“You ought to keep your filthy hands off my skirt, Mattie! Mother wouldn’t approve if she were to discover I had soiled it not even a week since Papa had come to visit.”
“Oh please! Mother this. Mother that. You ought not to cherish it so much! Sage, if I had attended every silly request of Mother, I’d be so nutty that all the fruitcakes in the world would be jealous.”
And so Mattie went about meticulously wiping her hands on her own silvery white dress, making the utmost effort to ferry every last bit grime, all the while smiling condescendingly down at Sage.
***
Mattie always had a proclivity towards defying the orders of Mother. It was not the fear of being caught that brought upon such elation, but rather the satisfaction that came …show more content…
It was a dainty little skirt. A brilliant pink with little white embroidered flowers she liked to run her fingers over. It took eight long years for its ruffled ends to finally not wilt beneath her knees (clearly “a minute now” had been a rather cursory estimate). Until recently, she had kept it safe in the rightmost corner of her closet; and now that she had begun donning it, under no circumstance would she allow it to perish from its lofty state of immaculation to the likes of her sister’s filthy hands. She wore it on every opportunity she could procure. It brought her decorum on Mattie’s eleventh birthday. Faith; when they went to see Grandmother in the hospital. Good luck; when she recited lines from Catcher in the Rye in class (she never really understood the novel; something about catching little kids from falling off a cliff; anyhow, there was her skirt -- always with her when she needed it most). “It is a peculiar little idiosyncrasy of hers,” Miss Clements would say of her fondness towards her skirt. “A blankie is to a child as her skirt is to …show more content…
Since he had left, he had been appearing twice a month to see her (Sage never actually kept count, but that’s what Mother had told her). “Your father’s coming for dinner tomorrow night, Sage,” Mother would call from stirring leftover pasta in a tattered saucepan from their meager kitchen. And before she could turn around to heed her reply, Sage was already scurrying up the stairs to her room, her soft feet a muted thumping against the old carpet underneath.
There she would promptly latch her door shut, rendering her room secure from the advent of yucky fingers (or any other unwanted horror for that matter). Then, with the nimblest turn of her wrist she would ever so slightly vent her closet open, so only the faintest glint of light and the corners of her tiny eyes could fit through the crevice.
A sense of comfort, an easing of a causeless worry, broke a smile across her face. “I can’t wait to show Papa my skirt tomorrow,” she thought to
“Oh please! Mother this. Mother that. You ought not to cherish it so much! Sage, if I had attended every silly request of Mother, I’d be so nutty that all the fruitcakes in the world would be jealous.”
And so Mattie went about meticulously wiping her hands on her own silvery white dress, making the utmost effort to ferry every last bit grime, all the while smiling condescendingly down at Sage.
***
Mattie always had a proclivity towards defying the orders of Mother. It was not the fear of being caught that brought upon such elation, but rather the satisfaction that came …show more content…
It was a dainty little skirt. A brilliant pink with little white embroidered flowers she liked to run her fingers over. It took eight long years for its ruffled ends to finally not wilt beneath her knees (clearly “a minute now” had been a rather cursory estimate). Until recently, she had kept it safe in the rightmost corner of her closet; and now that she had begun donning it, under no circumstance would she allow it to perish from its lofty state of immaculation to the likes of her sister’s filthy hands. She wore it on every opportunity she could procure. It brought her decorum on Mattie’s eleventh birthday. Faith; when they went to see Grandmother in the hospital. Good luck; when she recited lines from Catcher in the Rye in class (she never really understood the novel; something about catching little kids from falling off a cliff; anyhow, there was her skirt -- always with her when she needed it most). “It is a peculiar little idiosyncrasy of hers,” Miss Clements would say of her fondness towards her skirt. “A blankie is to a child as her skirt is to …show more content…
Since he had left, he had been appearing twice a month to see her (Sage never actually kept count, but that’s what Mother had told her). “Your father’s coming for dinner tomorrow night, Sage,” Mother would call from stirring leftover pasta in a tattered saucepan from their meager kitchen. And before she could turn around to heed her reply, Sage was already scurrying up the stairs to her room, her soft feet a muted thumping against the old carpet underneath.
There she would promptly latch her door shut, rendering her room secure from the advent of yucky fingers (or any other unwanted horror for that matter). Then, with the nimblest turn of her wrist she would ever so slightly vent her closet open, so only the faintest glint of light and the corners of her tiny eyes could fit through the crevice.
A sense of comfort, an easing of a causeless worry, broke a smile across her face. “I can’t wait to show Papa my skirt tomorrow,” she thought to