One yard of satin was all that she had. Pink satin—the color of early rosebuds, and the color of a grandmother’s lost love. There were trimmings inside, too; a few lace embellishments, beads woven in white. A small strip of Velcro. She didn’t need much, after all.
Outside my office door, she cried to my friend, “I tried. I did. But I don’t have the strength. I bought all that’s needed. Do you know anyone who can make it for me?”
My heart pounded painfully. I had no experience and no sewing machine. Didn’t know how to start. But I had to say something. I poked my head out from the crack in the door. “I can do it.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, though not about my skill. It was really a code: “You don’t know who I am. Don’t know what I’ve been through. I have nothing to give you. Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“I can do it,” I said again, taking the bag. “I’ll have it by Friday.”
“Thank you,” she said, tearfully nodding, wiping her face before getting to work. Life had to go on, and she had to move forward. But the world had stopped spinning. The future was empty. Much like the sweet crib that was ready and waiting, but never an occupant would it send to sleep.
There wasn’t a pattern, but I started cutting. A crescent-moon neckline. Two tubes for the sleeves. Stitch by stitch, sprawled out on my living room floor, the dress came together. I thought of my mother. Of my sister, Rachael, who I’d known all my life, though I’d never met her. I thought about her birthday in early December, of the story told many times of her birth.
“My water broke,” Mom said. “But something was wrong. My belly was flat. I stood in the snow, alone with your father, not sure what was happening. I made him promise me, ‘If I lose this baby, swear you’ll give me another one.’”
My dad, only twenty-one at the time, couldn’t believe his ears. “What?”
“You heard me. Swear, if something is wrong, you’ll give me a new baby.”
My dad said, “Okay.” He barely knew my mother, and they weren’t a couple. He wasn’t the father of the child she carried. But he packed up his Subi with Mom alongside him and rushed her to the hospital. To this day, he’s never told me what that trip was like, but knowing my mother, I doubt it was silent.
Mom’s belly was quiet. A quick c-section. From what Dad had told me, Rachael was born blue. Trisomy 18, also known as Edward’s, had taken her before she could take her first breath. Tiny pink lips and ears that were pointed and elvish. The baby was beautiful, but she was gone.
Someone asked Mom what name she had chosen—heartbroken, she was embarrassed to say that the child had no name. She called the bump, “Bag-ey,” a cute form of bagel, for bun in the oven.
“Why not Rachael?” the stranger suggested. It fit. So Rachael she was, and would now always be.
My aunts—not through blood, but my mom’s chosen family—couldn’t have been more different. Aunt B insisted on rushing to Mom’s house and clearing the nursery, like it never even happened. This wasn’t surprising, as B had zero intentions of ever having a kid of her own. Being callous was simply part of who she was.
L was a bit different. She was Southern and sweet. Aunt L was brave because she had to be and asked the doctor to bring in the baby. Together, they mourned over her tiny body, and sometime in those moments, a picture was taken.
It was L who knew it was time for farewell. After Mom said goodbye, L took Rachael to the nurses outside, the last time she was seen.
Dad fell in love with Mom that winter, and he kept his promise to give her more children. Rachael was a miracle after Mom had a bout of cervical cancer; she’d been told she couldn’t have babies at all. But my next sister arrived two years later, and I came along four years after that.
So it made sense when my crying coworker came in that I had to say something. Her daughter’s pregnancy ended in tragedy, and the child needed something to wear in the casket. A girl with dark hair and a sweetly pinched pout. She deserved every prick of my inexperienced fingers. Every hour of agonizing over the seams - were they straight? It was simply the least I could do.
Now that I am older with kids of my own, I appreciate more how something so small meant more than I could ever imagine and so much greater than the sum of its parts. A single yard of satin. A bag filled with trimmings. A forever angel’s pink dress with small roses. One of thousands of children who never saw birthdays, in thousands of families who don’t speak of such things.
I sewed it for all of them. Sewed it for Mom. Sewed it for Rachael. And I pray to never have to sew one again.
