{"id":253581,"date":"2026-07-13T02:54:36","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T23:54:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/1kitap1.com\/en\/backstitch-marian-mitchell-donahue\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T02:54:36","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T23:54:36","slug":"backstitch-marian-mitchell-donahue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1kitap1.com\/en\/backstitch-marian-mitchell-donahue\/","title":{"rendered":"Backstitch – Marian Mitchell Donahue"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cThe ancient astronomer and mathematician.\u201d Alice raised her eyebrows and signaled for him to go on. \u201c. . . and Merlin\u2019s little owl buddy.\u201d \u201cDoes your mother know how affected you were by all those Arthurian bedtime stories?\u201d \u201cI\u2019m sure she does, and I\u2019m sure she\u2019s very proud of her handiwork.\u201d Arthur took another swig from his Slurpee and made a face.<\/p>\n

The vodka had sunk to the bottom so now every sip went down like a shot. \u201cI lucked out, though, with the Arthur thing. My father wanted to name me Douglas.\u201d \u201cDoug?\u201d Alice leaned back and looked him over. \u201cYou are not a Doug.\u201d \u201cWho picked out your name?\u201d The question was out of his mouth before he realized what he\u2019d done. Usually, a mention of her parents and Alice would snap shut like a clamshell and stay guarded the rest of the night.<\/p>\n

He froze and waited for her to close down, but she didn\u2019t. If anything, she looked a little further away than usual, but she stayed with him, and miraculously she kept talking. \u201cI know my father wanted Alice because it was his grandmother\u2019s name. Well . . .\u201d She swirled her Slurpee like wine.<\/p>\n

\u201cReally, he wanted a boy. He wanted Frederick Miller V, but he got me instead. But my mom . . . I\u2019m not sure but I think she wanted to name me Daisy.\u201d \u201cDaisy,\u201d Arthur repeated, testing it out. \u201cI like it.\u201d \u201cI like it to. She was Rose, and she was always gardening, so I think she liked the flower thing. But I\u2019m Alice instead.\u201d \u201cI like Alice, too,\u201d Arthur tried reassuring her. \u201cAlice is nice.\u201d \u201cAlice in Wonderland. Alice Through the Looking-Glass. You know, I\u2019ve never even read those books?<\/p>\n

I think my mom read me bedtime stories, but I can\u2019t . . . I don\u2019t remember any of the actual stories.\u201d \u201cNot in school, either?\u201d \u201cNope.\u201d She shook her head. \u201cLots of Bible stories, not a lot of fantasy.\u201d They both drank from their cups. Alice looked up at the fading evening light. \u201cWhat\u2019s your birthday again?\u201d<\/p>\n

she asked. Arthur felt her trying to drive the conversation back to safer ground and he let her. \u201cOctober tenth.\u201d \u201cMmm.\u201d She nodded. \u201cSo, you\u2019re a Libra.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t. Start.\u201d He walked into the trap happily. \u201cA Libra, very interesting, very interesting. I\u2019m an Aries, so that doesn\u2019t bode well for us generally .<\/p>\n

. .\u201d \u201cThe Zodiac is not real.\u201d Arthur turned to her, playing up his irritation, getting her to smile. \u201cIt is a made-up system of imaginary lines, and it cannot predict the future. You can\u2019t see the future up there. No future, just the past.\u201d \u201cIs that supposed to be deep?\u201d \u201cNo, literally, all light we experience here on Earth is old. Sunlight?<\/p>\n

Eight minutes old.<\/p>\n

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Nothing had prepared her for the eyes. Violet knew she\u2019d see little pieces of herself as a child on banners and bus stops when she went to her mother\u2019s retrospective at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Her sister had warned her they\u2019d used one of their mother\u2019s early works for the promotional materials, from the years she hid herself away in their house and all she\u2019d painted were the girls.<\/p>\n

But there was no warning Marigold could have issued that would have readied Violet for the way her own brown eyes followed her as she walked from the parking garage on Constitution Avenue through the soupy summer day to the doors of the museum. Once seen, they couldn\u2019t be unseen. Her own eyes, rendered first in small dabs of oil paint all those years ago, now re-created in high- resolution printer ink, the rest of the image cropped out and left mutilated on some graphic designer\u2019s desktop.<\/p>\n

Violet tucked her head down and pressed her sunglasses high up on the bridge of her nose to keep from meeting her painted gaze. She couldn\u2019t understand why, out of everything, they had picked this early work, and her eyes, to represent her mother\u2019s show. Why her own dark set and not her little sister\u2019s objectively more interesting hazel one? She was in that painting, too. Why not hers? Violet didn\u2019t believe she had any illusions about herself. If anything, the years she had spent as her mother\u2019s art object had given her a greater than usual awareness of her own aesthetic truth.<\/p>\n

Her eyes were a dark brown that almost looks black, which some found off- putting. In a good mood, her mother would deem them only \u201cserious\u201d or \u201chaunting.\u201d In worse moods, they became inhuman. Violet suddenly had dolls\u2019 eyes or dogs\u2019 eyes. The feature\u2014the scrap of an incomplete story\u2014 was meant to pull people in further and further. You were supposed to want to know what happened next, but Violet already knew what had happened, and she didn\u2019t want to be pulled in.<\/p>\n

She was already a half hour late meeting her sister at the exhibit. The last time she\u2019d been in D.C.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.<\/em><\/p>\n

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