Silk Stalking
Antoinette Brown
I was awakened by the jangle of my phone.
“Martha? It’s Roberta. Did I wake you?”
Of course you woke me. It’s not even nine a.m. But that’s not what I said. “I’m awake.” I struggled to free myself from my blankets and sat up.
“You’ll never guess what happened to the guest speaker after quilt guild last night.”
“She caught her plane and went home to her posh lifestyle and mansion in Spokane or wherever she came from?” I guessed.
“No.” Roberta paused for dramatic effect, as she always does. “She was hit over the head and left for dead in the parking lot outside the meeting room.”
Now I was really awake. “How terrible. What about Joyce? Wasn’t she taking the speaker to the airport?”
“Hit on the head, too.”
I fumbled for my glasses. I swear I can hear better when I wear my glasses. “But they’re alive, aren’t they?”
“They’re both at Chatham County Regional Hospital for observation. The police aren’t allowing any visitors.”
I sat up slowly. “Do the cops have a motive?”
“They were robbed.” I could hear the outrage in Roberta’s voice as it got louder and louder. “Someone stole the trunk full of fabric Alexi used to illustrate her technique!”
That was serious. “The fabric samples are pieces of art. Irreplaceable,” I said and thought, and worth thousands of dollars. “Like the kimono that was lost in the mail last year. And the quilt stolen from the guild’s show in April.”
“Except nobody killed for those!”
“No one’s dead yet,” I corrected her.
“We have to spread the news among the whole quilting community, all over the world. We have to keep her art from being sold. Maybe even get the pieces back.”
“Yeah, let’s hope so.” I needed a cup of coffee. I stood up. No use trying to get back to sleep, especially once my dogs heard that I was up. “Call me if you hear anything. I have to feed the dogs.”
We crafters know that heirloom quilts and valuable fabric aren’t stolen to be sold. They are stolen by other crafters who covet them. They won’t be sold. They won’t be displayed. They will spend decades in someone’s collection. Someone’s stash. Just like the trunk of silk stolen last night.
No one will see it again until I die and my kids give away my stash.
My name is Martha and I’m a hoarder. I am an addict. There, I’ve said it.
When do I suppose I first entered that state? When was it that “hoarder Martha” took the central role in my personality? And why? What was the drug? Was it the thrill of the hunt for the object of my desire or the pride of ownership? I don’t know, and it’s too late to worry about the details. I only know that that my closets are stuffed with vintage clothing waiting to be deconstructed and reused. My chests of drawers are packed with unfinished projects. Quilt racks hold vintage and contemporary quilts. Bins of fabric fill the bonus room. Hundreds of quilting and sewing books fill the shelves in my office. Sewing supplies are stacked on shelves that line my bonus room. Baskets hold colored pencils, markers, and dozens of seam rippers. I lose them all over the house wherever I’m ripping apart vintage clothing and they get buried so I have to buy new ones.
Every flat surface in my home is covered with fabric, sewing supplies, half-finished quilts, deconstructed thrift store clothing. The coffee table, the dining room table, the stairs to the bonus room, the blanket chest. If it’s wide enough for a pair of scissors, it’s covered.
But I do have a few saving graces. I can say that my hoard is no larger than most. I’m able to fit it all into my two-bedroom house. I never stored anything in my attic. Some of my fellow hoarders have to rent storage units or build sheds in their yards. And I only have two sewing machines, one of which is still sitting in its box and has never been used because I don’t have a flat surface for it.
My son Dan fears I won’t be able to pay my bills. He worries I’ll become dependent on him and his sister. He doesn’t understand that I’m really not that far gone. Actually, I’ve never paid much for the stuff in my stash, except the buttons. My buttons have made the transition from hoard to collection.
The fabric, ribbons, patterns, thread, and zippers I’ve bought mostly on sale or from thrift stores. Sometimes I accepted them from friends who were downsizing and needed to get rid of them. But I haven’t accepted everything I’ve been offered, which I think speaks to my self-control. I only keep natural fabrics. Silks, cottons, linens.
My kids are embarrassed, naturally.
Dan called the Health Department. The Health Department sent out an inspector, but he didn’t do anything because I’m not a public health risk. Despite Dan’s concerns I’m not a filthy hoarder. No dirty dishes in the sink. No mold in the shower. Nothing in the attic that could start a fire. My son walks through the house when he comes over. He checks the fridge and the closets. I understand his anxiety. He can’t bring his daughter or his dog over for me to babysit if the house is filthy. I think that keeping my house clean enough for my granddaughter also speaks to my self-control.
And until recently, I’d never committed a crime to add to my stash. I’ve shoplifted an expensive button from time to time, but who hasn’t?
Fabric is hard to steal. It comes wrapped on large heavy bolts. Even remnants can be as large as baguettes. The only fabric I can steal comes in small cuts like fat quarters or charm packs of five-inch squares. I don’t bother with them, but I have noticed that the clerks at my favorite store seem to watch me closely. I wonder if they can see the madness in my eyes. Perhaps they recognize it in themselves.
Of all fabrics, the one I most crave is silk. Silk comes from the cocoons of silkworm larvae. The cocoons are soaked in water to release fibers that are wound on spools. The fibers are woven into fabric on looms. Silk production is slow and labor intensive, which makes silk costlier than other fabric. It’s also more beautiful than any other fabric and feels divine to the touch. Smooth and luxurious. Just last week a piece of eucalyptus and rose hand-dyed silk habotai sold for a hundred and nineteen dollars. It was barely two yards long and thirty-eight inches wide. I could never afford a piece like that.
I used to buy small pieces online, bits of vintage saris and fragments of ball gowns from the 1920s. Even they cost ten or twenty dollars apiece. From them, I created precious little leather wallet books. I page through the books at night, caressing the fabric. But that only made my greed grow. I wanted the good stuff and lots of it.
To satisfy my need, I devised an elaborate scheme to exchange cheap silk for better. A form of alchemy. I created a page on a popular social media site offering to exchange donated rectangles of silk to benefit a fictitious charity that was not explicitly identified. The goal was five hundred rectangles. I knew I could harvest that much silk from the clothing I purchased inexpensively from thrift shops, carefully deconstructed and now stored in large bins in my bonus room.
At first, only a few silk rectangles arrived in the mail. I dutifully sent scraps back in exchange. When I received a piece I didn’t want, I substituted it for one of my discards and kept the process going. Eventually, after weathering ebbs and flows, I received a flood of silk: dupioni, raw silk, jacquards, and brocades.
I placed each treasured rectangle in an acid-free sleeve, along with any correspondence that was included, and put it in a notebook. I soon had five large notebooks of gorgeous silk fragments, all documented. I used up dozens of inexpensive vintage silk dresses and skirts and made room for more.
Finally the silk rectangles frittered out, and I needed a new source. Our local quilt guild invited a speaker from Washington State who dyed silk fabrics using a specialized technique. First the fabric was prepared to remove its finish and a resist applied to produce a design. Dye was mixed and added to a liquid solution. The fabric was immersed in the dye bath, drained and the color fixed by steaming. Then, the silk was rinsed in cold water and line-dried. She supplemented her presentation with samples of her dyed silk that we were free to examine. I fingered the silk and rubbed it on my face. It was soft and smooth and cool to the touch. The jewel tones were intense, vibrant, intoxicating. Emerald green, ruby red, magenta, and royal blue. I had to have them.
I tried to hide my excitement. “Are the samples for sale?” I asked the speaker.
“No, they’re for demonstration only,” she replied. “You can sign up for my class, and I’ll teach you how to dye silk yourself.”
Sure, I thought. Pay the class fee, fly to Washington, pay an additional supply fee, and spend three days up to my elbows in chemicals. No way. I wanted them now.
What to do? I had to improvise. “How are you getting to the airport?” I asked innocently.
Joyce elbowed me aside. “I’m taking her to the airport.” She helped the speaker pack her silk samples, yards and yards of them, into a dark navy blue travel case.
I thanked the speaker vociferously, said grand farewells to women I hardly knew, and made my way to the parking lot. I made a show of smiling and waving to cars in front of me. I took my time, spending nearly thirty minutes in the parking lot until only one other car remained. I drove out, circled around the building, and hid my Subaru behind the trash bins.
I took off one of my taupe support stockings and pulled it over my face. Not something I would want to do on a regular basis. If I had planned this in advance, I would have chosen a more loosely woven fabric for my mask, perhaps cotton gauze.
I opened the trunk of my car and dug out the tire iron stored under the spare tire. I put on a pair of forest green stretch gloves I stored in the car for cold nights. I’d seen enough cop shows to know that I didn’t want to leave fingerprints.
I waited until I saw two women leave the building, struggling with the navy blue travel case carried between them and walking in the direction of the only other car in the dark parking lot. My heart pounded, and sweat poured down my face and back.
I approached them, waving with one hand and holding the tire iron behind my back with the other.
“Let me help you with that,” I mumbled through my stocking. They looked in my direction. Before they could say anything, I rushed forward and hit the speaker on the top of her head with my weapon. She fell to the ground. Joyce screamed, backed away, and tripped. She struggled to get up but I yanked off her glasses and smashed them with my foot. Her screaming was getting on my nerves so I hit her on the head too.
I tucked the tire iron under my arm and tried to pick up the case. It was too heavy for me to lift, so I grabbed one handle and dragged it across the parking lot to my car. The sound of the metal edges of the case scraping on asphalt was deafening, but I would not let myself stop. I maneuvered it into my trunk, pulled off the stocking and gloves, and drove away. What possessed me to attack those two women? I have never hit anyone before in my life. What madness had come over me?
I had to get rid of the evidence. On the way home, I stopped at a thrift store parking lot where I emptied the case and ditched it. I drove home, pulled into my garage, and sobbed. Have I become incorrigible? After ten or fifteen minutes, I went inside and slept after ingesting twice my usual dose of sleeping pills.
Roberta called me the next morning. But of course, you know that. Later I unloaded my valuable cargo from the car and spread it over my living room floor. I handled each sample and admired its beauty. My little dogs came over to investigate, but I put them in their crates. No dog hair on this gorgeous hand-dyed silk.
It took eight trips up the stairs to move the fabric samples. I distributed them among my ten bins, all carefully organized by color. It felt good to have that part done, to have them where they should be.
In the end, I wish there had been an easier way. But silk, really fabric in general, is much too expensive to pay for all I need. And it’s not like I killed anyone. Those women will be fine, and I bet that that speaker has a stash twice the size of mine. Three times!
I’ll have to hunker down for a while until this blows over, but if I’ve learned anything from my experience it’s that I must find more creative ways to add to my stash. Maybe organizing a silk-dying competition. Possibly hosting a workshop.