The Leg by Tara Campbell

                 Tony Slade CC            



The Leg
 
Mom was a knitter.
Every Christmas
her kids and her grandkids,
her sisters and brothers
and all of their children
still hang up the stockings she made.
We’ve all held on to
the hats and the scarves
and the baby blankets
and dishcloths and mittens
and all of the warmth
that knitted and purled
from her hands.
 
She sold her work too,
at craft sales and bazaars,
and had other bizarres
in her room at my sister’s house:
scuff-faced dolls sporting
yellowing dresses
and matted hair
blinking one lazy eye
and lurking in corners
behind the mechanical monkey,
banana-yellow hat
in his hand,
electronic stigmata
awaiting a coin
to set him rolling
on creaky plastic skates.
 
She wouldn’t get rid of
the things we’d played with,
wooden blocks with chipped letters,
dusty puppets and Barbies
with broken knees,
said they just needed
a little love
a little TLC
“You know those doll doctors?” she would say
“They just need one of those.”
 
We didn’t know any doll doctors.
 
Church wasn’t Mom’s thing
so after she died
instead of a service
we had a picnic
(it was early September
and unusually warm)
and we pulled bales of yarn
from her closets
(her favorite, Red Heart)
and hauled bins of knitting
and pallets of patterns
out of her room
to take to the
picnic-not-service.
 
Everyone got to take something,
all the kids and grandkids
nieces and nephews and step-grandkids
and cousins and first wives
or second husbands and all their friends too,
everyone chose a scarf
or a hat
or a baby blanket,
we all held something soft
to remind us of what it felt like
when she called us “honey”
and we all kept digging for more
until we found the leg.
 
A mannequin leg.
It was her display.
She used to knit legwarmers
said they were making a comeback
and maybe they were--
there weren’t any left in the bin,
just a leg
without its warmer.
 
We propped it up,
toes pointing skyward
enjoying a yarn bath;
we laughed at it
sticking up out of the bin;
we wore scarves in late summer
and missed her like hell.

​

Tara Campbell (www.taracampbell.com) is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, and fiction editor at Barrelhouse. Prior publication credits include SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, Monkeybicycle, Jellyfish Review, Booth, Strange Horizons, and Escape Pod/Artemis Rising. She's the author of a novel, TreeVolution, a hybrid fiction/poetry collection, Circe's Bicycle, and a short story collection, Midnight at the Organporium. She received her MFA from American University in 2019.

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