�

her hands are deft as her mind is clumsy and slow. her grandmother taught her as a child to knit, and so she does; sweaters too large for even her considerable girth, hats with comically long, training pom-poms, endless scarves that stretch down the halls in the home where she lives, snaking around corners.

her hands, slender and, really, beautiful, seem to have gotten her whole body�s share of intellect and speed. they have the memory she appears to lack, and an expressiveness she was born without (to her mother�s great chagrin, she never learned to speak, only to smile, and inelegantly eat, and, of course, knit). they move with grace, despite her drooling and lumbering and inability to use the toilet alone.

her knitting, despite its great proportions, is beautiful. each piece somehow glows with the perfect combination of prismatic color; the yarn takes on a rich and exquisite texture under her expert touch. as she galumphs down the high school halls, lowing and following her special education teacher, her creations trailing behind her, the blonde and lip-glossed girls giggle and point. but some, silent, turn back and stare, more in fascination than in mockery: how can such beauty come from her? how does she know how to do it when she can�t wipe her ass, or brush her hair, or hold a pen?

they never say this aloud.

she sits all day quietly clicking her needles and drooling and spinning out these glorious rainbows of thick knit, and no one approaches her, except when the teachers look away and someone spits.

the dark haired girl is one of the ones that stares and wonders. her friends call the knitter names and do crude impressions, and she laughs so as not to be found out. but she feels something visceral, something like � what? longing? � when she sees the cow-girl�s craft. the dark haired girl does nothing with her own hands; they are smooth and uncalloused and, she thinks, ugly. they�re ugly because they don�t make anything that lasts.

she is thinking this, today, when she slides into the special ed room during her own study hall, looking in either direction and she slips behind the door. glass is cold against her shoulder as she leans against it, and she spies the knitting girl in the corner.

her heart is beating out of her chest as she approaches her; no one else around, only the two and the yarn and the needles. the dark haired girl�s breath stalls when their eyes lock. slowly, bending to squeeze a ball of yarn, letting the ends rub between her fingertips, she swallows.

she kneels, and looking up, says, �teach me how.�