The White Blouse

The White Blouse

Outskirts of a mining town in northern Minnesota
August 1990

A ten-year-old girl named Ursula Dahl chases after a porcupine behind her mother’s trailer, her frizzy red hair sparkling in the late-summer light. The animal escapes through a wild raspberry patch, but the child refuses to give up. Crouching, she clambers between bushes looking for the thorny rodent. What she’ll do if she gets close, she’s not sure, but she knows she wants a look at the creature’s quills. Something about their sharpness simultaneously intrigues and frightens her. In her science book, she read that what hurts can also heal: when porcupines fall from trees—a frequent occurrence—they impale themselves with their quills, equipped by nature with antibiotics to help heal fractures and breaks. In the midst of searching and thinking, Ursula tears the right sleeve of her white blouse on the thorns of a raspberry bush. The child knows her mother will beat her if she finds out. So, when she returns to the trailer, she cuts the sleeve just above the tear and sews the seam. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough time to cut and sew the left sleeve to make a match—her mother will soon return from her shift at the taconite mine—so Ursula rolls up both sleeves to even out the discrepancy. When she was eight, the child learned to sew from her grandmother on her father’s side. That was before her father went into the asylum, her grandparents died, and she and her mother moved to the trailer. She knows her mother is under a lot of stress. The only woman working at the mine, her mother is not very popular.

Sitting in a patch of sun on the living room floor, Ursula opens her science book and gets lost in a chapter on rainforests. A few minutes later, when her mother arrives, the child’s sleeves have returned to their unrolled positions. When she realizes, it’s too late. Her mother’s wide green eyes have settled on the discrepancy in sleeve length. She walks slowly to the center of the room. Then, like a fast-moving lizard unrolling its tongue to capture an insect, she grabs her daughter by the neck. “Think I wouldn’t notice?”

The child cowers, and her mother begins to shake, the smell of sulfur emanating from her coveralls.

“You know how much money I make? Not enough to buy you a blouse every time you play Florence Nightingale to an animal that’d just as soon eat your arm off. What was it this time? Bed for a fuckin’ mouse to squeeze out babies so they can infest the trailer? Oh, excuse me. That was last time. So much for the pajamas I bought you for Christmas. Eaten up by your precious rodents. Now you’ve graduated to day clothes.”

Ursula takes a step back, and her mother lets go. “You don’t have to buy me a new blouse.”

“Damn right I don’t.”

“It’ll be fine. I sewed it.”

The mother grabs the front of her daughter’s blouse, twisting it almost to the point of tearing the material. She whispers. “I may be a lowly miner who came from lowly miners, but I’m not stupid. Don’t you forget that.”

As punishment, Ursula has to wear the garment every day for a month without washing it. After a week, the kids at school make fun of her, and the teachers take notice of her unkempt appearance. On the same day a bully puts dog poop in her mother’s lunchbox, the school principal calls the mother at work to discuss hygiene. When she gets home, she uses a razorblade to etch the word PIG on top of her daughter’s right upper arm. Then she throws out the blouse. When the bleeding stops, she drags Ursula to the store to buy two new blouses, one black and the other blue. Not a word is exchanged as the mother sifts through seconds and sale items. Blouses in a bag on the back seat, they sit in the parking lot of the town’s only department store.

“You know why I got you black and blue?” says the mother.

Ursula shakes her head.

“To remind you what’ll happen if you mess up either blouse. Things in this world come with a cost. And when you’re poor, an unexpected cost, like blouses for your damned kid, means you get to go without. You understand that?”

Ursula nods.

“Guess who doesn’t get any lunch for the time being, while you fill your face at the school cafeteria?”

The child says nothing.

The following week, when fourth graders begin handling acrylics, the art teacher insists that Ursula roll up her sleeves because the only smock left has a hole in the elbow. The child makes excuses, including one about how her arms are extra sensitive to light. The art teacher tells her to obey orders or go to the principal. In a flash, Ursula’s PIG scar makes its public debut. And faster than a porcupine skittering through raspberry bushes, the child is whisked to the state home and her mother to jail. Having endured several sets of foster parents over a yearlong period, Ursula is adopted by a childless middle-aged couple in Hollywood, California. Both work as set designers for the movies. It is here that Ursula befriends a costumer and begins to learn all she can about sewing and design.

A remote farm in an obscure island country in the South Pacific
February 2023

Deep in the lowland rainforest, a red-shanked douc langur forages on fig buds, its long white tail dangling from the dew-laden canopy. Within viewing distance, a fourteen-year-old girl washes her little sister’s hair in the clear waters of a stream, her vermillion eyes shifting back and forth between her sister’s head and the douc. Her two brothers tend their chores while their mother cultivates the seed beds with the help of a water buffalo rented from a neighbor. Later in the day, the death anniversary of the father, the family will prepare three bowls of rice and three cups of tea to honor his soul. The father died a year ago at the age of thirty-three. Hunting Asiatic moon bears, he stepped on a Bouncing Betty from a long-ago war. Manufactured by a company from Minnesota, the landmine was hidden in the mud beneath a banyan tree. It was in that same banyan tree that the douc langur had been grooming one of its young when the explosion hit. The immature monkey, with its unique red markings along the lower legs, lost its legs, and, soon after, its life. Since the father’s death, the family struggles to keep afloat, especially when the monsoons come, and the precariousness of their existence intensifies with the beat of the rain.

The morning passes quickly, as everyone is hard at work. That’s why no one notices the arrival of a slender young man with a smattering of upper-lip stubble. The man’s feet hit the rotting wood of the front porch, and his eyes settle on the fourteen-year-old, delicately running a tortoise-shell comb through her little sister’s long black hair. The man asks for the mother, and the fourteen-year-old goes to fetch her, but not before noticing the man staring at her arms and hands.

(Translated) “I can offer you eighty taka-dong for your daughter,” says the man to the mother, who stands a few centimeters taller, thanks to the mud caked on her shoes. “She will receive schooling, two meals a day, comfortable lodging, and a generous wage for her handiwork. She will live in a beautiful place.”

“This family has no need for a beautiful place,” says the mother. “I need my daughter to help with chores.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t, if you had enough money to pay for assistance. Do not miss this opportunity, which will only come once. Your daughter will grow up happy, healthy, and productive: sewing and learning during the day and singing and laughing at night.”

The mother starts to speak, but the man cuts her off. “One-hundred taka-dong. Your daughter has exceptional arms and hands. She will sew very well in our clothing factory. She will send home enough money to feed and clothe you and your family without worry. We will teach her everything she needs to know.”

“My daughter already knows how to sew. She will teach you. Two-hundred taka-dong.”

The two quibble and bargain, as the girl and her siblings sit on the rotting porch of their two-room house. Listening intently, they face each other in silence. The man pays the mother one-hundred taka-dong, and she tells her daughter to pack a bag. Expressionless, the daughter follows orders. Not until the girl and her siblings exchange hugs, tears, and kisses does the mother approach her daughter with a whisper: “You will make this family proud and prosperous.”

“I will miss you,” says the girl, who has developed a habit of smiling, even when in pain.

“Once a month,” says the mother, “when you send your wages, you won’t be missed.”

About ten minutes’ walk from the only home she’s known, the fourteen-year-old spots the endangered, red-shanked douc sitting in a tree, its elegant tail as long as its body. The man tells her to hurry. Ignoring his orders, she pauses to gaze at the stately animal. She thinks of the funny-sounding burps the monkey makes, the bouts of laughter that come from her siblings when they see a douc. Tears welling up, she moves on when the man yells.

A wealthy Twin Cities suburb
September 2015

On her first day of first grade at private school, a girl named Lyra asks her teacher to cut out the labels from her new red-and-white blouse.

“My Mormor lives in Denmark,” says Lyra, tall for her age, with inquisitive teal eyes. “She sent the blouse in the mail. It came all the way from Illum. That’s in Copenhagen. We were so excited, Mom forgot to cut the labels.”

In her mid-thirties with a cloying demeanor, the teacher bends to face the child. “Tell me, Lyra, why do you need to have your labels cut?”

“Because they’re scratchy. They itch. My Dad says I’m allergic.”

“I’m very sorry,” says the teacher, “but I’m not allowed to touch students’ clothes.”

“Why not?”

“It’s against the rules.”

“What rules?”

The teacher raises her eyebrows, thick with pencil. “The rules are designed for adults to follow and understand. Nothing for you to worry about.”

Lyra, whose IQ was recently tested at 145, says she’s mature for her age.

The teacher walks to her desk, leafs through a binder, and recites the following, her tone impatient and condescending: “Tampering with the personal belongings of any student is strictly prohibited, unless the possession of those belongings violates school policy or threatens the well-being of the classroom community. Then, and only then, may the teacher address the issue with the principal present. Now, are you satisfied?”

Lyra folds her arms and takes a step toward the teacher. “My well-being is being . . . violet . . . I mean, the word you said. The back of my neck is getting pink bumps, which could turn purple or violet, and when I scratch, they’ll bleed.”

A boy tugs on the teacher’s yoga pants, and she offers him a smile. Turning back to Lyra, she says, “Don’t scratch.”

The teacher’s aide tells Lyra to sit quietly until recess, which is only a few minutes away. “You’ll feel better once you go outside and run around.”

“No, I won’t,” says Lyra, whose body memory tells her the more she moves, the more the labels will bother her skin.

When the teacher plays the recess ringtone on her phone, the aide escorts the kids to the playground, located by a large grove of trees. The day is balmy, with a slight haze. A placid breeze makes cottonwood leaves flutter like coins spilling from slots at the nearby casino. Funded by a landmine producer that went out of business when laws changed, the school sits on twenty acres and abuts a forest preserve with a bog. Lyra’s parents have taken her hiking on the Boardwalk Trail through the bog, which has plants that eat insects, according to her father. An only child more interested in nature than other children, Lyra watches a squirrel skitter up the branches of a spruce. When the squirrel disappears, she runs around the tree. When she stops, she realizes she’s sweating, and the back of her neck itches more than ever. After scratching to no avail, she reaches around to the labels on her blouse and gives them a heavy tug.

Failing to do more than wrinkle her grandmother’s gift, she finds her way to the barbed wire fence that separates the school property from the preserve. According to her father—before her mother told him to shush—a person could hike from their house to school through the preserve and not cross a single road. The labels cause Lyra to itch so much, she picks up a stick and uses it to scratch her neck and back. She drops the stick on the ground and remembers that a key to the back door is buried in the pot of Marguerite daisies. All she needs to do is crawl beneath the barbs, which won’t be difficult, especially since she’s been taking ballet. Then she’ll be home free. Lyra slithers beneath the fence and starts walking. When she realizes she doesn’t know which trail to take, she turns around, goes back through the fence, and sits beneath the big spruce, its thick angular branches blocking the sun. Determined to avoid tears, she digs her hands into the soft, needle-strewn soil. Then she removes her shirt and buries it beneath the tree. About a minute after hearing the ringtone that designates the end of recess, Lyra emerges from the tree. When everyone is seated, she enters the classroom topless, her head held high. Several children gasp and skitter behind the teacher. Lyra plops herself into her seat.

“This is not funny,” says the teacher, her face shaking with anger.

With parents who taught her to tell the truth no matter what, Lyra stands up, puts her hands on her hips, and tells the teacher, “This is your fault.” Then she starts to cry.

 When Lyra’s two-week suspension comes to an end, she refuses to return to school, except for a trip with her parents to look for her Danish blouse. Unfortunately, the garment is full of holes, probably made by a squirrel or fieldmouse, according to her father. After a month of counseling, during which a licensed clinical social worker attempts to convince Lyra that teachers are not all bad, she enters a homeschooling program.

A garment factory in the aforementioned obscure island country
March 2023

On her first day of work, the fourteen-year-old girl attends a training session led by a sixteen-year-old boy. During the session, the boy’s sewing machine breaks, and the girl fixes it. In private, he admits she knows more about sewing than he.

(Translated) “Please don’t say anything to the boss,” says the boy. “Or I’ll end up cleaning the fusing machine. Last month a boy lost three fingers in the chute trying to clear a fabric jam. Then he lost his job.”

“That’s terrible,” says the girl. “I won’t say a word.”

The boy thanks the girl.

Over the next week, the foreman of the factory names the girl Worker 14 and assigns her the task of sewing the sleeves of a strange blouse created by a famous American designer known as Uff Da. At first glance, the blouse looks like any other cotton-poly combo with a V-neck; however, there is one visible difference: the right sleeve is shorter than the left—eight centimeters, according to directions Worker 14 is handed. She becomes accustomed to sewing the blouse, which she learns to do with speed and precision. Though the boss is happy with her work, she fails to receive a raise or anything more than a little rice and meat broth twice a day and none of the schooling that the slender young man had discussed with her mother. However, Worker 14 is paid as promised, and as soon as she’s issued a check, she sends home her wages.

On the same morning, she sees a douc langur behind the factory, a well-fed man wearing a cap with foreign writing speaks to her in a language she’s never heard. According to the sixteen-year-old boy who has become her friend, the man is an official from America, and the language he speaks is English. Worker 14 says she’s only heard of America one time, and that was when the village shaman cremated her father, who was killed by an American landmine, something you can’t see until you step on it; then it explodes. The American has an assistant, who takes pictures of Worker 14 sewing sleeves on an Uff Da blouse. The following week, while she’s asleep in a room she shares with six other girls, the boy enters and tells her the factory has closed.

 “We all have to leave,” he says.

“What happened?” asks Worker 14.

“The Americans shut down our factory.”

Worker 14 shakes her head. “How can they do that? They’re not even from this country.”

“I don’t know. Somebody said the two men are from the United States Government.”

“But we have our own government.”

“Yeah, but we’re getting paid to make blouses for rich Americans.”

Worker 14 says she doesn’t know what she’s going to do, especially since her mother is counting on her wages to finish paying for the water buffalo she bought from a neighbor.

After saying her goodbyes, Worker 14 finds her way home.

When her mother finds out what happened, she throws her hands in the air. “Americans again? First, they send explosives for a war they supported, then lost interest in. Thirty years later, the explosives kill your father. And now they stop my eldest daughter from working. Why don’t those barbarians just keep to themselves?”

Within a day, Worker 14 takes a job collecting deadwood from a nearby forest to heat fires for cooking—a position normally restricted to boys, but thanks to her well-developed arms, popularity in the community, and overall positive attitude, an exception is made. The new job pays much less than her factory position, and Worker 14’s mother returns to renting the water buffalo, the neighbor giving her credit for the money she’s already paid. In addition to gathering wood, Worker 14 resumes care of her brothers and sisters, while her mother looks for a second job. Most everyone in the village knows Worker 14, and the shaman, who is now very old, relies on her to find objects from the earth to adorn his altar. That job she does for free.

A month after her arrival, monsoon season begins. While it rains nearly every day, there are breaks in the precipitation, during which Worker 14 ventures into the forest to gather wood. On such an outing, she spots a conical object—an old undetonated landmine, except she doesn’t know it—protruding from the mud. A perfect addition to the shaman’s altar, she thinks. Just as she reaches to pick up the landmine, a douc langur burps. When she looks up, she sees the monkey sitting in a tree filled with feijoas, their pineapple-guava taste a favorite for her and her father. He used to cut open the green egg-shaped fruit and tell his family’s fortune by reading the seed sacs, whose designs look like flower petals. Her father’s readings were always positive, unless someone had done or said something hurtful. Worker 14 thinks of how much her father had loved her. Even when he was tired out from working the paddies or looking for work, he recited her favorite legend: the story of the Feijoa Princess, who escapes the teeth of a tiger by climbing up the tail of a douc langur. Worker 14 forgets about the conical object and carries her pile of wood out of the forest. For a moment, she imagines living in America, a place where she knows there’s an abundance of everything, and people have lots of time to do whatever they want. As Worker 14 walks, a big smile overtakes her face.

Joshua Tree, California
April 2023

Uff Da lounges with the weekend newspaper on her plush oversized divan, decorated in a tropical jungle motif. As a survivor of attempted rape—at nineteen, she stabbed her assailant’s arm with a porcupine quill from the Cameroonian tribal hat willed to her by her costumer mentor—she’s happiest when she’s alone, either reading or creating new designs. After perusing an advertisement featuring a cut-open feijoa at a Palm Springs market, she turns to the editorial section and reads the following headline: Celebrated designer Uff Da uses underage children to make popular blouse. The article points out that two of her factories in the South Pacific, which take precautions to follow all rules in house, can’t meet quotas for the white blouse. Therefore, they’ve resorted to farming out work to two other establishments that employ children in inhumane conditions for minimal pay.

This is the first time the designer has encountered this information. As she reads, her hair, still red and frizzy, feels as if it’s standing on end.

“A total of sixty-five children from nine to seventeen took part in making the popular Uff Da garment, according to records uncovered by a team of investigators,” says the editor. “It’s time the quirky recluse with a ‘no interviews’ policy owns up.”

At the bottom of the page is a photo of Worker 14 smiling as she sews. When Uff Da sees the photo, she stands up and walks over to her costume collection, which includes the Cameroonian hat. With the utmost care not to disturb the stitching, she picks out a quill and injects it into her right arm, through the PIG scar, now located beneath a tattoo of a sewing machine. When the pain fails to give her solace, she returns the quill to the hat and decides to take a nap. When she awakens, her upper arm has swollen to twice its size. Forcing herself to fetch some ice, she tries to imagine what it was like for Worker 14 to sew the white blouse, one sleeve shorter than the other, one garment after the next. She can’t. She doesn’t know where to start.

When the swelling subsides, she heads to the market in Palm Springs. As she picks through a display of feijoas, a man in his early forties with a thin brown mustache approaches her.

“Feijoas are one of my faves,” says the man.

Uff Da looks at the man’s T-shirt, its union logo featuring a clenched fist protruding from his developed pectorals. The man has approached her for a reason, and it’s anything but small talk: that she’s sure of. Her hair feels like electricity. She knows that whatever she says to the man could determine her fate. If he is who she thinks he is, he could blow her business to oblivion. She feels like she’s about to step on a landmine but doesn’t care.

She turns to the man. “You’re a journalist.”

“How did you know?”

“I’m not stupid, and you’re not exactly subtle, not with that T-shirt.”

The journalist smirks. “I could be a factory worker.”

Uff Da returns the smirk. “But you’re not.”

The designer pays for the fruit, and the two exit the store. Before agreeing to answer any questions, Uff Da finds out that the man writes for one of the nation’s top news mags, he’s two years younger than she, and he discovered her whereabouts from the secretary she fired last month.

“I have no idea how underage children ended up making my blouse,” she says. Her impaled upper arm begins to throb.

“That’s hard to believe.”

“Of course it is, and I don’t expect you to. But it’s still the truth.”

The journalist notices Uff Da’s miniature sewing machine, growing as the swelling increases. “So, what’s with the tattoo?”

“A little reminder. About privilege and lack thereof, you could say: how it all plays out.”

“Explain.”

“I can’t—not yet.”

Uff Da’s attraction for the journalist makes her mouth feel dry. She reaches into her bag, pulls out a feijoa, and bites into it, ignoring the skin and swallowing some seeds. Then she invites the man to accompany her to the island country where children once manufactured her infamous white blouse.

A selective private college a couple hours from the Twin Cities
March 2023

Wearing the new Uff Da white blouse her mother bought her for Christmas, Lyra enters the college library on a late Friday afternoon. She loves to be there at this time because the place is mostly deserted. Not only can she study in peace, but she can also visit with her only friend on campus, a research librarian who’s helped her several times when she didn’t know what to write about. At least twenty years older, the librarian has a similar build to Lyra’s Aunt Abelone in Aarhus, Denmark, the City of Smiles. The librarian enjoys teasing Lyra about being too serious. At first the student was taken aback by the librarian’s East Coast candor, but now she’s used to it and even manages to crack a smile when her friend makes a joke.

“Something told me you’d be in tonight,” says the librarian, just as Lyra reaches out to knock on her open door. “Come in and let me look into my crystal ball.” The librarian picks up a paperweight she bought from an art student who, she’s said on several occasions, was almost as serious as Lyra. “Hmm, let’s see. You’ve been assigned a writing project, and you’re racing to be first in the class to get stressed and burnt out before you even start. Am I right?”

Lyra tilts her head and raises her eyebrows. “Something like that, except this time, I’ve got a topic—the blouse I’m wearing. It’s fantastic. I didn’t even have to cut the labels—no itching, no scratching, nothing. I want to know everything I can find out about it: designer, materials, everything.”

“Wow. Must be some special blouse. Speaking of old itchy blouses, have you considered signing up for a creative writing class, where you can write about that childhood experience you told me about?”

Lyra crosses her arms. “Absolutely not. You’re the only person I’ve told that story to, and I hope you haven’t shared it.”

The librarian assures the student she hasn’t divulged her “nationally significant secret.” Then she focuses on the student’s arms. “Speaking of stories, there must be one behind your sleeves. They’re not the same length.”

“It’s designed by a native Minnesotan and was made in a country I’ve never heard of.”

“Uff Da?”

“Yes. I looked the name up on my phone and found out that the designer has Scandinavian roots and is trying to sound cool. According to a bunch of sites, both Uff and da are Norwegian. Uff is an interjection that refers to something that’s ‘upsetting or sad or uncomfortable.’ The two words together mean anything from, ‘I’m sorry to hear that’ to something like ‘Yeesh.’ ”

“Yes, well, your blouse is too cool for a librarian’s salary.”

“Want me to ask my mom to get you one?”

The librarian flicks her hand in the air. “You know, you’re getting to sound a little too much like me.”

During the next hour, Lyra learns that the blouse is made of Polysynthestine, invented in 2016 by an unemployed chemist from Wisconsin—mother from Asia, father from Scandinavia. It was the middle of winter during a blizzard, when the chemist combined water, liquefied coal, and petroleum—the same ingredients as polyester—and mixed them with lingonberry root, trace minerals, and banyan leaf extract. The chemist then placed the concoction in a spinneret resembling the bristles on the hind legs of a female spider. The finished product turned out to be something like silk but soft, durable, and less expensive. In the midst of imagining how Uff Da came up with the idea of a Polysynthestine blouse with one sleeve longer than the other, Lyra receives two books from the librarian, one on highly sensitive people and the other on mirror touch synesthesia, a rare neurological trait that enables a person to feel the experiences of others.

Lyra thanks her friend, who says she hopes the books will help her come up with some theories, that is, if she can dig into the past of the designer.

“You know that Uff Da was adopted,” says the librarian. “I read it in some magazine at the doctor’s office. Little else is known about the designer, especially since she keeps to herself, kind of like you.”

“What does her personality have to do with her designing a blouse or highly sensitive people?”

“I have no idea. I’ve done the easy part. Now it’s up to you to read between the lines.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Oh, I’m sure you can do it. If ever there was a highly sensitive synesthete, it’s you. And if Uff Da happens to be one as well, as I suspect, you’ll know it. You’ll feel it in your muscles and bones, just like you do with the blouse.”

The librarian leaves, and Lyra loses herself in the text on mirror-touch synesthesia. Tears come to her eyes when she delves into the world of a medical school intern who attempts to treat a cardiac patient and lands on the floor writhing with chest pain not unlike that of his patient. Taking a break from the book, she comes across the same newspaper article Uff Da had read before stabbing herself. Lyra’s right arm starts to itch. In the midst of scratching, she wonders if there’s something she can do to help the young teen in the picture, especially if she’s hungry, alone, out of work.

About the Author

Kendall Klym

In addition to winning the Tartt First Fiction Award for his short story collection Step Lightly, (Livingston Press, 2019), Dr. Kendall Klym has won numerous awards for his short stories, which have been published in literary journals including Puerto del Sol, Hunger Mountain, and Fiction International. Klym is a three-time honorable mention winner of the Great American Fiction Contest and has won writing fellowships at the Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and Monson Arts. Two of his were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A former professional ballet dancer, Klym holds a PhD in English with a concentration in Fiction Writing from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Most recently, he worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing, Fiction, at Oklahoma State University.