Fill for this prompt: http://trans-writers-net.tumblr.com/post/150035560605/this-weeks-prompt
Sophia had not knit in years. She learned on long car trips, stuffed between her brothers and sisters in an old, creaking station wagon, somewhere in the middle of who knows where. Her father would play songs on the radio or static when that was all he could get. Her mother would read stories when the static became to much to bear, tales from a thick leather bound book that Sophia had never seen the inside of. Sometimes, she thought it was empty and that her mother would conjure the stories out of thin air. But if her mother could conjure stories, it was not then fair that her father could not conjure songs, and his music depended on the whims of the waves.
The car was always hot. Never enough to be unbearable but enough that at least a few small voices would complain, especially when Sophia brought out her yarn. She couldn’t knit very well. Long scarves, blankets, even longer scarves. That was about the peak of her ability. But it kept her hands busy and her mind busier and that was all she needed.
Sometimes the little car would stop on the side of the road, buy fruit at small stands that blurred together into one indistinguishable mass of scents and colors and folding tables. Peaches, pears, apples, mangoes, passionfruit, kiwi. Some grown locally and the rest had to be. Thick juice dripping down her chin and onto her yarn until it got all tangle and sticky and she had to stop her scarf, large enough for her whole family to warm their necks together like the sun couldn’t do it for them.
Sophia’s first house reminded her of the fruit stands in some ways. Folding tables and folding chairs and folding beds and her whole life could fold away into a neat little package that she could put into the closet when company came over. She slotted her life in next to her yarn and her needles and brought it out only when she was alone and she needed time to think.
No one ever brought out their fruit to sell in the rain. The smell of the peaty earth and engine oil from the highways overwhelmed the delicate scents of the produce. You couldn’t buy anything you couldn’t follow your nose to. Sophia’s first house reminded her of the fruit stands. The roof dripped every time the rains came and her yarn soaked through and mildewed and there went a blanket to wrap around her shoulders, washed away in the spring rains. April showers bring May flowers crowned in tatters of scarves.
Eventually, Sophia stopped knitting. Her yarn and her needles gathered dust even as she unfolded herself. First, the bed. Cotton sheets, cotton comforter, cotton stuffing in cotton pillows. Solid wood bedframe and cast iron decorations. Much harder to get up the stairs.
Then her folding tables and folding chairs, plastic melting back into the fossils that had formed it, deep steady rock foundation for a house with a dust dry roof. Company came and company went like the rolling tides of radio waves out in the middle of nowhere, singing to her in a sea of static, rattling air conditioners, and the smell of fresh fruit.
And always, company left and all she had left were stories. Sophia could never conjure stories of her own and the thick leather book stayed in the old station wagon, tucked away into the glove box next to the tangle of yarn that had been Sophia’s first creation.
Her last creation went unfinished, half completed, half curled up in itself, waiting to unfold. A baby blue blanket for a bouncing baby boy, gold needles in blue yarn, a skein at her feet like a child waiting for a story, and thick around her head lay the heavy scent of half-rotted fruit.
