Adelaide Literary Award Anthology 2017

upper and lower strings. Just underneath was a sticks, all the individual characteristics of a
swirl of random glossy string that divided the living being were there to be discovered, but as
two groups even farther. I saw that the sticks weaver, I was not accustomed to look for them.
in mine were mainly haphazard finds. I hadn’t
expected to have a set of the smooth, uniform I felt trapped, and almost never secure. I
wood ones sold in the market. Several of mine didn’t understand how to work within the
had been found on the roadside. Thankfully frame, much less have the ability to adjust
each stick was marked with a guide string tied within it. Choices about weaving were made
in a loop. Even if I didn’t keep the loom bal- for me long before I knelt down. At least my
anced and sticks fell out, Maria wouldn’t have strings here were visible. Choices made in
to recount to divide the upper and lower education long before I opened my first
strings. The open loom reminded me of a classroom door had trapped me, because I
scroll. didn’t know to look, much less how to work
with them. My question while writing my
“Move over,” she instructed. Master’s thesis had been if the loom could
represent the institution of schooling, and the
Clearly she changed her mind about strings its standardized constructs that marked,
where to start the first lesson while watching measured and often divided students. Instead,
me fumble to fold my legs and hitch up my each time I fumbled for a definition of a
pants. I slid over and she eased the fountains particular string or grouping, I felt the physical
of cloth in her corte, so that she sat with her structure and its resulting ache and frustration
knees tucked under. Her weight rested on her more than intellectual endeavor. As an
heels. “Watch,” she pointed. outsider, I depended upon Maria Candelaria to
make decisions for me and translate them as
The work to do was in front of her. best she could.
With quick wrist movements, she left two loops The loose strings were a page so blank that I
of the belt I hadn’t seen she carried in her hand could not even understand initially how to
around the two sticks on the bottom. approach them. This feeling harkened back to
high school. I could hear my advanced algebra
“Always two,” she cautioned, “Or it will teacher checking for understanding. “If I knew
unroll.” enough to be able to ask a question, I would,” I
lamenting to myself the amount of unknown. I
She pulled the belt around her back. wanted to learn every time I sat down at the
The flat leather strip rested under the overflow loom, but I wanted to quit too. It was the first
of fabric and childbearing on her hips. With recognizable moment where I could have quit
her other hand, she wrapped the loops a sec- learning and no one would have noticed. I was
ond time. She leaned back and the frame ex- grateful I hadn’t needed level one weaving on
tended. Her body was in charge of the tension. my class schedule to be valedictorian.
My body was tense, but I was definitely not in
charge. Quickly she undid the loops, rested the One session, two sessions, a week
loop on the ground and pointed at me. passed. I came to the store Saturdays and
Sundays mostly, since I returned to the village
Maria Candelaria was the first woman too late in the afternoon after working at the
who had suggested I try to wear traditional international school to have sufficient light to
dress and mean it. I went to her shop before work. My first words emerged cautiously as a
the parade on the patron saint’s day fair and forest green, wool block of fabric, and Maria
she dressed me. I left my jeans and t-shirt in a Candelaria began to leave me alone, a lot.
plastic bag until the end of the day. That first Frequently, she demonstrated content, like the
day weaving, and for many more after, Maria basic weaving sequence of lifting and then
had to dress me. She hung up the loom, be- smoothing the strings or wrapping the belt, and
cause when I did, it was a shaky balancing act at then I endured endless minutes staring at my
best. The tensions in the strings, their weak-
nesses, the variety in shape and size of the

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hands trying to make sense of the instructions hanging purses and stood over me. Her fingers
and the materials in front of me. I could have grazed the somewhat fraying strings until she
been kinder than my trademark pleading look found the piece she needed to retie to the one
when she returned to show me again. The fur- now brushing my knee as it hung underneath
rowed brow probably made her wonder if the shrinking rectangle in front of me.
things were so awful why was I continuing.
“You dropped a string,” she pointed out.
Maria Candelaria assumed much of me. The movement of exchange between the two
My learning demanded a specificity of instruc- main groups of warp strings was challenging to
tion, a transparency and explicitness with a lan- master. There was a division between the top
guage she never used before, and I was not and bottom groups of warp strings. The weav-
referring to either Spanish or Kaqchikel. This ing required an even give and take between the
miscommunication occurred about the loom, top and bottom. The cloth came together as a
the strings, the images, and most importantly, string passed between the unwoven strings be-
the justification for her decisions. As a teacher, tween the groups in order to forge a connec-
I could empathize with Maria Candelaria. I tion through the weft string. If I dropped a
used to be sure that I “knew” my students, and string then there was a vertical dash where it
when I didn’t, that a skill like speaking Spanish didn’t go under the horizontal strings. The one
meant I spoke their “language”. Spanish hadn’t she pointed out, I missed in previous rows.
helped me in Wisconsin. Kaqchikel hadn’t
helped during Peace Corps. Maria was accus- “You could go back. If you want.”
tomed to being understood in a different lan- The look on my face groaned no without
guage of practice. I wanted to be able to help the sound. This exchange of strings was the
her help me, but I couldn’t. basis of everything the weavers achieved. Their
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t thought about me. images required smooth movement and a con-
The string was green because she knew it was stant tension as a foundation. When I began
my favorite color. She picked wool instead of lifting the strings, I used only my wrist, but it
the more common cotton, because she watched required my hips and body weight as well. I
me knit scarves for Wisconsin winters. She retrained my shoulders, hips and back to move
made connections to me; they just weren’t together.
helpful ones. The wool string was the heaviest “You have to relax. You’re pulling too hard,”
of the three common types the weavers used. Maria warned. There were other strings close
As a result, it knotted easier, and required extra to breaking. “Look at the divider string.”
strength to weave tightly. I walked or ran up I looked. The glossy divider string swirl-
and down the hills between Panajachel and ing through the weaving was littered in green
Santa Catarina every day and did push-ups in balls. That did not make me relax. It just made
my room, but my shoulders struggled to lift the me mad, mostly at myself. Most of the strings
strings. I could not maintain fluidity of move- I broke Maria retied. If she couldn’t, the gap
ment in my hips, nor the patience that might left a scar up the weaving. Mine had a couple
have come if I understood why the act was so of those. It wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t perfect,
difficult. With each knot, I threw more gaso- but I was learning, albeit reluctantly at times.
line on the stick frame and impatience flared. I “That string is looser than the others. It
was not outwardly appreciative at the time. I doesn’t stay with the group,” I complained.
blamed her. “You have to watch for it then. But,
look, these rows are tighter.” That was true.
“I broke another string,” I informed Ma- “If you had designs, you wouldn’t even
ria. The loom was more balanced because a notice the scar from the broken string. Your
month into our lessons I had about half the eye would look somewhere else. It doesn’t
strings now woven and rolled and secured next matter,” she continued.
to me with the important two loops. Now
there was only about two feet. She stopped

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A thought popped into my head. I wondered “There! You see, a duck,” she assured me
how many imperfect weavings she sold to grin- when we finished. Maria handed me a pink
gas like me who wouldn’t notice. But what did string and I wove it through, marking the end
I gain by noticing? Did a higher evaluation of the lesson for the day. It was a wobbly,
score add aesthetic or dollar value? kindergarten crayon, invented spelling kind of
duck, but you could say it was a duck. Or she
“Here, you want to try something else could. I wouldn’t have dared. The
today?” she offered. distinguishing shape hovered on the green
water. If she was willing to confirm its identity,
“What?” I couldn’t imagine being capa- I didn’t see why I should contradict her. She
ble of ‘something else’ if I was still struggling noticed my hesitation to celebrate though.
with this.
“You worry too much. Even if you
“Let’s make a duck.” make a mistake, no one will see it from a
“A duck.” She couldn’t be serious. distance.” She pulled a weaving down from a
Wasn’t there an order to my education? I folded pile. “Look.” She showed me an entire
couldn’t possibly be ready. There was no way I weaving of shaky images. “This old woman
was going to make a duck, but I wanted to. doesn’t see very well anymore, but I help her by
Maria ripped off a piece of light blue floss with selling these. No one (and she meant the
her teeth. gringos) sees the difference.”
“Luis,” her husband, “doesn’t like it
when I do this. He doesn’t think it’s good for I could have believed this was a
my teeth.” That’s funny, I felt inadequate, marketing ploy like the raised prices I faced at
cheating, because I was using scissors. the market. But, I didn’t. In her eyes, the value
Maria plucked up green strings under her was the same for the woven cloth regardless of
nail and slipped the blue one behind them. what was on it. She refolded the tablerunner
“We’ll make a triangle first.” and returned it to its place.
The gates were about to burst open with
another one of my seemingly endless questions, Three months passed and my stamina
constant and dangerous like the waters rushing increased. Secured tightly in the backstrap by
to the lake basin during hurricane season. Maria’s hands, I watched, listened and focused.
“Pick up two,” Maria instructed. I squinted and repeated back actions in my
“Two,” I repeated, and I picked up two, exactly head. I would still realize seconds later I had
two strings. no idea what to do next. We wove mostly in
“No. Two.” silence, sometimes together. I began to filter
I looked again. “Two? Or two pairs.” my questions, asking only those that I could
“Two,” she repeated and pointed. She not live without. Maria began to pause to see if
pulled up the strings so that the space showed I had any questions. I desperately prayed for
between her fingers marked by the cinnamon improvement. My friend just wanted me to be
toned skin of her finger. happy when I finished.
“So four,” I confirmed to myself. The
strings were grouped in pairs of two, but those “I worried about you,” she said pulling
were not the “pareja” or pair. It was discourag- out a butcher knife. “You were so upset, I
ing to hear her words and then to fail using my didn’t know if you would finish.” She began
own imagined meanings. I was struggling to be sawing at the strings nearest the stick
an active partner in this teaching and learning connected to the hook in the ceiling. The
conversation. weight of the stick began to angle towards the
floor and then fell in my lap. “There.”

Unworthy of any library but my own, my
green “bufanda” that I would never wear as a
scarf, was a more valuable text than any I
learned from before. I wanted to unroll it, and

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