Three Stitches, Not the Whole Person — Iris

The box had once held a printer. It now contained things with considerably better life expectancy.

Iris set it beside the sleeping laptop. Afternoon light reached halfway across the table; there was no reason to turn a lamp on yet.

First came the felt pouch, made by an aunt who had apparently considered pockets an unreliable public service. One side was blue, the other green. Iris put a finger through the loose loop of its drawstring and remembered a kitchen chair, a dropped needle, the determination to finish before dinner.

Her aunt had made her unpick three stitches. Not the whole seam. Just the three that pulled the mouth shut.

Iris had been prepared for a verdict on being bad at sewing. Instead, there had been a small pair of scissors and a precise indication of where to start.

She laid the pouch flat. On the laptop, a failed build waited behind the dark screen. Three stitches, then. Not the whole person.

Underneath was a little wooden game board. Her aunt had drilled the holes slightly off-centre; the pegs stood like a committee reluctant to agree. Iris remembered losing, demanding another round, then trying to negotiate a rule change midway through it.

The rule stayed. Her aunt stayed too, through four more games, without becoming either merciful or busy.

One peg was missing now. Iris counted the empty holes twice, although arithmetic was unlikely to become more accommodating on appeal. She put a spare keyboard switch in the box beside the board. A terrible peg. A temporary solution.

Last came a square of yellow cloth with a red darn across its middle. Her aunt had given it to her after teaching her to mend a tear. Iris could still remember the thread catching on a rough thumbnail, the cloth turning slowly in those hands.

She had wanted yellow thread. Something that would make the damage disappear.

There had only been red in the tin that afternoon. Her aunt had shown her how to leave enough slack for the fabric to move.

Now Iris held the square against the window. Light passed through the old cloth but scarcely through the repair. It was not beautiful in any useful decorative sense. It had survived being pulled.

These were gifts, technically. They had also been ways of occupying the chair beside her: after school, through bad moods, during the long business of learning not to abandon a thing because it resisted her.

Iris returned the board and cloth to the box. The pouch stayed out. She threaded its drawstring back through the loose loop, then opened the laptop and read the first error instead of all of them at once.