It's a Weird Time

My mother was doing that thing she did, that thing with the rag in the sink. She would stare at it with all the mental force in the world, just enough to make it levitate two inches over the wash basin. Then the corners of the rag would twist themselves in opposite directions, wringing out all the lemon juice that the rag had collected.

It was always lemon juice: lemons were full of bioflavonoids that she and the rag particularly enjoyed. The rag was trained to climb the Meyer lemon tree, drill a pinhole prick into the side of a lemon, and extract a tiny amount of juice. The extraction point was small enough that the lemon’s skin would heal itself, closing up seamlessly. The rag would then continue on, collecting lemon juice to share with my mother.

“Easy squeezy,” my mother would always say at the end to the juice-filled rag. Then she’d bend down, letting the rag hop onto her left shoulder for the ride up the stairs and into the kitchen.

My mother loved that rag so much. Sometimes I wonder if she loved it more than any of her children. There were fifteen of us kids total. I’m not sure how she managed to give birth to all of us within five years, but somehow she did it.

“Pure magic,” she would always say about having us all so fast. “Magic of the best kind, puro na puro.” We kids always wondered what that meant. As a grown woman, now I know.

She started taking up a lot of bad habits, like eating sponges. “Rags are superior to them in every way,” she would say. “Sponges are my favorite kind of marshmallow, anyway.”

“You know those sponges will never leave your intestines, right?” my twelfth sibling Horationus said to her one day. Horationus was always the bold one, saying the unsaid.

“Plenty of room in there,” my mother replied, grinning. “I’ve got 50 feet of intestines, and 50 more years to go in life. I’d better use up a foot a year if I’m going to make the most of my life.”

By then her favorite rag had earned itself a spot at the head of the dinner table. None of us kids dared to sit on the rag’s red velvet-cushioned seat with the engraved armrests.

That weekend in Duluth, my mother looked at me and said, “My child, you said we’re in Duluth? Where is Duluth, anyway?”

“Ohio,” I replied.

“That’s right,” she said. “I always forget my Midwestern geography. All I know is that Michigan looks like a puffy snow mitten, and there’s a bunch of states around it that are considered Midwest but are on the right side of the US. Anyhow, let’s get to that international fabric convention.”

The rag jumped for joy in my mother’s purse. My mother peered into her purse opening lovingly.

The World Fabric Expo of 2020 filled the Duluth convention center with every color and pattern imaginable. The rag in my mother’s purse led the way, eager to get around the crowded booths. My mother followed its lead, and I followed her.

“I’m glad you decided to come with us,” my mother said. “Honestly, you’re the only one who would understand.”

The rag popped out of my mother’s purse and led us to a booth called Historical Twinkles. An Indian man wearing an eyepatch and leaning on an antique burlwood cane waved at us.

“Namaste,” he said, bowing his head and putting his hands together, his cane propped up by his feet. I guess he didn’t need the cane for balance.

“Is it really you?” my mother asked.

“Perhaps, but you never know. I could actually be someone else,” the man said. He winked his visible eye.

The rag leapt out of my mother’s purse and zoomed right into the man’s face. “Whoa there, kid,” the man said. Before any of us could do anything, the rag was wiping the man’s face.

“It’s okay,” the man said. “The rag is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“This, young lady, is a special rag. In fact, it was the one prized item I brought with me from Kharagpur when I arrived in this country. It was supposed to stay in my possession, but it had other hopes and dreams. Like me, it wanted to travel and experience the world. So it said goodbye to me one day. We were in this very city, at the train station. It adopted the lovely Filipino woman at the next table, the woman who is now your mother.”

“Of all your siblings, you’ve always been the kindest to this rag,” my mother said. “That’s why I brought you here.”

The rag gestured something that looked like a nod.

“This man created our rag, and I raised it. That makes him your stepfather, more or less.”

“That is true,” the man said. “What it also means is that I know how to weave and sew very special rags. There are thousands of friendly rags out in the world today that share the common ancestry of your mother’s rag.”

“You’ll meet some of them soon,” my mother said.