How I Learned to Knit

I lived in my then apartment with my then husband who, then, comes home from work at 3 a.m. smelling like sweat and smoke and exotic dancer perfume.

My husband drops his clothes by the bed and curls behind me. The neighbors are screaming. They started at about three in the afternoon with vodka, I tell him, and were onto whiskey and with a break to walk to the bottle shop around 8 p.m.

The day we moved in, I locked myself out. I was outside trying to light the pilot for the water heater when the door slammed shut, and there I was in my shorts and bikini top and no shoes, and I needed to borrow a neighbor’s telephone book.

I didn’t know. How would I?

The biggest one, the fattest and hairiest, opened the door in his underwear. He said if I ever needed anything else, anything (wink), I could knock any time.

The locksmith took an hour to get there. I could’ve hugged the locksmith and kissed the top of his head. It took two hours to get the place open. My apartment was the hardest place he’d ever had to break into.

James was his name. The drunk neighbor with his gut hanging over the rim of his underwear.

I cleaned houses during the days, a cleaning lady. I took a calculator to the grocery store because I could spend no more than $45 on food for my husband and me for two weeks. At home alone until 3 a.m., I read books on the porch and hung wet socks over the backs of chairs to dry. I rubbed mold off the bathroom ceiling with a mop and swirled sand down the shower drain. The neighbors were drunk by 5 p.m. every bloody day, and sometimes they weren’t just drunk. But my apartment was the hardest one the locksmith had ever broken into, the locksmith said so.

Even half asleep I knew the sound of my husband’s car coming up the bump into the parking lot. I knew the sound of his door slamming and the sound change made in his pocket when he walked up the stairs. And my favorite sound: his key sliding into the deadbolt, and the turning of the lock.

Now, he curls behind me. It’s a big night for James and the boys. Now they are really screaming. There is body-shaped thud against the wall next to where I sleep. Someone is getting pounded.

My husband gets up. Enough, he says. You’re going to Penny’s, and I am calling the police. No, I say, I’m not leaving you here with them.

I was worried about him. I think about this now, not then.

Get dressed.

No.

Get dressed.

If they know you called the police they’ll kill you.

I agree to get dressed because my husband calls Tiny, the best bouncer they have where he works. He is not so Tiny at all, and he is our friend.

I ask to wait there long enough for the police to come, but my husband knows too much about the police here to allow that, and they’re outside now, the neighbors, I mean, and they’re thudding and punching and snapping the railing to the stairs into pieces. Something like a skull might have just cracked pavement.

Something Happened. The drunks are panicking. Suddenly Penny is honking out front and someone yells Get Rid of It and they thump back inside their place.

From our place, we have to cross their door to get out. Now we can make a run for it, outside past their door with my husband and Tiny—when did Tiny get here?—on either side of me, toward the car. They do this for a living, but I am not a stripper and these aren’t everyday drunks. My sandal slips and I yelp and Tiny yanks me up by the arm so I don’t fall. A hunk of hair runs down the steps in the blood like a mouse in a flood.

Turn around. Through the apartment now, I hoist a leg over the balcony and I am down the fire escape and jump the last 10 feet. Penny’s car goes slow, and I look out the back window at my apartment, where my husband and Tiny are. It is all very quiet.

Penny is my husband's friend, but I have met her once before. My sticky sandals are out on the steps by the screen door. She offers me a beer and I say no. I cross my legs on a pillow on the floor. She makes me tea, and adds a splash of whiskey.

Penny’s house is pink and yellow inside, and she has big pillows and fresh flowers and some music playing that should make me feel better. I sip the drink and Penny declares: I'm going to teach you how to knit.

She sits across from me, and I mirror her because I am left handed. She teaches me to cast on, and I don’t get it, so I try a few times, then how to stitch. Maybe a pot holder, or a scarf, or, you know, it doesn’t have to be anything right now.

So I start, and I’m still sniffling, and the needles click and she goes quite fast. I click and click without thinking and then I stop for the first time and look at it. What have I done? I have made a mess of things—loose loops and holes and tight spots all the way through. She says I have to unravel and start again from the beginning.

I go for a bit without stopping, but can’t go a stitch further once I see I’ve only repeated the same mistakes as before. I unravel and start over and unravel and start over and I don’t feel like I’m getting any better at this. I am slow and concentrating very hard and it is always a mess. I undo my work. I begin again. The telephone rings at dawn.