Deborah lies down on her back and opens the front of her hospital gown, exposing the tatoos that the Cyber Knife will use to aim its thin blade of protons, photons and electrons. The machine has not yet swung itself around to hover over her, so she can see the paintings over the ceiling lights. Someone knew that women, forced to lie on their backs and wait for violation, would need a conduit out of their bodies. She looked up into clouds of wispy greys flowing through whites, and above them the sun creating wafting shades of mauve. The parted heavens promise peace and warmth and invite her up into it and out of her metal-cold world. But she turns down the invitation, and instead of upward, she focuses downward. She allows awareness of being pulled down onto the bed and held there by gravity. Then she looses her imagination. Some people calm themselves down by counting one sheep after another as they jump over a fieldstone wall. Not Deborah. She marks the steps she’ll use to paint the cloud scene onto yarn. First, she sees the yarn tied and soaking in mordant. Next, she chooses colors and mixes them.  And finally, she watches her sponge-brush paint sunlight as it wafts through clouds.  

     It’s 7:30 am and she is the first patient of the day. While the staff carefully awakens their nuclear colleague, Deborah, already finished with painting, begins writing the poem for the yarn sleeve. She writes words. Changes them. Writes them again. Sometimes the same words. Sometimes different. . . , until the machine comes alive. It slowly swings itself around to hover over her, and she begins to worry, as she always does. For six weeks, Monday through Friday, it has been the self-same worry. Will I be able to hear them when they tell me to hold my breath? Or when they tell me to let out my breath? Will I be able to hold my breath long enough? Will I be able to keep perfectly still? She worries that she will not be able to do her part—that she will be the one who fails. She reminds herself, So far I have been able to do this, and today is the last time. Just one more time.

     Afterwords, in the dressing room, she applies lotion to what is left of her sunburned left breast, places a sterile 4X4 over the skinless, open area under her breast, and then very carefully puts on her most loose front-fastening bra. She’ll be going to work at the shop right after radiation and not even pain will not stop her from wearing her bra-armor. From her backpack she digs out a bottle of Motrin and her water bottle. She swigs down the pill and glugs “enough water to drown a cat,” as her mother would say. 

     The entire staff is waiting for her when she reaches the front desk. Standing together behind the desk, they congratulate her on her achievement and wish her the best of luck. Reaching over the desk the Admin hands her a diploma of completion, along with it’s jumbo envelope, and signed by all of them. Deborah is surprised. Speechless, really. For weeks, she has come and gone in this clinic as though in a trance. The staff has been nothing but kind and competent, and yet she has not really stopped to look at them, let alone to wonder about them, or to get to know them. Yet here they all are, come alive. Real people. It’s as though she is seeing them for the first time. They hand her a gift bag. She looks into the bag and sees white tissue paper, and nestled within—the edge of a canvas. She takes the painting out of the bag. It’s an original acrylic of iris. Each brush stroke is piled with color and vigorous life. They explain that the gift is from an artist who is part of a volunteer program that donates original art to be given to breast cancer patients when they complete treatment. Deborah holds the painting to her chest, “Thank you. Thank you to all of you for your kindness. And would you thank the artist for me?” She looks at the signature. Would you thank for me? Deborah has not seen this coming, caught off guard, she is at a loss for words. The painting is a true gift. The nature of a true gift is that it is both unanticipated by the receiver and unintended by the giver. The staff does not know that Deborah is an artist, let alone that she draws secret powers from her relationship with her mother, who was also an artist.  They could not know how meaningful and precious is their gift to her. Deborah decides, on the spot, that she will donate a gift of hand-painted yarn along with a shawl pattern, because some of her fellow radiation graduates are bound to be knitters. 

     She leaves the Alaska Cyberknife Center and heads up to the Creekside Cafe. She has promised herself the reward of picking up a breakfast burrito and sugar bomb coffee before she heads out. She sips her coffee and enjoys a feeling of peace on the drive to the shop. She knows that the radiation will build over the next few weeks, along with her exhaustion. But her part is done. Now will be the healing. She can lean back, take it easy and heal. 

     She gets to the shop just in time to open up. She guesses there will be time to take a few bites of her burrito and sip her coffee throughout the morning between customers. She’ll drink enough water to drown a cat. Then this afternoon, when the shop is quiet, she will take an easy chair break. She has found that a short nap, even just fifteen minutes, can take the edge off her exhaustion. 

     And she is right. Or almost right. After making space for her mother to join her, she immediately falls asleep and does not wake up until the mailman drives into the lot an hour later. She reassures herself that had any customers come in while she was sleeping she would have awakened. Unless someone posts a video of her snoring and drooling in the shop’s easy chair she will not believe otherwise. She takes her time warming the soup her friend made for her. Another gift. Contemplating gifts, she brews tea and digs out her sketch book and pencils. A doctor carries a medical bag, a lawyer carries a briefcase, Deborah, like all fiber artists, carries a stretchy oversized bag which contains other smaller, project bags, extra needles, scissors, tape measure, calculator, stitch markers, and any number of items she might need. Standing behind the counter, she enumerates the steps she will take to create her cloud yarn.  She will use DK weight yarn. She will dye three skeins. The color way will graduate from predominately white/light grey, through light/dark grey for the second skein. Both will be sprinkled with pink. The third skein will be mostly pinks. She has not yet decided whether she will sprinkle or paint shades of grey into the pink. She also polishes up the poem she will include on the sleeves. She sketches a triangle shawl, the broad base which wraps the shoulders is lighter grey with dots of dark grey and pink. The middle section is darker grey with dots of pink. The bottom is pink with dots of dark grey.  She stands back and looks at her work and smiles. 

     By this time her left breast aches. She goes into the bathroom, takes off her sweater, then her bra, and applies cream to her breast and a fresh dressing to the underside. Time for another Motrin. She is back with her sketch book and a fresh cup of tea. She looks over the cloud-yarn and poem one last time, then turns the page. 

     Deborah is deep in thought as she sketches. A woman’s form is beginning to take shape.     

     “I miss my mother so much,” Deborah says out loud to herself. The shop is quiet. Empty. There is no one to hear her. 

   “I wish I could show her my iris painting and talk to her about gifts. She’d be interested. She’d understand.” Deborah stands at the counter next to the till, her sketch book laying open, the nub of a No.1 pencil in her hand. 

     “Mom understands about using art to smooth out life.” The woman in the sketch stands face-front and is now reaching her left arm, horizontal and straight, at a right angle from her body. Her head is turned, in profile, she looks out past her extended arm. 

     “Mom, I imagine you notice that I speak of you in the present tense sometimes.” The sketched woman’s left fist enlarges and then a composite bow appears within her grasp. 

     “So why don’t I just ask you outright? Is this a crazy idea? Can I make this happen? Or should I? Maybe that’s the better question. Some of my inventions don’t fly.” Now the woman’s right forearm appears. Muscled. Precise. Eye level. The first two fingers hook onto the bowstring. 

     “Mom, would you help me with this?” Details appear. First an ornate leather bracer on the archer’s left forearm. Next, her right breast, round and full.

     “Mom, send help. I’ll be watching for it.” 

     Separated from her own volition, Deborah watches as the woman on the graph paper wafts through the grid-work and reveals herself in detail. Deborah supposes that the archer has all along, and forever, been living behind the graph-lines, waiting for just the right moment, to make her move, and step through the mesh into reality. Deborah straightens up and has just begun to contemplate who else and what else might be be waiting in the cellars and attics and trenches that lay behind and within her sketch book . . . 

     Movement in the parking lot distracts her. She watches his red Jeep pull in. And she smiles. She’s not surprised to see him. It’s been two weeks since he stopped by to pick up the thrummed mittens he’d commissioned from her. The mittens fit and he was pleased with them. It was a pleasant interaction, but neither of them spoke—at least not out loud, with words—of the desire to see each other again. But she knew they would. Deborah has enough estrogen left to know Robert would one day, again, drive his red Jeep into the lot. And she knew that she’d be smiling when he did. She gave herself a woman’s once over. She’d re-brushed her unconquerable grey curls when she first reached the shop this morning. She knew that by now they were still mostly upswept, but on the verge of busting loose. She was confident that her glass hoop earrings were the exact burgundy of her newly finished Wonder Woman shawl. She was ready. 

     Just across the counter from her, he’s so close she can see the flecks of gold around the pupils of his brown-black eyes. He takes the flecks away from her by looking down at her sketch.

     “That’s a powerful sketch of an Amazonian.”

     “An Amazonian?”

      He brings his flecks back. As an artist how can she help but notice that the flecks of color around his pupils give the perception of depth? Such depth in those eyes. “Yes. She’s a Amazon warrior, right?” He asks. “Legend has it that they had their left breasts removed to make them better archers.”    

     Now it’s her turn. She pulls up out of his eyes and looks down at her sketch. The archer, in the midst of a devastating bow-draw, has her eyes on her target—someone straight ahead, beyond her fist. She’s wearing a fitted leather jersey. Multiple rows of rawhide hand stitching mark geometric seams, perfectly tailored to contain the contours of her right breast and her flat, nonexistent, left breast. Deborah has no recollection of having made the decision to even draw the woman warrior, let alone to make her one-breasted. “Wow, where did she come from? Maybe she really was living behind the graph-lines all this time,” Deborah says. She jumps when he speaks.

     “Maybe. It’s hard to know where creative ideas actually come from; but I’m thinking your subconscious is a more likely source than your sketchbook. Just my opinion.”

     “Yes, well . . . I really do know that. Well, mostly I know that. I was just speaking from my imagination. Metaphorically. I was speaking metaphorically.” Back in the depth of his eyes, she begins to wonder about her own maimed left breast. Can he tell? Does it show? Of course not. She reassures herself. First, he’s looking into your eyes and not at your breast. Second, you’ve covered your nipples, so he can’t see that the left one is pointing off to the side. 

     “I notice you are sketching onto graph paper, and the squares do not appear to be the normal dimensions.”

     “This graph paper is especially made for knitters. The squares are the size of knitted stitches. Whatever I draw on this graph paper I can knit into a garment,” Deborah says.

      “Are you thinking of knitting that into a sweater, or something?”

     “The thought did cross my mind.”

     “That’s extraordinary. Can you really do that?”

     “Yes, I think so.”

     “If you can, you definitely ought to. To me, it shows the power and strength, and yes, the danger that women possess.” 

   She remembers asking her dead mother just a few moments before to send help. Could Mom have sent him?, she wonders. “Who sent you?” She asks. 

"I might ask the same of you," he responds.

Chapter 11: Deborah, Revenge.

Deborah took a five step run, just like her big brother had taught her when she was a kid, then she dove forward onto her belly, flattened out and slid headfirst. She was so pumped with adrenaline she barely felt the sharp, grainy edges of the ice and hard-packed snow under her as she slid. Instead of first base, she slid under some stranger’s parked car. As she slid, she reached out with her left arm and hit the front left tire with the palm of her hand to stop her trajectory. She took a quick look at where she’d landed to make sure she was centered under the car, and that no part of her could be seen from the street. Then she moved her mittened hands together and rested her forehead on them. She held perfectly still, tired to stop gasping for air and hoped her heart beat could not be heard from the street. No, she reminded herself, they can’t hear my heart beat. Then she turned her head to the right, so that she could see the street from under the car, and watched in the direction from which they would be coming. It was two in the morning. The streets and houses in this ’70’s Minneapolis residential area were dark and quiet. 

     It was snow-cracking cold and she knew she would hear them coming. She was pretty sure that these city boys would not be able to track her. The last part of her escape she’d been careful to stay off the sidewalks and on the icy street. Even farm boys and hunters would be hard-put to track her there. Besides, her stalkers had been keeping about a block’s distance behind her as they followed. Being drunk and high, they were not as quiet as they tried to be. She’d known they were there. She’d known they were following her. In the moment the street curved and she was out of their line of sight, she’d darted up a walkway to the front door of a house and then onto the shoveled private sidewalk that ran along the side of the house and to the back driveway. Then down the driveway and out to the alley. She’d run as fast as she could down the alley, lungs burning with the effort. She’d run out into the street, then slowed to a walk so that she could catch her breath and pull herself together. That’s when she’d taken her nosedive under the car.

     Her heart rate and breathing quieted; she turned her head ever so slowly and searched the sidewalk to her left. All was quiet snow and still shadows. Now the wait. She did not want to leave her hiding place too soon. She needed to be sure she waited long enough for them to get cold, give up, and wander off.  She needed to outlast them. The immediate source of pain were her thighs. With only a sheer layer of nylon between her skin and ice, her thighs were already burning. She repositioned so that her mittened hands were between the snow and her nyloned thighs. The next challenge were her toes. She began wiggling them inside her boots in an attempt to increase the blood flow. She wished she’d worn her winter boots instead of her dress boots. She thought, she willed, she begged her blood to flow into her toes. Breathe in. Breathe out. Blood to toes. Don’t fall asleep, became her mantra. And she did not fall asleep. And she did outlast them. But by the time she crawled out from under the car and walked downtown to find a telephone booth to call a cab her toes and thighs had left her to join the universe that was not-her. 

“To this day I have a hell of a time keeping my toes warm,” Deborah says to no one.  “The two big toes on each foot actually turn white—pure white— when they get cold,” She’s sitting in The Shop’s easy chair, where she must have dozed off for a few minutes. Instead of her mother, this fragment of old memory came to keep her company. “In point of fact, it took 15 years to lose the frostbite scars on my thighs.” That was forty years ago, Deborah thinks, and I’m remembering it like it was yesterday. Over the years she has rarely thought of this incident, and when she has, she dwelled only on her escape scene. But today, for whatever reason, today, she remembers the events leading up to her escape. 

She had gone to the party with some co-eds she barely knew. How could I have been so stupid. One of the girls had a red Mustang her Daddy had bought for her. Seven of them had piled into the car. The other girls, even the driver, were drinking, but not Deborah. I was stupid, but not that stupid, she thinks. When they arrived, the party was already underway— packed and loud. The Rolling Stones thrummed against her eardrums. She accepted a Manhattan that someone pressed into her hands, but managed to pour it into a potted plant. She glanced around and when it seemed no one was watching, she found the kitchen and refilled her glass with water. By this time the girls she’d come with had been absorbed into party. A couch was empty, and cradling her drink, she sat down there. Two boys came over and smiled and nodded to her. She smiled back, just like she was supposed to. They sat down beside her, one on each side. At the same time they moved closer, tight-close, and sandwiched her between them. Then fast as a flashbulb, one held her around the waist and the other slid his hand under her skirt. When she tried to push his hand away, a third came out of nowhere, knelt down in front of her, and grabbed her two wrists. In the two seconds it took him to push her wrists down onto her thighs, she could feel the boy sliding his hand under her, his wriggling fingers feeling for the elastic of her panties. But he was not expecting the newfangled pantyhose she was wearing. “What the fuck,” he said, “I can’t get in.”

     “You can’t find the cunt’s cunt?” And the boy beside her let go of her waist to slide his hand under her. In that moment, she stood and charged forward. Full-bore she rushed the front door. On the way through the foyer she grabbed her coat from the hook, while at the same time swinging the door open with enough force for it to slam against the wall. She kept running. Full out. For the past year she'd spent weekends keeping her track star roommate company while she logged miles. Deborah could run in those days. She'd already gone several blocks before she'd spent her first sprint. Head back, she was grabbing for air, when her side seized and her muscles stopped. She doubled over and hands braced on her thighs listened through her ragged breaths. She could hear them following her, not much more than a block behind. No more sprinting, she settled into a marathon pace. She began to understand that she would not be able to outrun them.

"Who were they? Part of the fucking men's track team?" Now, in the cool of time, she reasons that they may not have been elite college athletes. Just boys. Taller. Stronger. Egging each other on. "But they were not more motivated than me," she says. Because she did ultimately outrun, outsmart and out-wait them. She didn't call the police, of course. In those days the police were not an option. Everyone knew she was asking for it by being a co-ed, by going to a party, by wearing a short skirt. Besides, she'd not actually been raped. She'd escaped. "I don't think finger raping counted back then, anyway."

Deborah's roommate, not the track star, the one before the track star, had been finger raped. Deborah tries to remember her name, but cannot. What she remembers is the small, pale woman coming into their room late at night. "What was her name again?" Deborah can only remember that she was a literature major. When the woman came in that night, she climbed the ladder up into her bunk bed, and still fully clothed, pulled the covers up over her head. She did not answer Deborah's concerned questions. In time Deborah stopped asking and stood silently beside the bunk bed waiting. More time passed. The literature major, tossed the covers aside, climbed down the ladder and without as much as a glance toward Deborah, took change from the phone-bowl and went out into the hall to use the payphone. It was not the police that she called. It was her family. They answered her call. The middle of the night and they answered her call. The literature major's voice was tearless as she described being grabbed by two men on the West Bank Bridge. They tried to throw her down into the Mississippi River, but she held on to the bridge suspender with all of her might. She did not let go. "I held on, Mom," she said. "I held on with everything I have." Deborah went into the hall and stood beside her. The literature major said, "Yes," then "No, they used their fingers." Then "Yes." Yes." "I love you too." "Yes." "Goodbye Mom." She turned to Deborah, "I'm leaving," she said.

For more than an hour Deborah helped her roommate pack her bags, and box up her food and dishes from the community kitchen. They lugged it all to the front porch. Deborah made them some tea and they wrapped themselves in blankets, sat on the luggage and waited together. The car pulled up. The father driving. The mother in the passenger seat. Two younger children spread out and sleeping in the back. Deborah followed her roommate as they charged down the front steps and onto the side walk. Before the engine was turned off, the mother had swung herself out of the car and was holding her daughter. The literature major began to weep. The father stood close beside them and put his hand on his daughter's head. The literature major placed her hand over his as she wept. "Are you sure you want to do this?" The mother asked. "Yes, I want to leave this place," the daughter responded. Deborah helped the father load baggage and boxes into the trunk. He handed her back the box of food, "You keep this, and thank you for your help." He nodded to Deborah as the car pulled away.she caught a glimpse of the literature major sitting on her mother's lap, slumped, with her head on her mother's shoulder. Deborah never saw or heard from them again.

Deborah wonders what became of her roommate. Did she drop out of the university? The University of Minnesota was a large campus, but not so large that they would not have run into each other. So probably she did drop out. Maybe she stayed in her suburb, and never returned to The Cities. Deborah gets up and makes herself a cup of tea, during which she continues writing her fantasy story about her missing roommate. She probably got a job in the local grocery store. Maybe even married the grocer's son. "But I bet she kept a hell of a reading room." Deborah imagines shelves of books—Tolstoy, Steinbeck, Wolf. She sees books stacked on side tables—Orwell, Welty, Burgess. Stacked up from the floor—Dawkins, Roach, Deutch. In the center of the maelstrom of books is a golden chase lounge, tossed with assorted tapestry pillows in earthen tones. A small desk of dark wood, with a single drawer sits against the window. Along the back of the desk, between bookends, is a row of bruised and stained journals. Stacked upon the desk are the latest in the literature major's rotating stack of library books—Snyder, Applebaum, Harari.

"No, I'm not quite satisfied with that ending," Deborah says. She does not realize that this is the last time she will have the opportunity to speak out-loud to herself until after the shop closes. A car pulls into the lot. Her tea is finished and Deborah takes it to her station behind the counter as five women carrying project bags and takeout bags make there way, laughing, to the front door. Two, with heads together, begin handing the homespun on the shelf across from the counter, another two are bent over examining the Addie display on the front of the counter. The fifth approaches Deborah.

"Hi Deborah, I'm Cindy, I don't know if you remember me, she says."

"I certainly do. I taught you and your husband, Pete, to knit a few years ago. It's good to see you are still knitting."

"We're coming from The Valley," Cindy says motioning toward the other women. "We spent the morning at Fiber N Ice.and on our way to Far North in Anchorage. Would it be okay if we hang out here and knit and have our lunches?"

"Absolutely, make yourselves comfortable," Deborah says, motioning them to the seating area. "I think most of you have been here before, right? Help yourself to whatever you need." Deborah nods toward their steaming to go bags from the local Thai restaurant. "There is coffee, tea, napkins, silverware and plates—just help yourself."

"We brought enough food to share, if you'd like some," Cindy says.

"It smells amazing. Just amazing. So much better than the canned soup I had for lunch."

"No, really, have some. Come and join us."

"Pad Thai? Did you happen to pick up some of their Pad Thai. It is the best."

"Indeed, we have Pad Thai."

     Deborah takes her fresh cup of tea and a generous bowl of steaming Pad Thai with her to what she calls her “command console.” It’s a rectangular space created by an L-shaped counter butting up agains a picture window. She puts her food and tea on the wide windowsill, back away from the risk of contamination between food and fiber. Under the counters, and invisible to customers, is an assortment of shelves and drawers, containing printers, ordering catalogs, bookkeeping  information, time cards, gift certificates, scales and all the infrastructure needed to run a successful business. Whenever Deborah steps into the command console, she can hear Riker announce, “Captain on deck.” 

     On the side counter is Deborah’s sketch book, already opened, with her favorite fountain pen laid on top. She removes the pen and turns to a fresh page, and prints, “The Edge:”  The Edge is her way of identifying her live row of stitches. From this edge she will work her way forward. Whatever part of her mind is available will work its way forward starting with The Edge. Parts of her yarn shop work are mindless. She is free to think whatever thoughts she chooses when she is winding yarn, rearranging skeins, or cleaning and prepping the seating area. A smaller part of her mind continues working on The Edge when she is engaged in rote interactions, such as making eye contact with each customer who comes through the door, smiling and stating, “If there is anything I can do to help, please let me know.” There are also many hours of frogging mistakes, breaking pattern codes and teaching. At these times, her entire mind is being used, leaving her unconscious mind to work The Edge:. 

     After the colon, using in fountain pen, in flowing cursive she writes, “Where is she now,” and aims her mind in the direction of the missing roommate. Deborah realizes she is not satisfied with leaving the literature major forever in a personal library. No matter how lovely is the sunlight streaming in through the window, across the row of journals and onto the golden chase lounge: life needs to be more than intellect. Life needs to be more than thought. Life also needs to be action. A quote from Matthew floats to the top of her brain, “It is by their deeds that you shall know them.” Then one from Jane Fonda, “Use it or lose it,” and “Life is action.”

     The Valley knitters buy a ton of homespun, hand-dyed and the Malibrigo they can’t get in Wasilla. While Deborah’s winding yarn she rewrites the roommate’s story. Yes, she returns to the suburbs. Yes, she marries the grocer’s son. Together they have three children and build up the business, adding a pharmacy, dry goods, and even a coffee shop and restaurant. They have a thriving business, all three children are in college, their tuitions already paid, when the grocer’s son leaves her for a younger woman.  There is no drama. Absent is the phase of alcoholism. No diets or plastic surgery. Instead, she retains a city lawyer. Within a year she has moved to a fully furnished apartment on the West Bank, using the equity from her share of the family home and business on tuition. Daily she walks across the West Bank bridge to the main campus for her classes. In time she learns to enjoy her walk. Deborah does a quick google of literature programs and decides to send her roommate to Harvard for her masters in Creative Writing and Literature, then back to U of M for a PhD in Comparative Literature. Currently she sees her roommate living in her own home on the West Bank. She takes an On Demand Transport driven by a Gopher Chauffeur back and forth to her office and classrooms. Deborah watches her at the head of her classroom engaging in rousing discussions with her students. And yes, she grades papers while seated on a golden chase lounge. She has a lover who manages the Guthrie Theater. All this and Deborah still can’t remember the literature major’s name. She grabs a pencil and does a quick sketch of a woman in a suit standing in front of a classroom, caught in the midst of speaking and gesturing, with several of her adult students raising their hands. She jots “Professor Roommate” under the sketch.