingers making her sneeze.
She thought of him then.
Usually, Samson would be finishing work soon, if he had any. A shadow crossed her mind. It fell into her heart, unable to escape. She reached inside her shirt as if to adjust her bra strap.
What would become of him? What had already?
Three weeks and no word.
She pulled at her shirt. Green and cotton from the shoulders to the upper chest, white below. Too rich a green for her dark skin.
Be patient in affliction.
Her father’s words rang in her head, and suddenly she got a terrible hot feeling around her eyes.
She shoved his image down. Samson and Samuel, two phantom men vying for attention.
She bent again over her machine and began sewing a corner.
After an eternity, she looked up. Mr. Falade was getting up from his desk, arms stretching high above him, a yawn about to break forth from his lips.
Again, Samson’s image shot through her mind.
She looked at the shadows across the opposite wall.
He’d be headed back about this hour, a rusty axe swung over his shoulder, balanced there against the thickness that showed he was a working man. Lips strong enough to punch a balloon to life in one go, thick and decisive, as if every word that sprung from them were true. She’d remembered how it felt to touch them, her fingers small, almost lost in the volume of them. She touched her own. The feeling grew.
Two more meters to go. She looked over toward her neighbor, Fidele, long-haired Fidele: trim in appearance, short in figure and excessive with the tongue. Fidele was stitching a hem at the moment, eyes squarely on the machine’s needle. For once she was silent.
Be patient in affliction.
All of a sudden an image flashed in her mind. The house. The bodies. The afternoon sun. She shut her eyes.
“Ouch.”
Clementine had let her gaze drift at the wrong moment. Her finger had run into the needle under the machine’s brazen foot, stabbing it down quickly before her reflexes took over and her own foot snapped up, her hand jerking back.
She grabbed her fingers with her other hand.
Three thick blood droplets squeezed out before she had the wherewithal to reach for the bottom of her skirt to wipe them off.
Oh Lord, she prayed. Don’t let him be dead.
She looked from the blood - a rose on her skirt - to the patterns of green and yellow draped in front of her as if waiting to be brought to life. They could be diamonds slanted and interwoven, or the kelp in some far-away crystal sea, blurred to a uniform shape as it swayed beneath the water. This one would be for the president’s wife.
Her chest swelled all of a sudden: that terrible feeling of bravado like a too-full balloon, or swallowing an unripe plum whole. Still, she’d only receive a sliver of the profits. She only deserved that, she reminded herself: she was here strictly on charity.
She’d never made a dress for anyone like her before. Madame Zinsou was a tall woman thick around the middle and with a rounded bottom, outlined by the consistent tightness of her skirts. It suggested not laxity, but providence, a mother hen with everything to offer.
Her presence, however regal and stern, had a soothing effect on Clementine, a quieting one. She would come in with her slicked-back hair long enough to braid but never done up so. It was always the same, and for some reason, Clementine liked that. The president’s wife had no time to pursue the latest fashions. Cripples lined the streets; more children were out of school than in; mothers were daily suckling malaria-plagued newborns to their dying breaths, before getting pregnant again a few days later.
No time for trivialities.
At least that was how Clementine thought of her.
Her father would have liked her. She was resolute.
The thought had come churning into her mind, unbidden. Long ago, months ago, she had willed them to stop, for all images of recollections of her family to be banished, but more and more often they seemed to be slipping through, as if a waterlogged body from a shipwreck finally bobbing to the surface.
Be not afraid, her father had always quoted to her, especially in those last days.
They had been warned at least, in some small way.
They had been told of horrors to the North.
Death is a doorway, Samuel had told her. It depends on the weight in your heart: Christ’s love is as light as a feather; the devil’s hatred weighs more than a houseful of bricks. There’s no reason to fear Clementine, with the LORD in our hearts, we all live and die for a purpose we can’t yet fully understand.
Those words, he’d spoken just a few weeks before it all.
They rang in her head now. Christ’s love…the devil’s hate.
It had all been so simple for him. And yet, what she had witnessed, the way in which he had died - how could she imagine beauty springing from that? How could she imagine Christ’s love, nor keep the devil’s hatred at bay?
She sighed.
And what about Samson? More dark images filled her brain, and she shook her head as if to send them flying.
Finish this seam, she told herself. Make it straight.
She forced her mind to return to her work, her bloodied finger now wrapped in a stray bit of cloth. Her mind followed her fingers, and then onward to her aching stomach, and from her aching stomach, back to her father’s words - do everything as if working for the Lord - and then from her father, directly back to him.
What was this strange path, directed by some invisible tailor?
She shook her head and blinked, returning her gaze to the needle and her mind to Madame Zinsou. She must not disappoint.
Samson. A moment later her thoughts stole back to him. She sighed and looked at her watch. He would have been walking home from work if there were any today, and if he had been here to find it. The long slow labor of the jobless, a shifting of sands from one foot to the next, the mournful stillness of those waiting always for something that may never come.
Better not to wait, better to go. That’s what he had said.
She almost pushed herself up from her chair then, as if propelled by some invisible force, searching for him in the doorway.
Stop.
She calmed herself and sat up toward the machine, willing her shaking hands to still.
