Ciera Robinson

Imperfectly Laced

Excerpt

Makeda

Under the soft haze of the lamplight, Mama’s silent tears bleed into her stitching.

A seamstress by trade, I watch Mama hunched over the kitchen table. Her brown fingers flitter away, working overtime to mend the seams of a leotard back together. 

“So, you just gon’ watch me work, or are you gon’ help?” says Mama, her voice thickened by her Southern accent. 

Tentatively, I place one foot in front of the other, making my way out of the shadows near my bedroom and into the light. 

“Here,” Mama says, holding up a needle and some thread. 

Without saying a word, I grab the piece of black thread and string it through the eye of the needle, like I’ve been doing since I was five years old. I take extra time to tie the knot at the end of the thread, and it’s pulled tight just like the one in my stomach. The knot is pulled taut every time I dance or even think of dancing. The action of it so foreign to me at times since around seven months ago, when my dad died. 

“You ’bout done with that?” asks Mama, her words pulling me back into the present. I blink my eyes repeatedly and let the needle dangle from the thread, holding it out at arm’s length in front of her. 

Mama looks up, adjusts the glasses on the crook of her nose, grabs the needle, and asks, “Are you excited?”

Shrugging my shoulders, I say, “Eh.”

“Hmm, what’s this?” asks Mama, her brown eyes fixed on me. “You were excited yesterday.”

“I know.”

“Then what’s changed?” 

“I don’t know—just, it’s my first time being out in the front. I don’t want to screw it up,” I tell her, pushing around a thimble near the edge of the table. 

“You won’t, baby,” says Mama, wearing a wan smile, despite the tear tracks that stain her ebony cheeks. “Your dad would be proud.” 

I scoff and look down at the framed photo of Dad that Mama sets next to her whenever she works as she tries to make up for the loss of income. His golden skin takes in the rays of the sun. His smile mocks me. He should be here. 

So I avert my thoughts to a happier time and my gaze to the living room, outlined by silhouettes of our television, raggedy orange couch, and keyboard. I think back to when Daddy would sit at that keyboard, his fingers flying across the keys. Back then music would always fill our house, and now only silence, broken by Mama’s quiet sobs, can be heard through the paper-thin walls.

“Hey,” says Mama, “Remember what I always say, If you can thread the needle—”

“You can create something new.”

Mama squeezes her calloused hand around mine. “That’s my girl…. So,” she says, quickly turning her attention back toward the leotard she is working on. “You gon’ help me carry these into the studio tomorrow?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

O

“Hurry up, come on child, you’re already late,” Mama shouts as she scurries over to the driver’s side of the car, Dad’s 2001 burgundy Buick, carrying an armful of dance costumes. 

In the driver’s seat, Mama stacks the layers of crinoline, sequins, and silks onto my lap, obstructing my view of the road. 

Mama’s foot, heavy on the gas, lurches the car forward. We coast a few feet down the driveway before the car slows up, makes some weird mechanical noise, and stops. And I know it’s morbid, but I can’t help thinking, first Dad and now his car. I imagine this is what it must’ve been like when he died, his heart slowed, seized up, and then gave out, just like his car.

Guess Mama must’ve been thinking the same thing too because she starts to bang both her hands against the steering wheel, her head jerking back and forth. When she finishes, Mama’s hands are clutching the steering wheel, her head rests in the crook of her arms. She quietly says, “Damn it, Ezee.” That was my dad’s name, Ezekiel.

Before I can say anything, Mama is already out of the car.

  As I press my hand down on the costumes to get a better visual, I see the smoke billow out from under the car’s hood. 

Great, now I’ll never get there. 

Mama coughs, waving her hand at the cloud of smoke, like that’ll solve the problem. After several minutes pass, Mama pushes the hood of the car back down. I remove my hand from on top of the costumes, allowing the crinoline to breathe, and lean my head against the car window. 

Seconds later, Mama hops into the car, still coughing and hacking. After she regains control of her breath, I ask, “So, what are we gonna do now?”

“Looks like we’ll have to catch the bus.” 

“Ma, I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but we just missed the bus, and knowing M.A.R.T.A —”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right,” says Mama, without need for further explanation of its lack of reliability. Just because Mama says M.A.R.T.A stands for Moving African-Americans Rapidly Through Atlanta doesn’t mean we’re always going to get there on time; we’ve got to be able to catch a bus first.

Mama’s eyebrows knit together as she tries to thread the needle. Then, cracking open her car door, she says, “We’ll just have to walk.”

“Huh? You’re joking, right? That’s like a thirty-minute walk.” And if I know one thing, it’s that if God doesn’t kill me, the Atlanta heat on a Saturday morning will. 

Mama steps out of the car and walks around to my side. She opens my door, grabs the costumes from my lap, and says, “You comin’?”

“But—” 

“The longer you sit there trying to argue with me, the more time we lose. So, Imma asks you again, you comin’?”

I look from Mama’s assured face to the lingering cloud of smoke.

“Ughhh…” Reluctantly, I get out of the car, already feeling the sweat starting to form on the arch of my brow. 

“All right now, take some of these.” Mama hands over about half of the costumes she carries. “Now, let’s go,” she says, turning on her heel.

O

Once Miss Diane’s School of Dance, a one-story white brick building, comes into view, I bolt, leaving Mama in my dust. 

Mama then calls out from behind for me to be careful and that she’ll see me inside. 

“OK,” I respond, as my feet take off, whereas the rest of my body tries to keep up, the crinoline, every now and then, slapping me in the face. 

At the studio door I struggle with the costumes in my arms to grip the handle and pull the door open. 

My best friend, Avae, who on any given day could be mistaken for my twin, sees me through the glass door and rushes over. She pushes the door open while simultaneously grabbing a few costumes from my hands.

“Thanks,” I say, as we scamper down the hall to the right. 

“Why are you so late?” she asks, following me into the storage room.

Inside the storage room bears an uncanny resemblance to the guest bedroom in our house. It’s full of nothing but clothing racks stuffed with outfits and piled-up shoe boxes in the corner. The only difference is that here, instead of a bed, there are two card tables pushed together against the back wall for Mama to work.

About the Author

Ciera Robinson is a native from Atlanta, Georgia, and a second-year MFA student at Columbia University, studying Writing with a concentration in Fiction. Her novel Imperfectly Laced focuses on how colorism affects the lives and dance careers of two teenage black girls, Makeda and Vashti, living in Atlanta.