by Neil Brosnan
You have your granny’s hands, all right. You are living proof that some talents do skip a generation. I still get a warm fuzzy feeling whenever some unrelated event causes Mam’s words to echo through my subconscious. I don’t remember Granny: I was barely two when she died, but her handiwork has outlived all of her children, and will very likely see me out as well. My childhood home was full of Granny’s creations: curtains, quilts, sheets, pillow cases, cushions, tablecloths, doilies and tea cosies. From an early age I’d been in awe of Granny’s redundant sewing machine and the huge wicker workbasket it sat beside. Despite Mam’s frequent warnings about the dangers of pins, needles and other sharp objects, she had to be at her most vigilant to prevent me from trying to snuggle up with my favourite doll inside Granny’s basket’s woven walls of wonder.
When, more than a decade later, transition year decision time arrived, my choice was an easy one. A quick chat with old Miss Sloan – our neighbourhood seamstress and patch-and-matcher – sealed the deal: my love/hate relationship with wrap-around pinnys had begun. After several days of drudgery with Miss Sloan’s jack-the-ripper, as she referred to her seam ripper, I was steered to the Formica-topped work table and finally introduced to Miss Sloan’s fully-functional antique sewing machine.
As I’d struggle with bobbins, shuttles, hand cranks, tension springs, winder guides, drive shafts, needle clamps and dog feeders, Miss Sloan would relate how she’d learned her trade through watching Granny transform the outlandish contents of parcels from aunts and cousins in America to practical garments for growing children in a small Irish town. At tea break, Miss Sloan would sometimes share titbits of Granny’s legendary exploits during Ireland’s War of Independence – she had, however, refused to confirm the rumour of Granny’s propensity to regularly conceal revolvers, ammunition, and bomb components in her knickers. But whatever the story might have been, a strange sensation would slither along my spine when she’d finish by adding: you have your granny’s hands, all right.
It was in the middle of the pre-Christmas rush that Helen Grogan appeared in Miss Sloan’s workshop. According to Mam, school life had been far easier for my generation than for hers: we had avoided having to contend Hell, as Miss Grogan was known to generations of secondary school studentsin the bad old days of corporal punishment – but I’m not so sure. Deprived of the option of inflicting physical pain, Hellhad proven extremely efficient at waging a campaign of psychological warfare on any day’s chosen victim. All too often her ice-blue glare would mock me from above her varifocal lenses, before her thin, bloodless lips would quiver apart as she would virtually vomit her venom through ill-fitting, nicotine stained dentures. On many occasions I had cursed the intervention of a grandfather I’d never known when, according to Mam, he had physically restrained Granny from confronting Hell after Mam had received a particularly vicious beating from the teacher. Apparently, Granny – armed with her favourite scissors – had been intent on wreaking the ultimate revenge for Hell’s most recent act of cruelty.
Miss Sloan presented me with Jill – my very own seam ripper – after lunchtime on the day of Miss Grogan’s visit to her sewing room. I still use Jill at home, but I have to be extra careful when my grandchildren visit as I’d broken off the little pink safety ball on the evening that Hell had collected her alteration from Miss Sloan. I will, however, always regret not having waited until after the teachers’ Christmas party – when Hell would have been still dressed in her Mother Clause suit – to spring from the gloom inside her backyard gate and plunge my Jill-the ripper – minus its pink safety ball – into her left carotid artery.
Bio:
From Listowel, Ireland, Neil Brosnan’s short stories have appeared in magazines, print anthologies, and in digital format in Ireland, Britain, Europe and the USA
https://sites.google.com/site/neilbrosnanwrites/
He has published two short story collections: ‘Fresh Water & other stories’ (Original Writing, 2010) and ‘Neap Tide & other stories’ (New Binary Press, 2013)