A Dress for Elena

by Jermaine Reed, MFA

Elena’s eyes are a silent, purplish universe with flecks of gold that shimmer like distant stars. Even in this picture faded with age, her eyes whisper a solemn soliloquy she will never utter. 

My breath catches as I sift between the photos. Elena’s eyes stretch behind the glare of a hand in motion. In another, her mouth curves but doesn’t fully blossom into the smile her face reaches for. Something within me sinks until it’s a knot at the core of my stomach.

Two weeks ago, Elena’s mom asked me to make a dress for Elena. The words had tumbled from my mouth in free fall before I shook my head.

“I sew for fun, but I can’t make a dress,” I’d said, balancing myself on my bicycle. I dug a nail into the tangle my Afro had become in the summer humidity, as my eyes traced the cracks in the concrete.

“You’re a strong girl. You got this,” Dara had said, tilting my head upward with a forefinger.

Now, thoughts of Elena invaded me. She existed as glints of memories in my mind. Though we’d bumped shoulders in the same high school halls, she’d lived on the other side of town with her dad. We’d laughed a little together at cafeteria table and parted at the garbage can. Sometimes, we traded baseball cards underneath the table. She was the only person I’d ever told about my collection.

Tonight, I squirm in my bed, photos of Elena shifting through my fingertips. My breaths become waves in a storm, as I draw up images in my mind of a dead girl’s dress I have to make. Maybe these pictures her mother gave me will explain it all.

I sit up on my elbow and I focus my bedside lamp on the next photo. Elena’s face fades into an orangish glow. Maybe the picture used to sit out at Elena’s home, a small tribute by Dara, Elena’s mother. “Maybe,” I say.

In the photo, Elena wears overalls spotted with the same yellow and red sauces on her wrists. Her back is pressed against a wall in the corner, her knuckles like marbles in her pockets. In another, she is a miniature version of herself, her hair sweeping lower than I recall. Others rub elbows with her in the picture, but she’s a universe away, chewing her black-painted fingernails.

As the shadows of sleep take me, images of Elena with a lazy smile project across my ceiling. “She didn’t smile that way in any of the pics,” I say. Still, my mind conjures up a giggly Elena in muddy jeans and a spotted t-shirt. My heart smiles.

“I bet she smelled like raisins, flowers and summer nights like in the cafe,” I mumble.

***

“This is where she spent most of her time when she came to visit me, or whoever she came to visit,” Dara says, her cotton tone belied by the wrinkles at the corners of her mouth. She tilts her head to the side, squinting. “You remind me of her.”

I shift on the bank, not sure how to respond to being compared to a girl who’d committed suicide days earlier. “How so?” I say over the hum of flittering mosquitos. I smack my arm and rake the stubs of my nails over it.

Dara’s hand swallows mine in its warmth. “Don’t scratch like a boy. You’ll irritate the bite and leave a scar,” she says, patting my thigh.

I nod and bite my lip, my arm a small fire.

“You’re a pretty girl,” Dara says, her eyes rolling over me. “You wear nice clothes that match, something Elena wouldn’t be caught doing. But it’s something about your demeanor. You giggle like a girl, but it feels forced. There’s a tomboy screaming to get out of you. Elena was the same.”

I nod once, my lips moving but no words coming out. My soul draws inward at the accusation that strikes like an arrow to the chest. I seal my lips, fold my arms and listen to the chirps and rustles of the forest.

A black cloud of mosquitoes crowd the sticky air. I wrap my Afro in my scarf to keep the sweat away. Fish scales glimmer beneath the water, the fish close enough to splash me as they go along. I dig my fingers in the dirt and toss back the occasional worm. 

 “Who did Elena used to come here with? Her boyfriend?” I ask, licking my lips. My voice cracks, but I manage to get the words out. Dara hands me a bottle of water from the cooler and I gulp half the bottle. The belch erupts before I can stop it, and I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.

Dara waves a hand. “Elena didn’t have time for boys. She always came alone,” she says, her chin resting on her fist.

“I wonder why.”

“I used to wonder why too. Didn’t do me any good. She wanted her space, I guess.”  

“Did she act different before, before…” I stammer, mouth dry, regardless of the water I’d drank. 

“Before she the pills? I’d say she was the same maybe,” she says, exhaling and closing her eyes.  

“What kind of things did she like?” I shift on the patchy grass and prop my head up on my hand.

“Nature, dirt. I didn’t get to go to prom, so I wanted her to go to hers. It was my dream. But she wasn’t the type. We were opposites.” 

Under the pink setting sun, Dara could be mistaken for royalty. She could be queen of some great kingdom with her full lips, turquoise eyes and shiny olive skin. I would have taken her for anyone other than Elena’s mother.

“I didn’t know Elena as well as I could have,” Dara says, standing. She folds her arms and looks across the pond, her eyes seeing something I cannot. “Or that I should have.”

The sun is nothing more than little rays of light the expanding darkness drinks up. Dara and I sit in silence, letting nature converse with itself. She stands and dust the leaves and dirt off her.

“Let me give you a ride home, hon,” Dara says.

“I’ll take my bike,” I say.

Dara climbs in her van and turns, crunching through the undergrowth. She comes to a stop just in front of me.

“Elena said you were a good friend. She always talked about you and your designs. It’s kinda the real reason I picked you,” Dara says. Her van creeps away over breaking twigs.

The words catch me off guard, but they warm me from the center. I’m both shocked and grateful that she considered me a friend.

I twist around, taking in the world around. The aroma of fresh leaves fill my lungs, and a cool breeze dabs my forehead. My chest warms at all the sensations that overwhelm me while picturing what Elena’s purple and gold-flecked eyes once had.

“What did you think about out here, Elena? What did you feel?” I say.

***

At home, I sigh and push myself away from the sewing table. I take deeper breaths, but it’s like the basement has been drained of oxygen. The sketch of the dress is lifeless on the paper. I step away, exhale and flex my hands. I’d promised myself that making this dress would be addicting once I started it. Doubt had expanded into every crevice of my mind. The excitement I’d anticipated now evades me, and I scratch my head.

My hand sinks into the cotton swath beside the drawing on the table. It’s soft. It’s pretty. Yet it is wrong somehow. I’m making a dress and good dresses are made of cotton. But cotton for Elena feels like bringing a headstone for a wedding gift. Elena’s family will be in town soon, and the funeral will happen. A small boom shakes the table under my slamming fists, and the scissors rattle to the floor.

“Shit,” I say, as I pinch the bridge of my nose.

After running into my mom at the grocery store, Dara had asked if I could make the dress because she thought I knew what girls my age like. She also knew I’d gotten in trouble selling custom clothes in school.

Now, sitting here in this basement, I realize that not every girl likes the same things. I am as different from Elena as her mother is. I need to think.

 ***

At the river, wind traces icy fingers over me. I hope for something as fish dart through the water, but emptiness resounds in my heart. Inspiration has taken the day off. Maybe it will find me when it’s ready. Or not.   

I trace my tongue over my chipped tooth and recall a time when I was eleven. I’d worn a blue outfit I loved for picture day, and the other girls called me names or made faces at me. They all had pink dresses and pretty pink hair bows. 

“Blue is for boys, loser,” one of the girls had proclaimed, standing over me, my elbow pounding from snapping against the tile. 

I’d run away, my cheeks warm with tears, hand wrapped around my elbow. I still don’t remember falling, but the fire of pain with a bloody mouth is tattooed on my soul. I grip my elbow, soothing a pain that has come in gone in too forms. Since that incident, I have worn pink every picture day. 

Suddenly, the damn holding back a wave of sadness cracks within me. I glance through the photos of Elena I have piled beside me on the dirt. Elena high cheekbones pull people to her, but she is not what many would call pretty, not even cute. If she had fixed up her hair, wore better clothes and used makeup, she would have been gorgeous.

“But she wouldn’t have been herself,” I say. Then, an idea hits me. 

 ***

It takes hours to fill the bin with all the pink things in my bedroom. When I am done, I am left with a few dresses, a pair of jeans and some shirts. I exhale, and my shoulders are lighter.

Dara lends me her truck, and I load my sewing machine, desk and other necessities into it. I wrap my hair and unpack at the riverbank. A hint of raisins and wrapped in summer breeze caresses my neck.

I exhale and crack my knuckles. As I do, images of Elena flitter across my mind’s eye. Why did she see suicide as an option? Who was she really? I may never know the answer to those questions, but something otherworldly tells me what I’m about to make is everything Elena would have wanted.

The desk sinks into the ground, one side higher than the other, but I cut anyway. I have lost all control. My body is on autopilot. Every cut, clip and measurement are perfect. I hang my work on a tree in front of me and rub the seams. The material is satisfyingly rough. My lips curl upward.

 ***

In her living room, Dara lifts the shirt I made for Elena and eyes it with a razor-sharp eyebrow lifted. She does the same with the coveralls. Her face is blank. I clasp my hands to keep from trembling. 

“When I asked you to make a dress, I wasn’t expecting a button-down shirt and a pair of denim coveralls,” Dara says, pursing her lips. 

I look at the floor tiles. “I’m sorry. I’ll make what you want instead,” I say, hoping not to make a bigger fool of myself.

“It’s about what Elena would have wanted, and this is it. Thank you,” she says.

 The hug lasts somewhere between an eternity and an instant. Elena is in it with a scent heavy with raisins and rain.

“Take a box of raisins on your way out. They were Elena’s favorite,” Dara says, winking.

My heart stutters, and I smile.

In the driveway, I crank the motor of my new blue dirt bike and swerve away.

 #####

A Dress for Elena ©️2020, ©2025 by Jermaine Reed, MFA