Martha smelled of bleach and cheap laundry detergent. This scent had eaten into her skin, her hair, into her very essence over twenty years of washing other people's floors. She poured the contents of a canvas bag onto the counter. Coins, crumpled bills bound with a rubber band. The money jingled pitifully and quietly.
The Tailor
didn't even look at the pile of change. He looked at the woman's hands—red,
swollen from water and detergents, with cracked nails. “There is exactly enough
here,” Martha said, catching his gaze. She hid her hands in the pockets of her
old coat. “I saved for seven years.”
“For a
rainy day?” the Tailor asked indifferently. “For the brightest day. For prom.
For Lily, my daughter.”
Martha
leaned forward, and a fanatical spark of maternal sacrifice lit up in her dull
eyes. “I want you to sew her a dress. Not just a beautiful one. I want... I
want her to have a different life. Not like mine. I want her not to know what
dirt is. Not to count pennies. I want her to be... above all this. Do you
understand?”
The Tailor
took off his glasses and wiped them, looking at Martha with a strange, almost
surgical pity. “‘Above all this’,” he repeated. “You are asking to sew an
outfit of Untouchability. This is the purest matter. It doesn't just
repel dirt, Martha. It rejects the very environment that generates this dirt.”
“I don’t
care,” the woman shook her head stubbornly. “Lily deserves the best. She must
shine.” “Light does not mix with darkness,” the Tailor warned quietly. “If she
becomes too pure for this world, this world will cease to hold her. Are you
prepared for the distance between you to become... insurmountable?”
“I am a
mother,” Martha answered proudly. “I am ready for anything, just so she breaks
out of this hole.”
The dress
arrived on the day of the prom. It seemed that its fabric was woven not from
threads, but from morning mist and the first ray of the sun. It was so dazzling
that it was painful to look at in the semi-darkness of their wretched apartment
with peeling wallpaper.
“Mom, it’s
wonderful!” Lily, a fragile, pale girl, pressed the fabric to her chest. “Put
it on, honey. Quickly.”
As soon as
Lily fastened the last button, the room changed. Or rather, Lily changed. The
dress fit perfectly, enveloping her in a soft, trembling radiance. She
straightened up. In her posture appeared the grace of a queen who had
accidentally walked into a stable.
Martha stepped toward her daughter to fix a curl, and suddenly her hand stopped. She could not touch her daughter. Between her rough palm and Lily's shoulder, an elastic cushion of air seemed to appear.
“You are so beautiful,” Martha
whispered, feeling a sudden coldness in her chest. “Let’s go, or you’ll
be late.”
They went
out onto the stairwell. The entrance was habitually terrible: walls covered in
writing, the smell of cats, cigarette butts on the floor. Martha habitually
stepped over puddles of spilled beer, holding the heavy door. “Lily, careful,
it’s dirty here!” she shouted, turning around.
But Lily
didn't look at her feet. The girl walked straight through a puddle of filthy
sludge. Martha gasped, expecting to see stains on the snow-white hem. But the
mud did not touch the fabric. The hem passed through the puddle as if it
were a hologram. Splashes did not fly. Trash did not stick. Lily floated a
centimeter above the floor, not touching the concrete.
They went
out into the yard. Neighbors sat by the entrance—heavy, tired women in
bathrobes. “Hello, Martha,” one of them nodded. “Why are you alone? Where is
your beauty? It's prom night.”
Martha
froze. “What do you mean alone?” she turned around. “Here she is! Lily!”
Lily stood
two steps away. She was smiling, looking somewhere up, into the sky that was
not visible behind the gray walls of the buildings. She shone so brightly it
hurt the eyes. But the neighbors looked through her. For them, stuck in dirt
and gossip, absolute purity was invisible. Their eyes could not perceive such a
spectrum of light.
“Lily...”
whispered Martha, reaching out her hand.
The girl
turned her head. Her gaze slid over her mother but did not linger. She
looked at her like a stranger. In her new, “better” world, woven of success
and light, tired cleaning women in old coats did not exist. The mother had
become part of the landscape for her—that very stain on the wall that you
simply stop noticing over time.
“Mom?”
Lily's voice sounded like the ringing of crystal, but it came as if from the
other bank of a wide river. “I’m coming. They are waiting for me.”
The girl took a step. In front of her was a fence enclosing the dumpster. Lily did not go around it. She simply walked through the rusty mesh, like a ray of light passes through glass.
She moved away, becoming brighter, more transparent,
dissolving into the golden sunset inaccessible to the residents of this yard.
“Lily, come
back!” Martha screamed, rushing after her. She crashed into the fence,
painfully hitting her shoulder and scratching her hands on the rust.
She saw the
shining silhouette moving away. To where there is no poverty. To where there is
no dirt. To where there is no Martha.
The dress
worked flawlessly. To live in a better world, one had to stop being part of
this one. Martha slid down the rusty fence onto the dirty asphalt and sobbed,
clutching emptiness in her hands, while her daughter, happy and invisible,
dissolved into eternal radiance.
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