Small magic
After a typhoon destroyed my father’s brick factory in our hometown, my mother brought back a large box of beads from the town factory. She said she had always liked handicrafts, but when we were younger she never had the time. Now that we were older, with my older sister twelve, me ten, the next sister eight, and my brother six, she could finally return to something she enjoyed. “Don’t worry. We’ll manage to borrow money to rebuild the factory,” she told my father over the phone, who was still in our hometown five hours away. “I’ll handle our living expenses.”
She sat in front of the television every day, stringing bracelets and necklaces as she watched her shows. She taught my sisters and me how to choose beads and match colors, and how to guide thin thread through bead holes so tiny they made you anxious. “Dark blue with light blue looks like sea and sky,” she said, rolling a frosted bead in her fingers. “Add a white one and you have a wave.” We concentrated hard; even my brother wandered over. His little hands grabbed fistfuls of beads, and my mother let him play until he got bored and climbed back onto the sofa to watch Doraemon.
She also brought home bags of plastic petals, stamens, and leaves. She showed us how to glue petals around a stamen, how to wrap green tape around wire to make a stem, and how to attach the leaves in just the right spot. But we complained about the sharp smell of glue and how plastic flowers lacked the scent of real ones. “Use your imagination,” my mother said. “We’re conjuring blossoms.” She told us we were magicians capable of creating beautiful, fragrant flower fairies, though she opened a window and set the fan facing outward for fresh air.
Handicrafts were not as joyful as she claimed. My older sister grumbled about her homework; my younger sister kept saying she was tired. One by one, they slipped back to their rooms. Only I remained, learning, amid the noise of cartoons, how to “grow” a singing flower in the fastest way. “What a lovely voice,” my mother said. “More melodious than a yellow warbler.”
One evening she carried home a bundle of half-finished clothes. “Flower season is over,” she declared. “Today we sew buttons.” She called it a skill every good girl should know.
We disliked it immediately. “Our summer uniforms don’t even have buttons. The winter ones have zippers,” my older sister said. “The needle keeps poking me,” I added. My younger sister cried outright after pricking her finger.
“Practice a few more times. Be careful. You’ll see, it’s easy,” my mother coaxed us, forcing a small smile. “Think of it this way. You’re letting the clothes bear fruit.”
We shook our heads. Even my brother frowned.
“Sewing buttons,” my mother explained, “is just the foundation. Once you learn it, you can make cloth dolls, knit sweaters, even do physics experiments.”
“This isn’t fun at all!” I burst out. “Handicrafts are your hobby, not ours.”
My younger sister sniffled; my older sister buried herself in her workbook. My brother had long since crawled under the table.
My mother looked at the buttons scattered across the floor and sighed. She pulled a strand of bright yellow thread from the box and, holding it under the light, slowly slid it through the needle’s eye.
“What do these buttons look like to you?” she asked. Before we could answer, she picked up a small round white one. “Doesn’t this look like a tiny robot face? See, the top two holes are eyes and the bottom two are nostrils.”
My younger sister stopped crying, peeking through her fingers.
My mother then picked up a square brown button. “This looks like a dirt block from your video game,” she told my brother. “If we sew it on with green thread, grass will grow right on top.”
My brother peeked over the edge of the table.
“And you,” she said, handing me a clear blue button, “hold it to the light. Doesn’t it look like a trapped water droplet?” Then she picked up a red button with floral patterns and dangled it in front of my older sister. “This one makes a perfect emblem for a magical girl.”
When she saw us watching her again, she smiled. “Each button is a little spirit waiting to wake up. And this needle,” she said, raising the threaded needle, “is the wand. When the wand touches the spirit’s heart, it will stay on your clothes and never run away.”
“So,” she asked, “who wants to wake the first little spirit?”
We glanced at one another and raised our hands together.
Huina Zheng holds an M.A. with Distinction in English Studies and works as a college essay coach. Her stories have been published in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, Midway Journal, and other reputed publications. Her work has been nominated thrice for both the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net. She resides in Guangzhou, China with her family.
