The Tatami Stitch
Kathlene McGovern
She rolls the handkerchief through her fingers. It’s droopy, moist at the edges, all the way through really. A thread escapes the side. It must have been embroidered by hand because a tatami stitch done by machine would have never frayed the way this one has. Knowing this feels like the ultimate irony because of the reason why she has an iron grip on her hankie. She can tell the qualifier she tacked on to her last sentence didn’t sit well with me. And yet, somehow, she’s compelled to repeat it, “You know, if you could... if you
might manage...to remember.” I remember a tatami stich is used to fill in an embroidery pattern, but I have no idea how I could or
why I would know this. Because I have no idea who the hell I am.
I can tell by the way she stammers that she feels like an idiot, the way you do when you lose your sunglasses right after you promised
yourself to always put them back in the case or you throw away the one piece of paper you really needed to keep when rearranging your desk. It’s not in my nature to be mean, or maybe it is because I can’t help but thinking what she said is, in fact, the stupidest thing anyone has ever uttered. I mean I am, on some level, floored by her abject stupidity. The look in her husband’s eyes tells me that while I may not have said this out loud, it is plainly written on my face. I guess it is in my nature to be mean.
But if I could remember we wouldn’t be here. Our asses searching for comfort on the hospital courtyard’s built-in concrete tables and chairs, the bright, searing sun bouncing off the white surface into our eyes, forcing them into a squint that’s doing nothing for the constant throbbing at the base of my skull. The obscenely ugly, green sweater she insisted on draping over my already-warm shoulders scratching and sticking itself indelibly onto my skin.
I look at the two of them. Homely. Hopeful. Anxious. Overbearing. And I realize...
I don’t want to remember. These people. This life. Why I know that a tatami stitch is what you use to fill in a pattern and the ones done by hand fray quicker than a wink. I can feel it, in my bones. Which sounds like the worst sort of cliché, but the fact is, since all this happened, I have nothing else besides this body. My blood feels more liquid. The sound of my breath, keener. And my bones – I really can feel them. Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle balancing next to one another with no visible connection, only the gravity of the table holding them together. And my bones, they feel resistant. Unwilling to bend to these strangers’ request.
Just after sunrise, Dr. Trout, his ridiculous name only compounded by the bagel crumbs stuck in his beard, pulled a whatchamajiggy from the pocket of his white coat and pressed it to my eye, shining a light as bright as this relentless sun into the back of my brain. Like he was intent on cheering up the dreary space where all the memories seem to have fallen through cracks in the floorboards and lay in the dirt, waiting for me to dangle a string with some gum attached to the end, pull them up and restore them to their rightful place.
“If this isn’t the damnedest thing, I don’t know what is,” his sigh dislodging a sesame seed from his whiskers and onto the back of my hand. “A little bump like this wiping the slate clean. It is the damnedest thing.”
Wiping the slate clean. Sitting across from these two rubes with their WalMart khakis and Fantastic Sam’s haircuts, there’s nothing that sounds more appealing. I force an apologetic look onto my face, “I’m afraid I can’t. Remember. Dr. Trout says it can’t be forced. But maybe someday.”
But I know it won’t ever be. That someday. I know even as I suddenly know the reason a tatami stitch fills in a pattern that I will never admit to remembering the wild marigolds creeping out from under the slab foundation of their single-wide and that he chews Grizzly and dribbles the remnants into an empty Folger’s can and that they know her name at the Hobby Lobby and set aside six skeins of Bernat Pipsqueak yarn in lime green any time it goes on sale. I know that these homely, hopeful, anxious, overbearing, well-meaning rubes will be kind strangers from now on. Eventually even the annual Christmas cards will fade into the oblivion where our ill-matched fates first began. And I’ll use my trusty stitch to fill in a whole new pattern.
might manage...to remember.” I remember a tatami stich is used to fill in an embroidery pattern, but I have no idea how I could or
why I would know this. Because I have no idea who the hell I am.
I can tell by the way she stammers that she feels like an idiot, the way you do when you lose your sunglasses right after you promised
yourself to always put them back in the case or you throw away the one piece of paper you really needed to keep when rearranging your desk. It’s not in my nature to be mean, or maybe it is because I can’t help but thinking what she said is, in fact, the stupidest thing anyone has ever uttered. I mean I am, on some level, floored by her abject stupidity. The look in her husband’s eyes tells me that while I may not have said this out loud, it is plainly written on my face. I guess it is in my nature to be mean.
But if I could remember we wouldn’t be here. Our asses searching for comfort on the hospital courtyard’s built-in concrete tables and chairs, the bright, searing sun bouncing off the white surface into our eyes, forcing them into a squint that’s doing nothing for the constant throbbing at the base of my skull. The obscenely ugly, green sweater she insisted on draping over my already-warm shoulders scratching and sticking itself indelibly onto my skin.
I look at the two of them. Homely. Hopeful. Anxious. Overbearing. And I realize...
I don’t want to remember. These people. This life. Why I know that a tatami stitch is what you use to fill in a pattern and the ones done by hand fray quicker than a wink. I can feel it, in my bones. Which sounds like the worst sort of cliché, but the fact is, since all this happened, I have nothing else besides this body. My blood feels more liquid. The sound of my breath, keener. And my bones – I really can feel them. Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle balancing next to one another with no visible connection, only the gravity of the table holding them together. And my bones, they feel resistant. Unwilling to bend to these strangers’ request.
Just after sunrise, Dr. Trout, his ridiculous name only compounded by the bagel crumbs stuck in his beard, pulled a whatchamajiggy from the pocket of his white coat and pressed it to my eye, shining a light as bright as this relentless sun into the back of my brain. Like he was intent on cheering up the dreary space where all the memories seem to have fallen through cracks in the floorboards and lay in the dirt, waiting for me to dangle a string with some gum attached to the end, pull them up and restore them to their rightful place.
“If this isn’t the damnedest thing, I don’t know what is,” his sigh dislodging a sesame seed from his whiskers and onto the back of my hand. “A little bump like this wiping the slate clean. It is the damnedest thing.”
Wiping the slate clean. Sitting across from these two rubes with their WalMart khakis and Fantastic Sam’s haircuts, there’s nothing that sounds more appealing. I force an apologetic look onto my face, “I’m afraid I can’t. Remember. Dr. Trout says it can’t be forced. But maybe someday.”
But I know it won’t ever be. That someday. I know even as I suddenly know the reason a tatami stitch fills in a pattern that I will never admit to remembering the wild marigolds creeping out from under the slab foundation of their single-wide and that he chews Grizzly and dribbles the remnants into an empty Folger’s can and that they know her name at the Hobby Lobby and set aside six skeins of Bernat Pipsqueak yarn in lime green any time it goes on sale. I know that these homely, hopeful, anxious, overbearing, well-meaning rubes will be kind strangers from now on. Eventually even the annual Christmas cards will fade into the oblivion where our ill-matched fates first began. And I’ll use my trusty stitch to fill in a whole new pattern.
|
Kathlene is currently a student at PCC who will transfer to UCLA to finish her BA in English. In 2017 she served as the fiction editor for PCC’s Inscape Literary Magazine and worked as a staff writer for Blindfold Magazine, a print mag that combined activism with pop culture and fashion where she wrote features on several actors and directors including Darryl Hannah and Aaron Paul and Casey Cooper Johnson.
When she's not writing, Kathlene teaches a performance workshop for dancers around the country called The Emotional Dynamics of Dance. The workshop teaches dancers to create story and connect emotionally to choreography, allowing for more dynamic performances. |