It wasn’t until I was seven years old that my mother let me get water from the well on my own. The stones at the top of the well were always a bit slimy, as if the stones themselves were a source of water. Did she think I was thick in the head? It’s not like I was going to stand on the wall and slip and fall into the well. I was tall enough to reach the bucket and the rope when I was five but I had to wait two more years. Maybe mother thought that seven was a powerful number, a talisman of sorts. She was superstitious about other things, why not numbers?
For most of that first spring, she let me walk the path to the well alone but still watched from a distance, limping through the garden wearing that filthy sweater that she’d knitted for father before I’d been born. He’d died from The Shivering Fever while I was in my third year. None of the water brought back from the well was ever used to wash it because she said that its smell reminded her of father. I don’t have strong memories of father, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t smell like rat droppings which is what the sweater smelled like.
I’d tried to wash it once but it didn’t go well. Mother came screeching at me, a stranger. I’d never heard her raise her voice, let alone scream like the mad woman in the village down in the valley. I learned to live with the nauseating smell, anything was better than that scream. I can’t wash it, but I’ve been collecting and drying wildflowers. If I grind them into a fine enough powder, I might be able to sprinkle some on the sweater when she’s not looking. Not as good as a boiling wash, but better than nothing.
The was written for @mariannewest’s daily freewrite:
@mariannewest/day-194-5-minute-freewrite-tuesday-prompt-sweater
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