O.Henr y Ending

Sew What

If you’re looking for Suzy homemaker, keep looking

By Cy nthi a a dams Home Ec

maven Mildred Green always wore sensible shoes with her pastel polyester ensembles. Her clipped salt-and-pepper hair never varied in style. She had a small gap between her straight front teeth.

And when she stood at the f ront of the class, dread nearly consumed me.

“Next, we will make a dress.”

I gasped. A recent apron-mak ing fiasco remained ver y raw.

Tr udging down our gravel driveway af ter school, I weighed options: sew, or r uin my grade point average.

Mama went to Monroe and purchased lime green hopsack ing, zipper and the required McCall ’s pattern. She plopped the bag on my bed look ing pit yingly.

Within days I was again Mrs. Green’s focus. Her mouth set af ter examining my seams, so wonk y you might have thought I’d been drink ing while sewing.

“Tear that out.”

T he nex t we ek , I f r u it lessly st r ug gle d to g u ide t he sew ing mach ine’s fo ot. It c are ene d of f c ourse, jumping into t he zipp er, savag ing t he met a l.

A g unfire sound sent students crouching on the floor.

Mrs. Green raced toward me with surprising speed as I inventoried my fingers.

“You broke the needle of f !”

Af ter repairing the machine, she composed herself. T hen, predictably, said, “tear that out.”

Af ter school, Mrs. Green would help remedy whatever I had done in class. I dreaded these sessions, watching her pink lips purse tightly.

During a former biscuit debacle, when I baked biscuits that could have been used for ammo, she commented wr yly, “Your mother never allowed you to cook, I am g uessing.”

I would not become a homemaker, I muttered one af ternoon. Mrs. Green suppor ted that decision.

Completed at last, my shif t resembled Mont y P ython peasant garb. “You will wear your finished dresses tomorrow for grading,” Mrs. Green announced. T he next day, I crept into homeroom — a sad sack in a, well, sadder sack. Moving f rom class to class, I willed myself invisible. In A lgebra, I noticed a one-inch gap exposing my flank. I moaned. By journalism class, a longer gap appeared underarm, exposing my bra. I pinned my arms to my sides.

K athleen Gore, teacher and mentor, grinned.

“Want my sweater?” she of fered.

I sank into a cubby to hide until it was time to face Home Ec.

Before total and utter humiliation, Mrs. Green gave a brief lecture about accessorizing.

“Assess yourself and remove one item af ter dressing. Never wear more than seven accessories.”

This I could master, I thought, given that I owned fewer than seven.

T hen, one by one, she summoned us for th for review.

So many seams had opened that I approached the f ront of the class as if transpor ting an active grenade.

Titters er upted. Mrs. Green bit her lip. “Your mother should not have bought hopsack ing.”

Tr ue. But shif ting blame was unhelpf ul; I raised my chin.

L ater, pulling the r uined garb over my head tested the remaining seams. T he whole thing shuddered to the floor.

Only the invincible Y K K zipper held.

T hat evening I lay wanly across a chenille bedspread imagining a writer’s life. Shelves of books inhabited this fantasy. As did the antique desks, t ypewriters and classical busts.

I imagined a closet stuf fed with clothing — and eight, nine, maybe ten accessories, all to be worn at once.

And there would be writing awards, I thought bitterly. Springing up to attack the lime green monster on the floor, I easily ripped it to shreds. “Tear that out!”

Indeed.

No doubt, Mrs. Green would discretely purse her pink lips when the repor ter inquired about her former, Pulitzer-Prize-winning student before letting out a simple sigh. OH

Contributing editor Cynthia Adams happens to look fabulous in lime green, although “ hopsacking” is still a trigger word.