FRESH YARN presents: From Your Lips to God's Ears... by Elaine Soloway

FRESH YARN presents:

From Your Lips to God's Ears
By Elaine Soloway

If Mother were alive today, she'd put TV makeover shows to shame, for she excelled in transformation. I was her favorite subject, and scenes from my childhood prove her zeal:

See me standing atop our Formica kitchen table, modeling a new woolen skirt that Mother is shortening. She hands me a piece of green cotton thread and says, "Chew this."

I stoop down to accept the two inches of wispy fiber, thus obeying a familiar bobemayse (old wives tale). This one, brought with from the Russian schtetl of her past, warns that evil spirits lurk near the pincushion, measuring tape, and scissors. If I do not chew the thread, I will be unprotected, and the demons could use the silver straight pins to stab my tender skin.

The year is 1947; I am nine years old. I understand that this ritual, which accompanies the shortening of all of my clothing, is just peasant folklore. But I play along because it is a chance to be close to my mother. Although I often feel wounded by her constant scrutiny of my appearance -- trying to get me to comb my hair, stand up straight, eat less -- I still adore her. So I take every chance offered -- even if it means chewing thread and swallowing superstition -- to prove my love.

As I chew, I think about Mother's Saturday shopping trip that produced this skirt. Temporarily freed of the apron she wears in our mom-and-pop grocery store, my mother had dressed up for her downtown jaunt. With her black hair in an upsweep, her Valentine-face in full makeup, her wide-shouldered rayon dress, and her high-heeled shoes, my mother looked as glamorous as the women in the ads of the department stores she'd be visiting. As she walked out the door, the scent of My Sin perfume trailing behind her, I wondered if I'd ever be as beautiful as she when I grew up.

Based on her daily demands of me, I think my mother fears I will favor my dad, and be short, round, with my head in the clouds; instead of growing up like her: slim, ambitious, and fashionable. But what my 34-year-old mother deems fashionable, I find ugly, like this green woolen skirt.

In fact, in this old movie of my childhood, I loathe all of the clothing she buys for me. I want to tell her that pleated skirts make me look fat, that none of my pals wear black pullovers with red satin roses stitched above the heart, and that the one-inch platform on my slip-on leather shoes won't stop me from being the shortest child in the fourth grade. But I fear honesty might hurt her feelings or turn her against me, so I feign delight.

"Turn," Mother commands, bringing my attention to the kitchen table tailoring.

I comply, raising my arms to my sides, imagining myself a long-legged model, not a shrimp who needs every article of clothing shortened. I circle the tabletop in my bobby socks, one foot in front of the other and feel the straight pins taunting my skin. But the masticated thread has done its job -- there is no blood.

"Perfect. Take it off," she says.

Mother moves to the Singer Blackside sewing machine that stands in the corner of our kitchen. Although she is dressed in a simple Swirl housecoat, my mother wears lipstick, rouge, and mascara, as if her cherished Singer deserves the courtesy. I often have the same thought: that the regal machine merits more than the humble kitchen in our three-room flat above our store.

Nestled on the couch, I study my mother. Once seated at her Singer, she rests her wedge-heeled house slippers on the black-grated treadle. As she flattens her shoes on the grill, she uses the fingers of both hands to steer the skirt's folded hem forward, sealing its fate forever. Daydreaming, I see the Singer appalled at its place among white-enameled appliances, like our chipped stove and icebox. I smile as I imagine it distastefully sniffing cooking odors that waft to its corner and stain the kitchen walls yellow and gray. Poor Singer. On Friday nights, you must endure chicken soup simmering on the stove. On Monday nights, when Mother fries chicken skin in schmaltz to make gribbeners - my favorite snack, I envision the Singer wincing at the scent of sizzling grease. Secretly, I enjoy the machine's distress, because I am jealous of its bond with my mother. I often watch the two of them -- coupled with their love of sewing -- and wish there was a place there for me.

I also resent the machine because it is a haughty reminder of my height handicap. I know my stunted growth distresses Mother, too, for one week after the skirt shortening, when my parents think I am asleep in my bedroom, I overhear this kitchen conversation:

"I think we should take her to see someone." It is my mother talking.

"You're nuts," Dad says.

"She's the smallest girl in her class," Mother says. "Maybe there's something wrong that a doctor can fix." From your lips to God's ears, I think, repeating a Yiddish expression I have often heard my mother say.

"There's nothing wrong with her. She's perfect the way she is," Dad says.

I lift myself on my elbows the better to hear the rest of their conversation. Surprisingly, I am rooting for Mother. If a doctor can fix me up, give me a pill to make me taller, like the rest of my classmates, maybe then people would stop patting me on the head as if I were a pet. I want so much to be normal size, not this midget who gets lost in a crowd. Not this baby who has to sit on the Yellow Pages to reach the kitchen table. Not this dwarf perched at a classroom desk, feet never touching the floor. I fall asleep before I know who wins the evening's skirmish, but by morning I learn Mom is victorious.

The day before our appointment with the doctor, Mother says to me, "I think we should do something with your hair. It could use some body." She is holding a box of Toni Home Permanent, and her blue eyes glisten, like those of a mad scientist. Mother has prepped her laboratory: a Pyrex mixing bowl, a pair of cruddy towels, rubber gloves, and the ingredients contained in the Toni kit.

"Sit," she orders, and places the larger of the blighted towels around my shoulders.

"It smells terrible," I say, coughing and pulling the towel up to cover my nose.

"Don't breathe," Mother suggests, as she steadily rolls strands of my hair on plastic curlers, clasps them shut with their elastic bands, then slathers the magic potion on each completed curl.

"Ouch," I complain when she tightens the rolls.

"It hurts to be beautiful," she says.

On Saturday morning as Mother and I are dressing for our trip downtown to see the doctor, I stare at my image in the bathroom mirror and say, "I look like Orphan Annie."

"I probably wound the rollers too tight," Mother admits. "In a few days, the curls will loosen and you'll be gorgeous."

"From your lips to God's ears," I say, making my mother laugh.

In the doctor's office, I gaze at Mother as she fills out a form handed to her by the receptionist. My mother looks as beautiful to me as Hedy Lamarr in the Ziegfeld Girl movie. For the doctor visit, Mother wears plastic Shasta daisies clipped to her small ears and her shirtwaist dress is sky-blue like her eyes and eye shadow. I am dressed in the hated green skirt, black pullover, lumpy shoes, and ankle socks. I rise from my chair and stroll to a mirror that hangs near the coat rack. Standing on tiptoes, I steady myself with my right hand on the back of a chair, then lift my left above my Orphan Annie head. In the illusion, I see myself stretched to average height. Just average, I think, no higher. I suspect Mother concurs and believes if I was taller, I will have better luck in life than she. Maybe Mother thinks a handful of inches will win me a doctor or lawyer, and spare me a grocer and a cramped flat above a store.

A nurse, with a clipboard clasped to her chest, enters the waiting room and says to Mother and me, "The doctor will see you now." She opens the door wide to indicate the path. Mother takes my hand, nervously squeezing my fingers, as if she was the one learning her fate, and not her nine-year-old daughter.

In the examining room, I climb aboard a padded table and squint at the diplomas that line the walls.
Calligraphy and gold seals confirm the medicine man's standing. The nurse leads me to a scale where she raises the bar to gauge my height and moves a balance to find my weight. I return to my place on the cushioned table and stare at a chart that hangs on the wall opposite the doctor's diplomas. Drawings of children, lined up like Russian nesting dolls, hop across the poster. Where do I fit in, I wonder.

"Let's take a look," the doctor says, as he enters the room and closes the door behind him. He studies the clipboard the nurse has handed him, and speaks to Mother in a slow voice, as if she were the fourth grader and not I. "Well," he says, "she is shorter than her age group, but her weight is just right. According to the intake sheet, I see you and your husband are short people. It's unlikely your daughter will grow much taller than either one of you. I don't recommend hormone injections at this time."

"Thank you, doctor," Mother says, "we just wanted to make sure."

As I jump off the examining table, I feel a mixture of disappointment and relief. I am short, like my parents; but not a midget, nor a dwarf, nor a freak. And the doctor says my weight is just right. Mother turns to me, takes my face in her two hands, kisses my forehead, and says loud enough for the departing physician to hear, "I knew you were perfect just the way you were."

I am happy to get her kiss and hear her sugary words. But in my heart, the one beating beneath red satin roses, I know Mother's efforts to transform her only daughter are far from over -- just temporarily stalled.