Submitted to Short Story Writing Month

Short Story Writing Month is going on now. I submitted the first of two stories that I had planned to write.

The Button Box
By DBB
Words: 2,367

Ever play the game, button, button, who's got the button? An old, corroded tin, that once upon a time had held a fruitcake, now filled with little fragments of the past, felt oddly warm in Faerie's hands. The floodgates to Frances Faye's childhood memories were unleashed as she inched open the canister's tight fitted lid. Frances Faye, otherwise known as Faerie, so named because her baby sister couldn't pronounce her name and it came out fair-fee, was relieved to find that all her old friends were still huddled together inside the tin.

Buttons have been around since the dawn of time. Made of wood, shell, stone, metal, they held the garments of man closed, were used as barter in trade or ornaments to royalty. To Faerie, the buttons within the worn, metal box were priceless gems. Every size and color imaginable, all collected by her sweet grandmother, Ida.

A button in the days of the depression was not something to discard. When clothes were worn out and could no longer be mended, the buttons were removed and tossed into the button box. The fabric, what useful pieces could be salvaged, were later sewn into quilts.

From as far back as Faerie could remember she had spent the summers at her grandparent's small ranch between the dusty mesas of southwest Texas. The button box, in the bottom drawer of the sewing cabinet, was brought out on hot summer afternoons as a means to entertain her. And entertain her it did. Faerie whiled away many a hot summer's day playing with each and every button in the box.

Besides being a tool to keep Faerie out her grandmother's hair, especially at peak canning time, the button box held an education. From them she had learned to count, learned the names of colors, and the secrets of her family history. But most importantly, it had unlocked a little girl's imaginings.

Faerie invented all kinds of button games. When the red ones were separated from the white ones they became the subjects of royalty, the gold and silver ones. The blue ones became the queen's army. The beige and brown were the horses and cattle. Tiny, tiny ones were the birds. Large gray ones were the elephants. Because there were so few of them, the cloth covered buttons, were the wise sages and wizards of the kingdom. Green, of course, depending on their size, were elves or faeries. At other times, the buttons were separated into sizes and color groups once again, representing Indians and their horses, dogs and cats. The large ones became Army soldiers. Faerie rarely played war in her imaginings. She didn't like war. So her soldiers were always the good kind. It was war that was all about her as a child. In 1944, when Faerie was five, two of her mother's brother's were in the Army, in Europe, and her father was in the South Pacific, a pilot on an aircraft carrier.

When the war was over, life moved on in a dizzying pace. Service people traveled from one end of the country to the other every few years. Her father had remained twenty years in the Navy after World War II, and had served in two others. His last duty was as a flight instructor at a Naval Air Station in California. At only thirty-eight years old he was killed in a plane crash the day before he was to muster out. Something about engine failure after takeoff. He'd had a very full life, full of adventure. Full of love for his wife and two daughters, Faerie and Caroline. Mother and daughters grieved appropriately for a military family. Life marched forward.

Faerie reached into the button box and pulled out a large, brass button, tarnished with time. It's weight heavy in her hands. It was evidently from one of her father's dress uniforms. She sat it aside.

The quaint little kitchen was still the same as it had been in all the summers she could remember. The little sewing cabinet still held a delightful assortment of treads, thimbles, embroidery hoops, and all the necessary paraphernalia to make dresses, shirts, dolls and doll clothes, and quilts. Faerie ran a hand across the top of the familiar cabinet. Blonde wood, originally, now darkened, nicked and worn smooth in some places. Only the sewing machine had been changed out for newer models over the years. A stack of coordinating fabrics cut into squares, ready to be sewn together, sat off to one side. Faerie moved the balance wheel. It moved easily, well oiled. An image of her grandmother sitting at this little cabinet, her head bent over the needle plate, back hunched over the latest project, knobby hands guiding the fabric easily along, formed in Faerie's mind. Tears filled her eyes, one escaped and dropped into the open button box.

The teardrop disappeared in the mix of buttons. Faerie reached in, and lifted out a handful of buttons, letting them fall back into the tin as sand would sift through the fingers. A tiny round button that looked like a pearl, fell through her fingers, hit the rim of the box and bounced onto the table. Grandmother Ida had made Faerie's wedding dress. It took almost a hundred tiny pearl buttons to close the back of the dress and sleeves. It was the fanciest and prettiest thing she had ever worn in her life. It had taken her grandmother weeks to finish it. Yards and yards of white satin, to make the full skirt and puffy sleeves. She felt like a princess the day she finally got to wear it. At the chapel in town, her Prince was waiting to carry her away for a lifetime of Happy Ever Afters.

Another tear had disembarked and rolled down her chin. Faerie wiped it away with the back of her hand. Happy Ever Afters happened only in fairy tales.

Suddenly needing to distract her thoughts, she glanced at the tea kettle on the stove. The clock above the stove reminded Faerie that the funeral would be in an hour. She stood up and wiped her face dry with the palms of her hands and headed for the sink. After filling the tea kettle and turning on the burner, she rummaged around in the cabinet where the tea things were kept. She found several opened boxes of tea, but chose the herbal peppermint blend that her grandmother kept just for her visits.

While she waited for the water to heat up she walked throughout the small, two bedroom house. A quilt secured with thumb stacks to its pine-slat frame leaned against the wall in the bedroom that Faerie shared with her sister during their summer residencies. The tidy little bathroom with its newly installed tub, sink and toilet, and all new, white floor tiles, glistened in the morning light streaming through the window over the tub. Grandmother was old, but she loved modern things. Her enthusiasm for life had far outweighed her bent-with-age-arthritic-frame. Frame of mind had been everything to Ida.

Something drew her into Ida's bedroom. The room was clean and tidy; the bed with its pale-green chenille bedspread, looked freshly made. On the end of the bed was Ruthless. He had greeted her at the kitchen door, waiting to be let in. It had been two days since Faerie had been notified of her grandmother's passing. Had anyone bothered to take care of the nineteen year old, brown and tan Maine coon in all that time? He had darted through the opened door and promptly disappeared. Faerie had been so caught up in all the living memories in the kitchen she had not thought again as to where the cat had gone. He had not mewed for food, nor did he linger and rub against her legs for love and attention the way he'd always done when she'd come to visit.

There he was, curled up at the foot of grandmother's bed, asleep, waiting patiently for his human pet to remember to come home. She tried to transmit her thoughts to the fluffy wad of fur on the bed. "Grandmother is not coming home anymore, dear old cat. I'm taking her place." It didn't work; the dear old cat didn't even so much as twitch a whisker.

The tea kettle sang out and Faerie returned to the kitchen. Having settled back in the kitchen chair next to the button box while her tea steeped, Faerie dipped her hand into the buttons again, swirling them round and round, as if she were stirring pebbles on the beach. The buttons were cool and settling. An ache crept back into her heart when she picked out a nickel sized, iridescent abalone shell button. She noticed another, and then another. Soon she had removed a dozen of the shinny shell disc and had lined them up on the table.

She poured her tea, added some sugar from the crystal sugar bowl sitting on the round, woven grass placemat in the center of the table. It shared a spot with the little red and green ceramic bell pepper salt and pepper shakers. The grass mat's red dye had faded somewhat to a salmon color.

The abalone shell buttons were so pretty and were on almost all of the latest dresses in the stores these days. Whenever her grandmother purchased a store-bought dress, the first thing she'd do was remove all, what she called, the "cheap" shell buttons, and replaced them with fancier, color coordinated, plastic buttons. Faerie chuckled at the thought. Her grandmother would fuss about how ordinary the shell ones were. Growing up, she'd had lots of shell buttons and glad to have them, but now, in these "modern" times, Ida felt she could squander a few cents more for the colorful plastic ones that matched the fabric.

Faerie rifled her hand in the button box again. Filtering out dozens of creamy white shirt buttons, some with bits of thread still in their tiny holes. It had always been her job to remove the threads so they'd be ready to use again. Faerie hadn't been around for a few years now, ten it seemed, and she had fallen behind on the job.

The kitchen was quiet except for her breathing and the soft, tick, ticking from the clock on the wall. Once again reminding her of the funeral in forty minutes.

"What the heck," she murmured, and dumped the whole box onto the table the way she had done as a child. Enthusiastically, she started sorting the buttons by size. Rainbows began to form. Images from childhood days filled her grieving mind. She stopped only long enough to refill her tea cup and nibble on a few sugar cookies that were still in the black and white ceramic cow cookie jar on the counter. They tasted fresh, as if made yesterday.

Yesterday, the day after her demise, her grandmother was laid out for her viewing in the mortuary, dressed in her brown and white, silk polka-dotted shirtwaist dress that she was so fond off. A pretty corsage of white silk flowers pinned to her left shoulder. Her thin-skinned, gnarled hands laid loosely, one atop the other at her waist. Her soft, creamy-white hair curled so delicately around the ears showing off the large round, pearl earrings. Little bangs were feathered across her forehead. They had done a good job on the hair and makeup. What mortuary had ever done a good job on an old ladies makeup? Most always made them up to look like little china dolls. Bright red cheeks, thin, bright red lips formed into a pleasing, half smile. Faerie smiled at the way her grandmother had looked yesterday in her coffin. Nothing too fancy, just the standard issue for most folks on a fixed income. They had done a good job on her hair and makeup. Whoever their makeup person was had a gift.

Handfuls at a time, Faerie took both hands and swooped all the buttons back into the button tin. She would have time to play with these until she was ninety-one, herself. That's how long Ida had lived, to ninety-one. Once again, Faeries hands absently stirred through the buttons. She could not stop touching them, caressing them. The doctors said her mother had a weak heart, something about a valve leaking and damaged heart muscles. Faerie believed she died of loneliness for her father—a broken heart, one year after his accident, to the day. She missed her parents. Neither of them got to see her married to her idiot, Prince Charming.

Faerie stirred the mix of buttons one more time, this time frantically searching for that single tiny, pearl button from her wedding dress, but it was lost in the myriads of shapes and colors and textures in the box. Another color, a tiny round, lilac, crystal-like button caught her eye. Caroline's prom dress. It was gorgeous. Tiers of lilac taffeta ruffles, layers of lilac netting crinolines. Caroline hated it. It was too tacky she had said, after her grandmother had stayed up nights working on it, less than a week before the prom. Caroline was a different sort of girl. She wasn't feminine in a frilly, girly sense. She was fonder of tailored, square shouldered jackets, and slacks than she was of dresses. Only her long blonde hair, in a single braid nearly to her waist, was about all that was somewhat girlish about her.

Faerie had loved her sister, ten years her junior. Watching her grow up, she had anticipated helping Caroline with school activities, shopping for pretty dresses, and or fabrics and buttons, in most cases for grandmother to make. Usually at the last minute because they could never find that "right" outfit for that "special" occasion and time was always running out.

Time was running out. Her beloved grandmother would be placed in her final resting place in less than a half an hour. Faerie flipped the plastic replica of a lilac crystal back into the box. Closed the lid, stood up and cleaned up her tea things. At least Caroline and her ex wouldn't be attending the funeral. Caroline got her ex Prince Charming; Faerie got the house, the cat, and the buttons.