The Crooked Square

Chapter 1The Hole in the Poster

On Thursday night, Shira Fisch erased a hole through her poster.

She did not mean to. She had been working on it for nine days. It was a big poster for the school Shabbos fair: a long Shabbos table drawn in pencil and marker, with candlesticks, challos, a kiddush cup, and, in the center, a family sitting close together. She had planned it for weeks. She had measured the table with a ruler.

But the third person from the left had a funny-shaped nose. She had erased it and drawn it again. Still funny. She erased again, harder, and again, and again, until the paper went thin and gray and then, with a tiny paper sigh, tore through.

Shira stared at the hole. It was the size of a quarter, right in the middle of a little girl's face.

"No," she whispered. "No, no, no."

Her stomach dropped. The poster was due Monday. There was no time to start over. And even if there were, she knew exactly what would happen. She would draw a new table, and somewhere on it, a candle would be a little too tall, and she would start erasing again.

She sat on the floor with the ruined poster in her lap. She was ten. She had never in her life turned in anything that she thought was good enough. Her math homework had worn-through spots from erasing. Her last book report had been late because the second paragraph never felt right.

It was a funny kind of trouble. Nobody was angry at her. Nobody even knew. But inside her, something was always saying: not yet. Not quite. Try again.

Chapter 2Bubby's Quilt

On Friday afternoon, Shira's mother drove her to Bubby's apartment to help set the Shabbos table. Shira had the poster rolled in a tube under her arm. She had told no one about the hole.

Bubby lived on the third floor, and her apartment smelled of cinnamon and floor wax. Bubby herself, small and quick, in a light blue kerchief tied in a neat knot, opened the door before they knocked.

"Shira'leh! You're early. Come, you can help me with the challah cover."

Bubby's quilt hung on the wall of the living room, where it had hung as long as Shira could remember. It was a big one, bigger than a door, made of tiny squares in blues and golds and soft greens, each one a different pattern. Bubby had made it herself, long ago, from pieces of old dresses. Shira had always loved it.

She stood in front of it now, while Bubby fussed with the table, and found herself looking at it the way she looked at everything. Looking for mistakes.

It took only a minute. Third row from the bottom, seventh square from the left. It was a blue square with white flowers, and it was crooked. Its corners did not match the squares around it. One side bulged a little, and the stitching along the top was uneven, like a hand that had been shaking.

Shira frowned. Everything else on the quilt was perfect. Bubby's stitching was famous in the family. She could sew a hem so straight you could use it as a ruler.

"Bubby?" she said. "This square is crooked."

"Yes," said Bubby, without looking up. "I know."

"You made a mistake?"

"I did."

Shira waited for her to say she would fix it. Bubby only smoothed the tablecloth. "Why didn't you take it out?" Shira asked. "You could have sewn it again. Nobody would ever know."

Bubby put down the challah cover and looked at her granddaughter for a long moment. Then she came to the quilt and rested a finger on the crooked square.

"I would know," she said.

Chapter 3The Night of the Square

"I sewed that one the night my sister left," said Bubby.

Shira had heard of her great-aunt, Tante Chana, who had moved far away when Bubby was seventeen. She had never heard this story.

"We were girls in a small town. Chana was going to America on a ship, and I was staying behind to help my mother. We did not know when we would see each other again. We did not have a telephone. Letters took months." Bubby's voice was steady, but her finger on the quilt did not move. "The night before she left, we sat up sewing together. My mother had given us scraps of her old dresses to make a quilt. We each took half. Chana sewed this side, and I sewed that side."

"Chana sewed the half on the left?" asked Shira.

"Yes. And on that last night, I sat down to sew this square. But I was crying so hard I could not see the needle. My hands were shaking, and the stitches went crooked. And Chana looked at it and said, 'Don't take it out. Let me remember how you sewed it the night I left.'"

Shira did not say anything. Her throat felt tight.

"I never took it out," said Bubby. "Sixty years. We saw each other three times in all those years. She passed away last winter. And every day I walk past this wall, and I see this square, and I remember my sister's voice. 'Don't take it out.' It is the most perfect square in the whole quilt." She smiled, a little wet-eyed. "Do you understand?"

"I think so," said Shira slowly. "The mistake is the part that remembers."

"A mistake can be only a mistake. Or it can be where the story lives. It depends what you do with it."

Shira looked at the quilt again. She saw something she had missed. Now that she was not hunting for flaws, she saw how all of it fit together: the careful squares and the wandering ones, the straight lines and the one crooked place. It did not look worse for the crooked square. It looked alive.

Then, without being told, she unrolled the poster on Bubby's dining table.

Chapter 4The Poster That Was Finished

She showed Bubby the hole. She told her about the erasing and the nose and all the other nights. She told her about the thing that kept saying "not yet."

Bubby listened to the end. She did not say "it's fine" or "don't be silly." She studied the poster, with its careful table and its torn little face.

"The table is beautiful," she said. "I see how hard you worked. The candlesticks are very good. And this," she touched the edge of the hole, "is not a catastrophe. It is a hole. What are we going to do about it?"

Shira had not thought of it like that. A hole is a hole. It does not have to mean she was a failure. It only needs something done.

They tried things. A square of blue paper glued behind the hole. A patch of white. Then Bubby had an idea, and she went to her sewing basket and brought back a scrap of the blue cloth with white flowers, left over from the quilt.

"A little girl needs a scarf," she said. "She is cold."

Shira cut the cloth into a small triangle and glued it over the hole, just where the face had been. It looked like the girl was leaning forward, her face hidden in a soft blue kerchief, one braid peeking out the side. It looked, Shira thought, like someone who was listening very hard.

It was not what she had planned. It was better.

She set down her pencil. This was the part that felt hardest. Her hand wanted to fix the nose on the next person, and the width of the table, and the tilt of the candle.

"Bubby," she said, "how do I know when to stop?"

"Make a rule," said Bubby. "Before you start fixing, decide. What are the three things that matter most? If those three are good, you are done."

Shira thought. She counted on her fingers. The family close together. The candles lit. The empty chair at the end for a guest.

She looked. All three were there.

"Done," she said, and was surprised how light the word felt.

On Monday, she carried the poster to school rolled carefully in its tube. Her teacher, Morah Rosen, unrolled it on the board and stood in front of it for a long time.

"Who is the girl in the blue kerchief?" she asked.

"She's listening," said Shira. "She's the one who remembers."

Morah Rosen smiled. "I would like to hang this one in the front."

That night, Shira sat at her desk to do her math homework. Her eraser hovered over a wobbly seven. She looked at it.

She left it.

It was not perfect. It was a seven that someone had written on a Monday. And somewhere in her chest, a very small voice that had said not yet for a long time finally, quietly, said: enough.