those children and the grandparents too. They’ll suffer this winter if he doesn’t sell it.”
“He’d get a better price in Seattle,” Uncle Jeremiah said.
Two hundred dollars seemed an amazing price to me,but shopkeepers were a strange bunch. They didn’t care how long it took you to make a thing or how famous your family was for carving or weaving. They wanted a thing because some other shopkeeper had one or maybe because there was a nearly identical mask at the World’s Fair. I took a closer look and saw, behind the mask, a woven blanket and a price card that said AUTHENTIC INDIAN BLANKET , HAND-WOVEN , $200.
I couldn’t believe it, a blanket worth as much as a man’s mask! And it wasn’t even a Chilkat blanket, with the perfect circles and patterns that show the faces of Bear or Raven. It was a plain Salish blanket with broad stripes in three colors. It was finely woven, probably one of the older dog wool blankets, but still, if I could learn to weave, I’d have blankets worth twice as much. It wouldn’t matter if no chief or famous house could give me a commission. I’d sell to white collectors and museums. The baskets were pathetic by comparison—two dollars, five at the very most for the big ones. The shopkeeper didn’t set a higher price for Dora’s or Annabelle’s work, even though it was better than anything else in the store.
That’s it, I promised myself. I’ll weave, and then I’ll have enough money to buy my own wool and pearl buttons for a button blanket, enough money to stay on my own land. As we moved on down the street, I remembered the design my father had drawn for me. I figuredyards of wool in red and black and imagined how I would decorate the borders. Maybe I would make an outline of waves to represent the dreams of my father, to show that I was a daughter of whalers.
The department store was a block farther on. The men headed downstairs for tools and hardware. The women skipped the ready-made clothes and church hats on the main floor and went up the broad wooden staircase for dry goods. Aunt Loula picked out bolts of flannel and broadcloth for shirts, hard canvas for men’s work pants, and plain muslin for underthings. My fingers ached at the thought of all that sewing.
Ida and I matched threads at the ribbon counter. There were two shopgirls there; one was winding new ribbon onto spools, and the other stood at the cutting table, folding and marking remnants. They carried on an easy conversation about the latest Valentino movie and the cut of fall blouses. They were as relaxed with each other as sisters, and I watched them out of the corner of my eye. When I spoke with Anita or Dorothy, we sometimes talked about movies or a book we had read at school, but we never got around to ribbon color or the fashion of ready-made clothes.
The ribbon winder had sea-green eyes and hair as yellow as a fall leaf. She wore it in one thick braid that fell over her shoulder. She took one color of ribbon afteranother and laid it on her shoulder so her friend could admire the effect.
“Baby blue, oh, I don’t know,” she said.
“Blue goes with blond,” the other insisted. “It says so right in the
Ladies Home Journal
.”
“But every Sonja from Little Sweden will be wearing blue,” the ribbon girl said. “How about red, scarlet red!”
The friend burst out laughing. “As if Mrs. Hardy would let you out her door in red. ‘I have a reputation to keep up, young lady, even if you don’t!’ I bet she was a prison matron before she ran our boardinghouse.”
I liked the remnant folder better. She had jet-black hair done up in a twist, brown eyes, and shoulders as broad as mine. She never wasted a motion in folding and labeling her yard goods.
“Lavender, that’s what you want,” the black-haired girl went on. “Soft like blue, but distinctive. Not that you’ve got a penny to spare for ribbon, what with stopping at the chocolate shop every other day.”
“Oh, you can afford
“He’d get a better price in Seattle,” Uncle Jeremiah said.
Two hundred dollars seemed an amazing price to me,but shopkeepers were a strange bunch. They didn’t care how long it took you to make a thing or how famous your family was for carving or weaving. They wanted a thing because some other shopkeeper had one or maybe because there was a nearly identical mask at the World’s Fair. I took a closer look and saw, behind the mask, a woven blanket and a price card that said AUTHENTIC INDIAN BLANKET , HAND-WOVEN , $200.
I couldn’t believe it, a blanket worth as much as a man’s mask! And it wasn’t even a Chilkat blanket, with the perfect circles and patterns that show the faces of Bear or Raven. It was a plain Salish blanket with broad stripes in three colors. It was finely woven, probably one of the older dog wool blankets, but still, if I could learn to weave, I’d have blankets worth twice as much. It wouldn’t matter if no chief or famous house could give me a commission. I’d sell to white collectors and museums. The baskets were pathetic by comparison—two dollars, five at the very most for the big ones. The shopkeeper didn’t set a higher price for Dora’s or Annabelle’s work, even though it was better than anything else in the store.
That’s it, I promised myself. I’ll weave, and then I’ll have enough money to buy my own wool and pearl buttons for a button blanket, enough money to stay on my own land. As we moved on down the street, I remembered the design my father had drawn for me. I figuredyards of wool in red and black and imagined how I would decorate the borders. Maybe I would make an outline of waves to represent the dreams of my father, to show that I was a daughter of whalers.
The department store was a block farther on. The men headed downstairs for tools and hardware. The women skipped the ready-made clothes and church hats on the main floor and went up the broad wooden staircase for dry goods. Aunt Loula picked out bolts of flannel and broadcloth for shirts, hard canvas for men’s work pants, and plain muslin for underthings. My fingers ached at the thought of all that sewing.
Ida and I matched threads at the ribbon counter. There were two shopgirls there; one was winding new ribbon onto spools, and the other stood at the cutting table, folding and marking remnants. They carried on an easy conversation about the latest Valentino movie and the cut of fall blouses. They were as relaxed with each other as sisters, and I watched them out of the corner of my eye. When I spoke with Anita or Dorothy, we sometimes talked about movies or a book we had read at school, but we never got around to ribbon color or the fashion of ready-made clothes.
The ribbon winder had sea-green eyes and hair as yellow as a fall leaf. She wore it in one thick braid that fell over her shoulder. She took one color of ribbon afteranother and laid it on her shoulder so her friend could admire the effect.
“Baby blue, oh, I don’t know,” she said.
“Blue goes with blond,” the other insisted. “It says so right in the
Ladies Home Journal
.”
“But every Sonja from Little Sweden will be wearing blue,” the ribbon girl said. “How about red, scarlet red!”
The friend burst out laughing. “As if Mrs. Hardy would let you out her door in red. ‘I have a reputation to keep up, young lady, even if you don’t!’ I bet she was a prison matron before she ran our boardinghouse.”
I liked the remnant folder better. She had jet-black hair done up in a twist, brown eyes, and shoulders as broad as mine. She never wasted a motion in folding and labeling her yard goods.
“Lavender, that’s what you want,” the black-haired girl went on. “Soft like blue, but distinctive. Not that you’ve got a penny to spare for ribbon, what with stopping at the chocolate shop every other day.”
“Oh, you can afford
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