Seamstress of Hearts

I am Adora. I am a human except on those few occasions when I think myself completely changing into a weightless creature and flying to do the mending.
I grew up in a poor town.

Being poor does not mean that we aren’t happy or not going to school. It means that we have very limited material things. I only have a school uniform, and I am lucky that I had it new as I don’t have sisters or brother. I have a pair of shoe, two pony bands, set of shining bangles, and a new dress.

My new dress is blue. It’s been two years I bought it but it always looks new to me. I play a game of imagination when I wear my new dress. I imagine that it’s new and I haven’t worn it earlier.

Our house is big with few things. My father had little space for sowing vegetable. He has a turban and two dresses in total. Mama is a seamstress. She has needles and five colored threads. She has two dresses and a pair of silver earrings.

All the people in my town have more or few things. We are content and merry. My story of how I turn to a creature sometimes and then go on mending business is interesting.

*****

One day I broke the buckle of my school shoes. The tears tripped trip trip trip down my cheeks. I knew my father could never buy me new ones. I sat despairingly until the time he arrived. He sat near me drenched in sweat calling my mother, “What happened to dear daughter? I see her sad, and that makes my heart bleed.”

My mother told that I haven’t said a word since I arrived from school. I brought my shoe and showed them to my father.

My father smiled and said, “No problem lets mend them.”

He took me to the cobbler and asked to repair my shoe. The cobbler in our town is crafty. He fixed it perfectly. I tried to figure out the place from where he mended it and found on carefully inspecting it. I felt happy.

Every year on 23rd of April, we have a whimsy party in woods. In this party, we dress beautifully and play the characters we want. Once I became a father and once I became a mother. This year I decided to be a cobbler. When I took out my new dress and tried to wear it, the sleeves felt tight, and I couldn’t get my hand inside. I felt sad and struggled when I heard a cheeeeeeeeeeeek like voice and saw my sleeves were torn.

I ran crying to my mother. She took out her needle and set to stitch my dress. She is an expert. She sewed the holes to perfection. I looked delicately but couldn’t notice the holes. However, when I turned the fabric back, I saw the stitch marks.

One day the rain felt heavy. The large drops fell like stones on the roof and made the sound drip drap drip drap. In the morning, I found that the upper wall to my play area was nowhere and all I see instead was a heap of bricks and mud. I ran breathlessly to my father telling him of my misfortune.

He came smiling with a bricklayer, and together they laid the bricks and applied the cement. For the day they sprinkled water. After that, it was all set. My father promised that it would not break again. I saw the cracks in the wall but couldn’t see them. Maybe they were hidden, but I knew they were present.
It took more incidents to make me know that we can mend the things. Whenever someone came to me running telling of their broken things, I tell them where to go to mend them.

It was a clear evening with the sun setting behind the horizons. Cool breezes touched my toes, and I felt a tickling like sensation, when Sania, my best friend came to me. She is different because she has a very dark complexion and big lips. She has curly hairs. People say she doesn’t look beautiful, but whenever I see her, I find her more attractive than before.

Between her sobs, she uttered, “Can you mend”…sobs… “Can you mend”…sobs, I replied anxiously, “I know how to fix everything but tell me what you want to be mended.”

She pointed at her chest saying, “It’s my heart that is broken, can you mend it…”

I thought heart heart heart, can I ment it with a needle or thread, the reply was no, then thought can I use gum over it, the answer was no. I also thought can I use cement to fix it; the answer was no. I thought of all the things like a stapler or tape or the dough or anything but found nothing that could fix her heart.

She kept sobbing when I told her, “No I can’t mend your heart nor can anyone else. But how it broke.”

She replied, “It’s the boys and girls from school they said they don’t want to play with me as I am dark as coal, and my lips are like blood and I seem like a witch, and I look ugly.”

She ran away without waiting, and I went crying to mother and father saying, “Can anyone mend hearts?”

Both of them looked perplexed. I kept repeating my question ignoring their concerned remarks when my mother said, “Yes, kind words, a pleasant smile, and empathy can mend hearts but listen the stitches are weak, and it bleeds whenever touched even weakly.”

I went the other day to Sania and smiled sweetly giving her a hug and whispering in her ears, “You look adorable, and I love you.”

The words did magic, and she smiled forgetting the harshness of the words that broke her heart.

So I wrote beautiful stories, and these stories are the weightless part of me. I send them to kids who have broken hearts.