Four Fingers

It was the beginning of the year, and everything feels so new, with new hope and a fresh set of mind Maria and I decided to open the shop. I dusted the house, drain the water from the clogged toilet together with Maria my half sister. My fashion shop is an extension of our apartment. I went to fashion school unlike the other designers on my street that learn through self development and apprenticeship, I had a degree in Theater Art, but mother had always frowned at the idea of me showing on TV, singing or acting, merely because she thought everyone will be like Julie her daughter’s friend. Julie is an actress and she is known for her vulgar ways of dressing and flirting with men. She has acted a lot of movies and my best out of them all is “endless hole” and “the chronicle of miss Rich”. Since we are from a Christian home, mother has always encouraged us to follow the words of the Bible and be modest in all our doings. Mother believed everyone that graduated with Theatre Art degree is bound to strive for success in any way possible, so I went for various modeling and fashion shows instead.

Maria brought out the sewing machine both the electric and manual, she changed the cottons, removed the cobwebs and arranged the chairs while I place the decorations out, I left the flowers on the right pavement as usual and changed the closed sign to we are open. ‘Ding dong’, the bell sound so loud in the morning, with the chimes hanging close to the windows, it is louder than an alarm, especially with the strong wind that blows the cotton away and rush a pile of dust in through every open space in the shop. It was my first customer of the year Mrs. Lela, she came with sapphire her 12 months baby girl dressed in pink all through. As a baby she smells like money, her perfume is customized and she also has a clothing line for babies, with her own special room. The last time I slept in a room alone was when we still own a house, now we live in a rented room in one of the public hostels. Mrs. Lela is known in the neighborhood to be a version of Queen Elizabeth, rich and famous, her husband is the new manager of World Bank; it was known throughout the street that every worker in her apartment has their own private cars. Mrs. Lela walked into the shop majestically and checked through the old dress hanging on the hangers on the cloth line, she was not satisfied with the way she was holding the baby and at the same time checking through the cloths. She is used to a royal lifestyle of so many attendants attending to her at ones. I made a suggestion to her to give the baby to Maria, then she called my attention to the fact that I had sent Maria to one of our customers to notify them that we have started business for the year. I would have made a direct call to all the customers but all our phones both the landline and mobile are out of credit, truthfully the only one functioning is the landline, the mobile is not totally ours, we borrowed it from the phone store every weekend and return it on Mondays.

After a long deliberation I decided to help Mrs. Lela with the baby while she conveniently looks through the dress. Baby sapphire keep getting her hands out of her covering and aiming towards the working machine. I held her hands for a moment and it was so soft and fresh, it smells nicely like rose. It is quite difficult to sew with a baby in my hand but the thought of missing the opportunities of getting Mrs. Lela to buy a New Year dress struck me at odd. For the past three years Mariah and I had fed on bread and milk, I had always made promises of getting us a suitable meal in a five star restaurant but to no avail, all the money secured from the shop is spent on our leakingbathroom at home, the neighbors complain about how the water coming out of our bathroom enters into their kitchen.

There are no parents to cater for our needs, Maria’s grandparent at the age of seventy two died of car crash while traveling to visit aunt Caro, she is a florist with two kids Gideon and Gabriella, who struggle to finish college, and they are always getting into trouble. Aunty Caro’s husband died in the previous years, rumor has it that she is a witch, who cast death spell on all that she sets her eyes on, true or not, she does look like a witch with her curly hair strapped at the back of her neck. No matter how hard Maria and I tried to please her during the holiday, it never worked, she screams so loud that she renders all of us speechless. My parents died some years after, my mother was a surgeon in cosmopolitan central hospital and my father was a writer, he married Maria’s mother two years after I was born. It was a polygamous family with lots of love and less of money; we can’t probably eat love, can we. They died during the thanksgiving festive, they had to travel to aunty Caro’s place, she is a piece of work, so Maria and I decided to stay behind. After the death of our parents she only contacted us twice and stopped, because we rejected her offer to live with us. With all the struggles we have faced holding a baby while sewing is the least.

I had forgotten I had a baby on my laps, so I sew conveniently. Suddenly, I saw her hands moving towards the sewing machine, I quickly reached out to remove her hands and unfortunately had one of my fingers stuck in the machine needle. Fashion was all I had until what I have left is four fingers.

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