Black Dress

By Elizabeth Ricketson:

My mother’s black dress. Classic in its sophistication. Basic in its purpose. Proper in its blackness. The blue-black immortal polyester fabric, 1960’s blend. Appropriate for the occasion.

The many occasions.

Carefully, I climb the back staircase to my studio while balancing a hot cup of coffee. The first cup. Relishing the daily ritual nearly as much as the first sip. Hickory floorboards greet me as I enter my studio. It’s 3 a.m. The world sleeps, but I cannot rest.

The desk chair creaks in protest. I reach across my desk to switch on my grandfather’s brass lamp. The familiar green globes glow warmly, illuminating a misplaced pair of silver pliers. I rest my chin in the palm of my right hand while staring through the darkness. A shroud of emptiness envelopes my small yellow house on the hill. What did I think I would see?

My great-grandmother’s delicate platinum engagement ring spins lightly on my right finger, reminding me of a woman whose name I share. I only knew her in her last years. Blind and bedridden, she lived with us. Back then, I brushed her snowy white hair, my own ponytails fashioned with inexperience. She stared back at me with fading blue eyes, never seeing the details of my face. Just a shadowed silhouette, like the figures I now paint.

I remember waiting for the school bus one morning many years ago. Red and white lights flashed, and sirens wailed as an ambulance approached our house. Not a bus. My great-grandmother had fallen. She bled easily. A gash on her head seemed to drain her long, frail body. Bed sheets soaked in scarlet. Skin paper-thin, torn before impact.

All day at school my imagination carouseled. Nightmarish. My focus forgotten. I rested my head on cradled arms on top of my desk. Tears puddled on the laminate while my fragile heart anxiously awaited dismissal.

The bus ride home was long. My small body quaked against the vibration of the hard, green-cushioned seat. I sat as tall as possible, as if the perfection of my posture would get me home faster. Nerves twisted and fired with every jolt of the bus. Brakes squealed to a halt. The doors opened, and with the usual explosion of relief, down the first two stairs I flew. That early autumn day, I leapt from the bus into something I would never unlearn. Scorching up the tarred driveway, I threw open the louvered glass breezeway door and paused in the three-season room.

The black dress hung on our clothesline, fastened to the line, but not with the usual laundry items—separate in its unspoken priority. More care was taken in pinning this dress. Squares of muslin protected the fabric from the marks of wooden clothespins. The sheets and pillowcases gracefully floated on a late September breeze while the weight of the black dress kept it nearly static.

Struck by the warmth of our small, tidy kitchen and surrounded by knotty pine cabinets, I stood frozen on the linoleum floor. My mother turned from the sink with a dish towel in her hand while tears streamed down her face. She always found a certain comfort in household chores. She turned to me an kneeled, opening her arms to rescue me from the news. “Ma” has passed away, she softly whispered as if to lessen the hurt.

Now, sitting in my art studio, my hands are stiff with arthritis. I often massage the years of overuse by employing my right thumb in a grinding motion against the palm of my left hand, and vice versa, hoping for relief at the start of my workday. Rheumatoid arthritis crippled my great-grandmother’s body. Her long, slender fingers arthritically folded flat against her palms. Will my weakened hands understand the same fate? Art would be impossible, and my life would follow.

I think back to that dark day when, at the age of nine, I first experienced all of our family traditions, religious and otherwise, around death. Two days of calling hours, both afternoon and evening. A funeral mass on day three. We arrived for the first viewing. My initiation.

The funeral home’s heavy varnished black wooden door stonily opened. The funeral director loomed above me, greeting my family with urgency. My heart beat in pace with his cloaked eagerness as we moved into the foyer across the worn, dark carpet, its colors now muted by the many mourners. Stained too. Men in dark suits and Brylcreemed hair dressed in an off-putting perfection offered us guidance with our coats, gave us directions, their well-practiced acknowledgements for a grieving family that I was yet to fully understand. I stretched my frightened view from around the far side of my mother’s black dress to see where we were headed. I longed to find the great grandmother I loved and had just read to a few days before.

A woman moaned. Loudly, she began to wail.

I remember shivering, looking for Ma, but she was unrecognizable even from a distance. White flowers everywhere. Pungent smells. A white satin sash adorned with gold lettering “Grandmother” decorated a large arrangement of lilies. My mother reached for my small hand, and as I looked from the foyer into the visitation room, I caught my first glimpse of the gypsy.

Seated alone in the back row of the empty parlor, her skin was dark, even darker than my

Italian relatives. Wearing a hat and dress as unfamiliar as the woman who wore it. Her eyes tightly closed, a white handkerchief crumpled and tightly held in her hand, she rocked rhythmically. Rocking. Back and forth. Wails increasingly louder on the exhale. Her identity, unknown. I whispered to my mother. Why is she here? Where were those strange men to help, I wondered. With a hurried tug of my hand, we moved in silence to the front of the casket.

A wooden kneeler complete with a brown leather cushion was appropriately positioned. My mother gracefully kneeled, easing her right knee gently down onto the bench while adjusting the hem of her black dress. Her left knee quietly followed. Just that morning, I sat on her bed and watched her remove the black dress from a cloth-covered hangar. Cautiously unzipping it, she slipped and shimmied it over her hips, skillfully protecting her perfectly coiffed frosted hair while careful not to smudge her Avon lipstick. The dress slid smoothly into place over her matching black silk slip, her dark hose and black heels already

on. She was beautiful.

My height made me equal to Ma’s still body. Paralyzed I stood, my head tortured by the view. Uncertain as to why, I kneeled beside her, Ma’s torso now within reach. Her arthritic hands were now straight right over left, pale pink rosary beads strategically draped. Averting my eyes, I turned to mimic my mother. Her small hazel eyes closed. With her first three fingers she softly recited, “Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.” She rested her forehead in her hands as her elbows offered support. Small stains of red lipstick smudged her perfectly white teeth as she softly prayed. Whispers of “Our Father, who art in heaven” continued while the whaling gypsy’s foreign moans drowned out my mother’s prayerful words.

I could barely breathe. I was afraid of Ma for the first time. Ever. Would she move? Could she move? Where had she gone? My focus, fixated on the floral pattern of her dress and the delicate pearl buttons that rested easily against her stillness. I had never seen her in this dress. In any dress. Housecoats and slippers only. My body went nearly as rigid as Ma’s. My eyes volunteered to move yet resisted. Struggling to understand this demon called death, I hoped for answers from Ma. She would surely tell me. Ma loved me. Why would she leave me? I needed to know, needed to look closer.

Her silky straight white hair was now tightly curled and tinged yellow. Thick matte make-up covered her delicate porcelain skin. Painted orangey-red lips sewn silent. Tears overwhelmed me. As my mother finished mouthing three "Hail Mary’s" with tear-filled eyes, she turned to me, ushering me away from the casket to a gray metal folding chair.

I sat silently and obediently in the front row with my older brother and sister. All views led back to the casket and the magnetic pull of the macabre. I cast my eyes down to the burgundy-patterned carpet. My head snapped back as Ma’s image reflected on my black patent-leather Mary Janes. I could see nothing else. There was no place to rest.

Now I push back on starting my workday, immersed in the embraceable quiet. The waning darkness weighs heavily outside the sanctity of my warmly lit studio, wanting to remain untouched by the exhausting demands made certain by daylight. I steal one more moment and then another, but the work, my work, refuses to be ignored any longer.

I reluctantly rise from my desk chair, and one of the soft white light bulbs begins to blink. Annoyed, I switch it off. Barefoot, pliers in hand, I make my way across the cool wooden floor to my paints. I reach for a tube of yellow ochre. A few Sennelier tubes also. Utrecht white titanium and raw umber. I slip on my latex gloves before opening the cadmiums. I shrug, remembering how concerned I once was about the heavy metals in them. Was I working smarter these days, or did I worry less? I forage through the tubes in an organized disorganized manor, tossing rejected colors from one spot to another in search of whatever. I stack the selected tubes on a well-worn oak stool in front of my easel that my mother purchased for me a lifetime ago. I tear off a large sheet of gray palette paper and place it on a makeshift table to my right. Color reads true on gray.

A twelve-by-three-inch plank of rough plywood loosely balances on two high metal stools. It is not unsteady, but neither is it secure. Vivid blobs of paint quickly appear. Neutrals too as a familiar assembly line of color dots the shiny paper. Habit and subconscious once again dictate the confines of routine choices. The adventure ahead requires maximizing a random

yet simple palette. It thrills me as the possibilities of the day visually unfold.

Painted canvases fill my studio, comforting me in the low light of early morning. Varying degrees of completion provide a certain energy. Fatigue too. Images of faceless dancers mirror back. A series of dancers in their reflective moments line the walls. A dancer’s body, strength, and grace in equal measure. Controlled effortlessness. Beauty in motion. Their faces, blank by design, still emote. Dancers in isolation. Offstage. Backstage.

I reach for a near-empty tube of Mars black. Just enough left for the day’s effort. The perfect blackness of my mother’s dress swims in my imagination. The depth of its darkness compositionally transform, highlighted in lavender. A dancer’s tutu.

My weakened hands are unable to budge the paint-hardened, sealed acrylic cap. The frustration and inconvenience of an aging body. Pausing, I scan the table near my easel for my pair of pliers that now hold a permanent place in the studio. Necessary as any brush. Resting on the small pine worktable next to a tape measure, they mock me. An inanimate object now holds the power. My diminishing strength relies on them.

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Elizabeth Ricketson

A graduate of Providence College with a BA in English, Elizabeth Ricketson has always had a love of literature and the fine arts. In the 1990s, she studied figure drawing at the Rhode Island School of Design, spending years dedicated to understanding human form, movement, and anatomy. Elizabeth’s essays focus on life experiences and life in Vermont. Essays available for consideration.

Website: elizabethricketson.net 

Blog: "It's Complicated"; elizabeth-ricketson.com