The Button

By Tassoula Tsilimeni (Rendered by Vassilis C. Militsis)

I was looking at her lying on her back, her hands crossed on her chest and touching the third cypress green suit button. She had had that suit sewn at Angela’s forty years before. At that time she was overweight and tried to tidy herself up with corsets and girdles. That suit was her favorite but it was not often worn. She kept it as her Sunday best, only to be worn on special occasions, which were gradually becoming scarcer as the years went by. Hung inside the walnut wardrobe, wrapped in a white sheet, shrouded as it were, had been waiting winter in, summer out breathing moth balls.

The suit was always imbued with the mothball odor however she used to sun it every spring. She had never had it altered. Twenty years later she had a broach attached on the lapel. The broach was made fast on a guilt setting and was surrounded by a crown of stones and deep-crimson mock flowers. She was fond of such contrast. Now forty pounds underweight, skinny and much shorter she was floating inside her suit. However, this difference was imperceptible now in her supine position. As I am gazing at her, I am under the impression that her fingers are caressing the big buttons of the same fabric, in the way she was caressing them that Shrove Monday.

We had gone on an outing with two friendly and neighborly couples to Makrychori to stare at the carnival mock wedding staged by the Local Cultural Club according to the custom of the day. Since she did not often use to go out, she donned her new suit for the first time. She had her hair coiffed high on her head and her ears were hung with gold rings that dangled every time she moved. I remember her being gay and constantly mirthful. The company thought that she was laughing with Theano’s jokes and japes. But my father and I knew very well that all that laughter was the effect of the suit she was wearing. It had been on her mind for years and she had always been putting off wearing it. Those were hard times, we were a family of three children, the wages were meager, and we were trying like all in the neighborhood to take root, being immigrants, as it were, in our own land. That was in the 60’s when the surrounding villages generously catered for the city. At nights everyone had the same dream in their slumbers; a humanely decent present for the grownups and a better future for their children. That was why their circle grew so cohesive. Likewise our kid company grew also as tight as a knot. Most of us were of the same age. We went to school together, we roamed the vacant lots together and we were looking forward to the coming of the ice-cream peddler on the sultry summer afternoons.

The women had just left their husbands at the tavern, where they were cutting the last figures of a zeibekiko dance then in fashion. We, kids, sometimes went out and wandered around the toy stalls, sometimes we hung around the juke-box staring admiringly at the magical way the small record automatically fell on the turntable and began to play as if guided by an unseen hand. Theano, Kyratso and my mother crossed the road to go to the square to secure a good place for the events of the Carnival before they started. They were laughing while they were walking briskly, their pumps sinking in the newly wet soil. You see, it was still February. Suddenly – no one had taken any notice of it – my mother fell down. At that moment my father was coming out of the tavern and seeing her flat on the ground hurried along with the others to help her onto her feet. I could not see her as a large crowd had gathered around her. When I finally ran to the scene, she was already standing. Kyratso was dusting the skirt and Theano the back of her suit while my father leaning over was asking again and again; “Have you hurt, Stella? Have you? Where?” and he was blowing on her knee. Thin rills of blood ran down her leg and big holes, like burst gum bubbles, gaped through her pantyhose. Cold sweat ran down the small of my back and I was about to be sick. While the others were trying to see if and how much she got hurt, my mother, her face pale, was fumbling the coat buttons. Mister Foris picked up and showed us a piece of barbed wire that lay on the sidewalk, a relic of the works that had been done in the village square the previous days in view of the festivities of the day. Her face was contorted by a grimace while my mother’s possible pain made me feel sick again. The blood, dark and thick now, ran parallel to her green varicose vain down to her ankle. She could hardly refrain from concealing a tear when she saw the orphaned suit button hole. (The button was missing). Along the hole there was a tiny rip as if it was the rupture of virginity. My father caressed her hair whispering; “Don’t fret! Angela is the best at mending clothes”. The rest of the day her hand rested on the buttonhole. She was caressing it rather than hiding it; and she was groping for the missing button, which was never found however hard we searched.

Now that I regard her wearing the same suit and lying with her bony, tiny hands on her chest tied in a white ribbon, I remain with the notion that she is still caressing or fumbling for that missing button.

Tassoula Tsilimeni is Associate Professor at the Pedagogical Department of Early School Education of Thessaly University. She teaches subjects relating to children literature (Narration and Fiction) and generally to books about children. She is responsible for the “Printed Pedagogical Material” unit of the post graduate studies of Thessaly University. Her interests are focused on the theory and teaching methodology of children’s literature as it is implemented on Pre-school Education. She has expounded her views, concerns and studies at relevant congresses. Her works have appeared in journals as well as in collective or personal publications. She is a coordinator and member of the drafting group of the text collection for 1^st and 2^nd elementary school grades of the Pedagogical Institute under the title To Delfini (The Dolphin). She is also engaged with writing children’s literature books and theoretical ones for adults. She is the director of the electronic magazine Keimena (Texts) dealing with issues of children’s literature and published by the Laboratory of Language and Culture of Thessaly University. She is also a member of Greek Children’s Book Circle, Women’s Literary Fellowship and since 2004 she has been a member of the Diadromes (Courses) magazine drafting committee. She is the president of the Olympus Narration Festival, realized biennially under the auspices of Thessaly University since 2003. Last but not least she is a founding member and President of the Board of Directors of the Panhellenic Friends of Narration Association.