Unbroken Threads

by Jennifer Klepper

  “Let’s give it a week. If she’s on board by the end of next week, great. If not, we’ll reconsider assigning you to a different case.”

  Jessica gathered her bag and case file and stood up to leave.

  “Jessica, I think you have a tiny bit of charm.” Rosalie rose from her chair, grinning mischievously. “I seem to recall a law student sweet-talking her way into a presidential inaugural ball without a ticket.”

  Jessica felt her cheeks flush a bit. “Why, I don’t know what you’re talking about. But I’m sure that law student you speak of was just seeking to understand the electoral process more deeply.”

  “In a ball gown at an open bar.” Rosalie arched an eyebrow knowingly. “Seriously. I think you’ll make this work. She might see that you are pretty savvy and tenacious yourself.”

  Rosalie’s comment sounded gratuitous, but that didn’t diminish the trace of confidence Jessica had felt earlier. After all, Jessica had convinced both herself and Rosalie to take Amina’s case, and she took a little pride in that. But wanting to take the case was just the first step. While the hardest part would be building Amina’s case for convincing the interviewer, Jessica knew she first had to build her own case for convincing Amina.

  CHAPTER SIX

  White ceramic bowls of fresh guacamole, chopped cilantro, lime crema, and pico de gallo decorated the kitchen table in red, white, and green. Only the roasted corn broke the color coordination of Jessica’s fish-taco buffet. Jessica had hit the grocery store after her meeting with Rosalie that morning, hoping to pull off a second family dinner for the week.

  “You sure you won’t join me, Danny? It’s a little uncomfortable eating by myself with you sitting there watching me.” Only Danny and Jessica sat at the table. Only Jessica had a plate of food in front of her. Cricket and Conor had begged off family dinner, filling plates as quickly as Jessica could put the food out, then headed to their rooms. Mikey’s soccer practice had been rescheduled, and he wouldn’t be home until later.

  “I like watching you eat.”

  Jessica searched his face for a smirk, the twitch of an eyebrow, or some other indication of sarcasm. All she saw was a face utterly relaxed in its sincerity, so she obliged by taking a giant, messy bite of a fully loaded taco. That, satisfyingly, elicited a smirk.

  “That’s what I’m talking about, hon. As I was saying, we’re meeting up at Lewnes’ for dinner, otherwise I’d be on my second taco already. They remind me of that trip the two of us took to San Diego.” Distractedly, his eyes moved from her eyes to lower on her face. “You’ve got some... right here.” He reached out his hand and wiped his finger slowly across Jessica’s lower lip then put it in her mouth so she could lick off the lime crema.

  “When’s the last time your high school group got together?” Jessica asked before taking another bite.

  Danny furrowed his brow. “At least... seven or eight years. Dave took that job in Hong Kong about that long ago, so it can’t have been more recently. I’m impressed he was able to get us all together this time. It was pretty last minute.” His eyes moved to her mouth again. “More lime crema? Are you doing this on purpose?” He wiped her lip with his finger again, eyeing her with suspicion.

  “Maybe.” Jessica leaned in for a crema kiss. “I’ll wait up for you.”

  Danny finished the kiss and ran his fingers through her hair. “Better not. We’re likely to be out late. Gotta make up for the years. Who knows when we’ll see each other again?”

  You and the guys, or you and me? She felt guilty the moment she thought it since he rarely went out with friends, especially lately, and his busy schedule hadn’t stopped her from her regular girls’ nights.

  “Gotta go, hon.” Danny stood and stretched. “I’m sure the kids’ll keep you busy tonight.”

  AFTER PUTTING AWAY the remnants of dinner, Jessica made her way to the second floor to collect dirty dishes. The stairs creaked with each step, so familiar now that she could identify the stair based on the sound. An old house had things to say. It drove Danny crazy. He thought that surely Jessica had learned enough by now to fix the steps. She could fix a loose tread, yes, but she couldn’t eliminate a century’s worth of creaks even if she wanted to.

  Cricket’s door hung open, and Jessica could see feet bopping to the beat of some unheard music. Pushing the door open wider, she smiled, seeing her daughter, pencil in hand, working through math problems while listening to something on her headphones. According to Cricket, listening to hip-hop while doing math helped her synthesize the concepts and establish a deeper understanding of the material. Something about the beat structure.

  Danny, the math whiz, was pretty technical in his analysis of their daughter’s study methods. “Whatever works,” he’d said, even if “what works” came with horribly misogynistic and violent lyrics. Jessica surprised herself that after her own free-range childhood, she would be the stricter of the two parents, especially with Danny coming from a military family. She relented on the music thing, though, since Cricket’s report cards backed up the beat structure hypothesis.

  Light streaming through one of the house’s three remaining stained-glass windows decorated the room with an ever-changing mosaic of colors. A younger Cricket had “helped” Jessica refinish the window seat in her bedroom, doing a little bit of sanding but mostly making crayon drawings of the designs created by the light.

  Lying on top of a funky boho comforter, surrounded by decorative pillows and a couple of tattered stuffed animals, Cricket seemed oblivious to the colors dancing around her.

  Jessica bent over to pick up the empty dinner plate sitting next to the bed and a T-shirt and shorts lying nearby.

  Cricket moved the headphone off her right ear. “Hi, Mom. What’s up?”

  “Just cleaning up. Whatcha working on?”

  “Precalc.” Math was Danny’s thing. Cricket knew not to get too specific with her mom about what they were learning in class. It was all gobbledygook to her.

  “What else do you have tonight?”

  “History. I have to work on a digital presentation due next week.” Cricket counted out the classes on her fingers. “Lit. A lot of reading, and I need to write a response essay. Spanish. Some conversational work online. I already did my chem lab report.”

  Clearly, the two of them would not be watching old TV shows like they used to or going through another one of Oma’s boxes together in search of a new treasure. “Anything I can help with? I’m happy to proofread your essay or help you out with the presentation app.” It wasn’t as though one of the kids would need her help with anything digital. They didn’t even need their dad’s help, and he ran a software company.

  “I’m good. Thanks, though.” Cricket put her headphones back on. Her feet bopped, and her pencil scribbled letters and numbers in equations that formed yet another language Jessica didn’t understand.

  Jessica tossed the dirty clothes in Cricket’s basket and closed the door on her way out.

  She took the few steps toward Conor’s closed door and raised her hand to knock. She stopped then lowered her hand. Mikey would be home from soccer soon. Maybe he would need someone to quiz him for an upcoming test.

  Until a more receptive offspring arrived home, the boxes downstairs were sure to be more than welcoming to Jessica.

  WITH A PARLOR FULL of boxes to the left and a dining room with overflow to the right, Jessica stood in the entryway brandishing a box cutter and her laptop. The laptop was open to a spreadsheet, complete with columns for item information: Item Name, Description, Photo, and Letter from Oma. She had also listed the item disposition: Consignment, Donate, and Keep. The spreadsheet offered an ordered balance to the cardboard chaos in front of her. She scanned the room, trying to decide where to start. The trunk peeked out from behind a stack of boxes, beckoning her.

  Jessica had a vague memory of seeing the old trunk in Oma’s attic decades ago, tucked in the back like a forgotten memory. Before her now, with its frayed leather handles on the si
des and cracked leather straps with buckles securing the lid, the trunk screamed transatlantic steamer voyage. The wooden slats were so dirty that she couldn’t get a read on what type of wood they were, but probably oak. Dents in the metal bracing hinted at bumpy journeys, steamer ships, trains, and wagons. She ran her fingers over the dull gray metal, cringing when she turned her hand to find four blackened fingertips.

  “Ooh, a treasure chest!” Mikey walked in the room, his huge grin leading the way. The WD-40 had clearly worked. She hadn’t heard Mikey come in through the front door.

  “Hi, sweetie! I’m so glad you’re home!” She went to hug him but held back so she didn’t cover him with black trunk grime.

  Mikey looked right past her, not noticing the holdback on the hug, let alone showing any resulting disappointment. “Did we have pirates for ancestors?” All those years of playing pirate seemed to be flooding back and filling his face with a mixture of hope and... perhaps a bit of pirate greed.

  “Ah, no.” Jessica shook her head apologetically. “No pirates. Sorry.”

  The pirate excitement fell from Mikey’s face, replaced by a twitch in his nose. “Is that me?” He sniffed at his armpit.

  “How about you throw your jersey straight into the washing machine?” She paused, remembering the kitchen table from a few days before. “Your socks, too.” Before she could ask him to come back after he’d changed, he was gone.

  Jessica slid the trunk from behind the boxes, undid the buckles, and folded back the straps, watching bits of rotten leather flutter to the carpet as she did so. Lifting the lid, she caught the feminine notes of Oma’s perfume flirting with the faintly toxic smell of old mothballs. She had to use both hands to push the heavy lid back far enough for it to stay open. The trunk was definitely pre-Ralph Nader. There were no child-protective hinges, and the lid would’ve had no problem taking off a hand if it were to fall back shut.

  And inside... no pirate booty. But she did find lots of linens—crisp white linens. Jessica sat back, perplexed, wondering what one does with a trunk full of old linens. This was most likely a cache of “Donate” items.

  After a quick trip to the powder room to scrub off the antique dirt from her fingertips, Jessica opened the lavender envelope Oma had left in the trunk.

  “Linens from the farm. Gr. Margarethe and Gr. Bertha did the embroidery on all of the table linens. Gr. Margarethe did all of the white-on-white embroidery. Gr. Bertha used color in hers. Even when there was little to put on the table, Gr. Margarethe made sure the table looked nice.”

  Tonight’s taco bar had filled the Donnelly table, but even if Jessica had had lovely linens to accent the dinnerware, no one would have been there long enough to notice.

  Jessica removed all of the items and placed them on a blanket she had spread in the entryway, handling the items carefully to avoid antique grime contamination.

  The embroidery was intricate and beautiful, three-dimensional and throbbing with life. Flowers and birds’ nests and corn and wheat graced the fabric. The white thread on white linen, which seemed as though it would be mild and staid, had a complexity and layering of stitching that made the pictures more vivid than a full-color photograph.

  Mikey appeared back in the entryway, balancing a taco plate in one hand and a jar of salsa and a water bottle in the other. He eyed the spread of linens with bewilderment.

  Jessica raised her eyebrows. “What do you think? Treasures?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Uh, no, Mom. I was thinking more like gold doubloons, pearls, gold cups, you know, like in Pirates of the Caribbean. I kind of hoped we had some cool criminal ancestor.”

  Jessica gestured for Mikey to set down his food. “Come over and take a look.” She wouldn’t delude herself into thinking that a boy was going to be thrilled to see Grandma’s linens, but she could still show him. The selfishness of this triggered a pang of embarrassment, but she would get at least a few more minutes with him, so it was worth it.

  “These are all old linens. Look at the embroidery. Wait, are your hands clean?”

  Mikey held up his hands, and Jessica nodded her approval, handing him a tablecloth and a stack of cloth napkins. “Your great-great-great-grandmother embroidered these.”

  Mikey tested a box marked “Cigar Boxes,” decided it could hold his one hundred or so pounds, and took a seat. As he unfolded and turned over the cloth and napkins, the realization of discovery filled his eyes. “Here’s a bird and a bird’s nest. And this tablecloth has little clovers scattered all over it. And here’s corn and a butterfly and—what’s this round bumpy thing?”

  Jessica ran her fingers over the embroidery. The “round bumpy thing” was a cluster of individually stitched balls, all comprising a greater round object with a display of broad leaves at its base. Jessica searched her memory, the threaded mystery quickly solved. “It’s a hedge apple.”

  Mikey scrunched his face in disgust. “A bumpy apple?”

  “Not apples. They grow on what’s called an Osage orange tree. But they’re not oranges either, and you don’t eat them. My brothers and cousins and I used to collect them into piles and have huge wars.” Jessica smiled at the memories of hiding behind the barn and pelting the boys with slightly rotting hedge apples.

  “Got it. So she embroidered the plants and animals by the farm. Here’s an acorn, another clover, and is this a baby pig?” Mikey smiled. “It’s like playing ‘I Spy’ or... oh, oh... ‘I-owa Spy.’” Mikey gave a self-satisfied nod.

  Jessica grinned. “I see what you did there.”

  Mikey handed the linens back and picked up his food.

  “Can I join you for your dinner?” Jessica heard the neediness in her own voice, grateful Mikey was too naïve to pick up on it.

  “Science test. Gotta study.” He pointed up the stairs with his water bottle.

  “I can quiz you if you want.” She struck a casual tone just in case he wasn’t actually that naïve.

  “Thanks, but I got this new app. I can make my own flashcards online and quiz myself. I don’t think I’ll need your help with the quizzes anymore.”

  Jessica looked down at the stack of napkins in her hands, wondering how long it must have taken to stitch a single hedge apple. “Oh, okay. Well, let me know if you need anything. I’m happy to help.”

  She checked her watch as she heard him creak up the stairs. It was only seven o’clock, and Danny wouldn’t be back until who knew when. She seemed to have time to stitch some hedge apples, if only she knew how to embroider. For now, the linens went back in the trunk, and Jessica sought out Amina’s case file. If the kids didn’t need her help with studying anymore, she could do some studying of her own.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “This isn’t enough.” Jessica slammed the folder shut, creating an unsatisfyingly weak “whoosh” when she would have preferred a loud slap.

  Gracie, ears pricked, looked up at Jessica from the rug in front of the fireplace. Realizing Jessica wasn’t offering food or a walk, she rearranged herself, pulling the rug here and there into a proper dog’s nest, and went back to sleep.

  Jessica had cleaned up the impressive taco mess her youngest had left in the kitchen and now sat curled into the corner of the couch with her laptop, paging through Amina’s thin application and typing notes. Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, Amina’s application read the way Amina spoke—clipped and devoid of detail, guarded.

  To be fair, considering the debacle with Amina’s first lawyer and the fact that asylum applications have to be filed within one year of entry into the US, it was likely that Amina had prepared the application in haste to beat the deadline.

  Jessica clicked on the browser tab that displayed the asylum law’s text. Amina had to prove that she could not return to Syria due to “persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” It was one thing to learn about this in a short training session but another to apply the rul
e to a woman’s story.

  Amina had no criminal convictions. It would have been a rough, no, impossible road if she had. She was married, but the location of her husband was unknown. There were no children, but the form didn’t ask if she’d ever had children.

  Jessica skimmed past the benign things again, like Amina’s college degree, university employment as an accountant, and her involvement in a women’s study group. These added shades of normalcy, but the rest of the application twisted that into shades of darkness. There was a father, interrogated and assaulted; a sibling, murdered; and a husband, kidnapped and missing. All descriptions were light on detail and devoid of documentation. Then there was mention of the Syrian Armed Forces and the Free Syrian Army, both somewhat familiar names, but Mukhabarat didn’t ring a bell.

  Jessica had hoped she would learn about Amina’s history from the application and see if, at the very least, she could give a little guidance to the woman who wanted to do this herself. But mostly she learned that she had a lot to learn. It was like another pile of boxes. She didn’t know what was inside any of them, and in this case, there was no “Open this box first” box.

  She did know that Amina was from Syria. And everyone knew that Syria was a shit storm. She watched the news and knew to associate the country with the Arab Spring, Assad, and ISIS, but she wouldn’t even be able to find Syria on a map.

  That box was the first she should open. Jessica’s laptop hummed in the background as she typed “Syria” into the Internet browser.

  A map opened on the screen. A red dot marked Syria, which was nestled between Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan. It didn’t take many clicks before Jessica was mired in the history of a former French Mandate damaged by colonialism and a religion torn between two elements disagreeing over divine guidance and spiritual authority to the point of genocide.