Sex and the Sewing Room
By Loretta Morris
They all showed up that day. Again. After weeks of work they were down to the last few rooms and spaces, and had only eighteen more days to get the job done. Dan could be heard thumping around in the sweltering attic, Jessie banged pots and pans into boxes in the kitchen, and Carrie assigned herself to her mother’s overflowing basement sewing room. Today’s mission was to clean out these areas before their parents got back from an afternoon outing to the gambling boat with Uncle Ed. They had to be ruthless and swift with their decisions if their mom and dad were to have the house ready for the “down-sizing” sale by the end of the month. Everything in the house fell into one of three categories: Pitch, Sell, or Keep, and there would be very little to keep.
Carrie looked around and shook her head. Crap. Fifty-two years. Fifty-two years of crap was more like it. Her Depression Era parents never threw out a thing, and the proof was in the sewing room which was crammed with everything and anything related to the art of dressmaking, tailoring, upholstering, or just general mending.
Her mom would never think of getting rid of an article of clothing before stripping it clean of items she might use later; buttons, zippers, hooks and eyes, even collars and patch pockets. Every color imaginable was represented in the thread boxes, most with matching seam binding tape, whatever that was. Pins with colorful heads, plain heads, and even the T-shaped upholstery variety covered a dozen worn out pincushions. Boxes upon boxes of patterns, all clearly labeled either Women’s, Men’s, or Children’s, and then subdivided into categories such as dresses, blouses, skirts, suits, and Halloween costumes filled shelves that spanned an entire wall. And the buttons! Tens of thousands of them, all stored in rusty, dented cookie tins. It would all be headed for either the estate sale or the dumpster, because, with the exception of the Singer itself, there was no room for any of it at the assisted living facility.
If it were up to Carrie she’d toss it all into the dumpster and be done with it, but the manager of the sale warned her to be careful about what she threw away. You never knew what people would buy, and what she judged as dumpster-worthy might bring in big bucks for her parents. That made Carrie’s job much harder. And so her task to separate the valuable junk from the worthless junk began once again.
Experience had taught Carrie that the hardest part of cleaning out a new room was getting started, so she took a deep breath and just dug right in. She opened a box marked “Fabric Scraps” and smiled. Bits and pieces of familiar garments mingled and swirled, little snips of family history. She gently touched a rich teal brocade with gold threads that was her mom’s favorite holiday skirt (and later became Carrie’s Barbie doll’s most elegant evening gown), Jessie’s soft pink confirmation dress that Carrie was so jealous of, a striped tie her dad proudly wore to church on Sundays, the old calico curtains that once hung in the kitchen.
No. Get a grip, Carrie. You’ve got a job to get done here. No time for nostalgia. She knew that a sentimental box of memories for her was just a musty heap of frayed rags to anyone else. Pitch.
Next, the old cookie tins bursting with buttons. Sell.
Pins and needles. Pitch.
Boxes of zippers. Sell.
Thread. Sell.
After about an hour Carrie gathered what she could manage and headed up the basement stairs to the dumpster, which had been delivered the week before. As she walked through the kitchen, she stopped to chat with Jessie, who, from the escalating volume of banging pots and pans, seemed like she needed a break.
“How’s it going, Jess?”
Exasperated, Jessie exhaled loudly with an upward puff, and her bangs flew up for a second. “Do you realize how many mixing bowls Mom has? There must be thirty of them. Thirty! Why would she need so many? I can only remember her using two or three different ones at the most.”
“Oh really?” Carrie countered, “Do you realize that our baby clothes…BABY CLOTHES… are still down there? No. The mixing bowl thing doesn’t surprise me at all. Anyway, almost all of the kitchen stuff can be sold. Almost all of the sewing room stuff is going to end up in the dumpster.”
“True,” Jessie slapped her palm on a cabinet door. “There’s money on these shelves,” and then, “Hey Sis, when you get a chance, clean up the sewing machine, will you? That’s the only thing down there that’s worth anything. Maybe a few hundred dollars.”
Carrie stopped. “I thought Mom said she wanted to keep it.”
“No way,” answered Jessie. “She can barely sign her name anymore let alone run a sewing machine.”
“I know, but . . .”
“No buts, Carrie, we have to get rid of this stuff. You saw how small their new place is, and that sewing machine cabinet is gigantic. Where would they put it?” She shook her head. “Mom’ll get over it.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’ll clean it up.”
“Make sure you use hot-sudsy water!” To their mother, hot-sudsy water was all that was necessary to keep a household sparkling. “Carrie, did you use hot-sudsy water to wipe down the counters?” “What’s that? Blood? Quick, get some hot-sudsy water on it.” “Don’t sass me or I’ll wash your mouth out with hot-sudsy water!”
“Shut up!” Carrie answered back through a smile.
After several more trips to the slowly filling dumpster, Carrie returned to the sewing room and took a few sips of her Big Gulp while she thought about what to tackle next. She had made a dent in the mountain, but there was still much to do. There was the chest of old clothes, drawers full of sewing notions, a few dress forms, and of course, the dozens of boxes of patterns. Might as well get started on those.
She pulled down a box marked “Men’s suits, ties, & vests” and opened the top. Immediately she sneezed, her nose and throat assaulted by the musty odor of old paper and dust. She knew instantly that the hundreds of patterns were a lost cause. Even if the styles came back, her mom’s rationale for keeping them all these years, the crinkling sound made by the delicate tissue paper of the patterns indicated that they were crumbling in their envelopes, and would be of no use to anyone. This makes my job so much easier. She started hauling the boxes up the stairs two at a time.
Carrie intended to finish up with the patterns quickly, but a box marked “Children’s Halloween Costumes” caught her eye. She and her brother and sister always had the best costumes in the neighborhood. What could be the harm in taking a few minutes to look? For old time’s sake. She made herself as comfortable as she could on the dilapidated basement sofa and lifted the cover of the box.
My God, they’re all here. Colorful drawings of the clown, the cat, the princess, the witch – all of them – bringing forward vivid childhood memories of trick-or-treating. The now yellowed envelopes marked years and years of Halloween costumes that had made her mom the Pride of Balmoral Avenue.
Carrie was just about to call Jessie down to see them when she spotted something – a small, stapled booklet, about four by six inches, sandwiched between the angel and the devil patterns. It had a plain yellowed and tattered paper cover that read:
Happiness in Marriage
An Ethical Medical Interpretation
(For Private Use Only)
Puzzled, Carrie pulled it out and leafed through the 61 pages of minuscule print. In a moment, her jaw dropped and eyes widened. She slapped a hand over her mouth, trying without success to suppress a loud gasp as she realized what it was that she was reading.
Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit! It was a manual – a sex manual – a no-nonsense-this-is-exactly-how-you-do-it sex manual for couples about to be married. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit!
In a flash she clapped it shut and looked around the room as if it were a public place and not her parent’s deserted basement. Oh my God! Mother!
But she couldn’t resist the allure of the little book. I’ll just read the chapter titles. Among the most intriguing were: Physiology-The Male Organ, Proper Times, Moderation, Preparation for Intercourse, and Natural & Unnatural Pleasure. “Now I have to read more,” she said aloud, curious as to what constituted unnatural pleasure.
Then came a booming voice. “Hey! What are you doing down there? You’re not asleep, are you?”
Carrie jumped. Was it God? No, just Dan, stomping down the basement stairs in his heavy work boots.
“What? Me? No! What? I’m working!” Carrie stammered back, stashing the booklet under a lumpy couch cushion. “What…what are you doing down here?”
“Relax, spaz, I’m hungry. Wanna go get some lunch? Jessie wants McDonalds.”
“Umm…Why don’t you just bring me something. I really want to get this room done before Mom and Dad get back. You know mom’ll just want to keep everything that’s here when she sees it.”
“Yeah, you’re right. OK, you want the usual?”
“Sure. Thanks. Hey! don’t go up empty handed!” She pointed to a bulging garbage bag, ready for the dumpster. (Don’t go up empty-handed was another ‘mom-ism’ that Jessie swore would some day be inscribed on their mom’s headstone.)
“Yes, Mom,” Dan smirked as he picked up the back and ascended the stairs.
Carrie listened for the back door to close and counted to ten-Mississippi just to be sure they were really gone before she whipped out the book again. She inspected the front and back covers for publishing information, anything that would indicate when it was given to her mom and who had written it, but there was nothing. It was definitely very, very old, perhaps given to her mother in 1948 in preparation for her wedding night. Oh God! Maybe by the priest!
She read on, laughing in disbelief at the notion that, “Too often intercourse unfits a man for his daily work, saps his vitality, and makes him easy prey for disease….” and in the chapter titled Normal Union, “…the next thing to attend to is the proper fitting of the organs…” There were three steps in that process, she noted with a grin.
Carrie couldn’t take it any longer, and besides, she had a lot of work left to do. She fanned herself briskly with the little booklet of mid-century porn, closed it up, and slipped it in her purse between the protective covers of her checkbook. Back to work.
As she pulled more boxes off the shelves and sorted through drawers, she thought about her mom. Mother, Mom, Mommy. That’s the only way I ever think of her. Not as a person, not as a woman, just Mom. Not as a wife who wanted a loving and fulfilling marriage. Not as an individual who has dreams, emotions, and goals. Just Mom. Just the person who cooked and cleaned, helped with school projects, pulled weeds in the garden, and sewed and sewed and sewed. Right here in this room. This space was a part of her mom, her refuge from the world, her creative outlet, her peace and quiet, her place to read a sex book.
Lost in her thoughts, Carrie was again startled by heavy footsteps on the stairs. Dan and Jessie, carrying the fast food, joined her in the basement.
“Dig in,” urged Dan as he tossed her a bag with a cheeseburger and fries.
“Hey guys,” said Carrie, “Mom wants to bring the sewing machine to the new place.”
“What?” said Jessie, “I thought we decided we were going to sell it.”
“I know,” Carrie countered, “but Mom decided she wants to keep it. It’s hers, Jess, and it means a lot to her. She should decide, not us.”
“What do you think, Dan?” Jessie asked her brother.
Dan looked up from his Big Mac, unaware of the power struggle playing out between his sisters. He shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever. I don’t care.”
“You’re no help,” Jessie sneered.
As they ate, Carrie considered sharing the book with her siblings, but then decided that would be somehow disrespectful. Her mom had gone to great lengths to keep it a secret and would be so embarrassed if she knew they had it. Carrie also thought about her own children who would someday be tasked with the job of emptying her own house. He eyes widened as the she realized all that that meant.
After they finished eating, Carrie told her siblings she was leaving for the day.
“So soon?” whined Jessie. “Why? There’s so much to do!”
“Don’t worry Jess, I’ll be back again early tomorrow morning, but I have to get home now.”
“What’s so important that all of a sudden can’t wait?” Jessie asked, annoyed.
Carrie smiled and blushed. “I’ve got a few drawers of my own to clean out.”