Distaff

Abstract

FICTION Distaff Melodi Goff It was a dog's job, and whatever powers had named the tools of her trade had known it. Loom, warp, woof, yarn—something unusually big, misshapen—and something whose Latin root means "rupture." But she kept at her work, sending the shuttle singing through the warp and humming the tune her mother had always hummed. Maybe her grandmother , or her grandmother's grandmother, had known the words to the tune: all that remained now in the family was a hummed melody. Her daughter knew it, but she hummed it in an office; her son knew it, and he sometimes caught himself whistling the harmony as he watched various machines create precise metal tools unblemished by human hands. His father had whistled that same harmony in the fields, or at his anvil. The ringing of his hammer, the low whistling, and the humming and whooshing from their mother's loom, was the West Virginia lullaby each child loved and longed for. Only half the tune could be played now, and its endurance through uncounted generations was spent. So she found herself musing over her work, sensing death looming over her and longing to woof at it, but knowing the weight on her heart would only come out as a howl. And yet in her weaving was her only source of knowing: the feel of the yarn, the creak of the frame, the thickness of the warp's voice told her what her eyes could no longer see. The weaving was her only absolute certainty, and only through it could she believe in family and God. In the long winter months she had grown too crippled with arthritis to move much, and her daughter fussed with her to stay away from the loom, to stay under warm quilts on her lonely bed. When one particularly bad day found her curled on the floor with yarn tangled around her blackening fingers and her lips bleeding from her fall, her son spoke of sending her to a nursing home. But the children knew something of their mother, and finally compromised by moving the loom right beside the bed, if she would finally agree to an indoor toilet and a telephone. Cleaning the outhouse, or digging a new hole, was a man's job — leave it to modernization to dump a man's chore on the woman! The compromise was decidedly one-sided. The telephone had to be equipped Melodi Goff lives with her husband and four children in Jefferson City, Tennessee. 35 with a "ringer off" switch, and everyone knew that "ringer on" would never be. After all, she could always call out if she needed help. And if she couldn't call out, then it was just God's time to take her home. Regarding the bathroom, it was accepted only on the condition that her son (son, not daughter) would come and clean it once a week. She would, of course, clean the tub and sink as she had always done, but the toilet would remain a man's job till her dying day. She noticed, with some concern, the look of relief stealing across old Mr. Myron's eyes when he was told the old outhouse would be filled in. But the decision was made, and she found, despite herself, much pleasure in both "frivolities." She could call the preacher religiously to reprimand him for his erroneous sermons, a task she was unable to complete these past five homebound years. And, wicked though she still thought it was, being able to relieve herself in the warmth of the house was delightful. As she feared, it caused her to spend much more time than reasonable at such business, and she became so lax as to permit herself to rise in the middle of the night to tend to a bodily demand which would otherwise have waited, miserable though she be, till morning . On the better side her son was now obliged to visit her weekly; he was always willing to chat a while before knuckling down to his job. He often brought Holly, his granddaughter, and she loved her greatgrandmother 's oft-repeated tales. Her son told...