When it was my turn to have my lips sewn, I chose lace. I’d never seen anything so lovely: scalloped edges, intertwining threads forming webs and florets. The way it curled in my palms. How it tickled and scratched my skin, rough yet pliant. The cart in the bright sewing room was neatly packed with spools of yarn, satin, burlap, wire. Silk, organza, tulle, and velvet. When my seamster wheeled the cart near, I dipped my hand between the fabrics and felt the textures slide along each finger.
My skin burned when my seamster tugged the lace through my mouth. It grated the flesh. While he pulled the lace through each hole, a seamstress pressed my body down. This is what you wanted, they murmured. Their arms bent and moved over my face in small, calculated motions. I thrashed upon the sewing table, watching the curved needle disappear and reappear under my nose. “Wait,” I managed to say, but they cinched the left side of my mouth with a sharp pull. A sliver of skin rested on the needle’s hook. I was sutured halfway to the cupid’s bow. By now the pain had dulled to a blessed ache. I welcomed my wheeling eyes, seeking to focus on something else.
The sewing room’s ceiling. Chalky grout. White gloves gleaming with blood. A pale, papery mask covered my seamster’s face from nose to chin. A bright lamp shone behind his head, casting him in shadows. He followed the seamstress’s lead and slid the mask to his neck, revealing an image I had never seen.
Their mouths. Unsewn. Unbound. Rotting flesh. The linings of their decayed lips, with unhealed blisters and scars. Pale in some places, dark in others. But twisted into matching frowns. They wet their lips with saliva before lifting their masks and resuming their sutures.
It was against the Bind for anyone to have their ribbons removed. My seamster must have felt the cool air through his perforated skin, whistling like an ocarina. What did you have to do? I wished to ask as I felt lace file in and out. What did they do to have their lips freed? The corners of my mouth cinched further. Soon, the center. I whipped my tongue behind my teeth, pushing against the seam. My seamster snipped the lace from his needle, giving both ends a rigid tug. He yanked down his mask and licked his lips. His voice came out weak and airy, and lilted higher the more he spoke. “I told you to pick silk like the rest. You’ll regret the lace. Promise.” He wiped some of his saliva into the holes surrounding his mouth. He snapped at the seamstress to adjust the lamp behind him.
He slipped his mask back over his horrible lips. The two of them bent over me once more.
The lace in my lips was old and yellowing. It was darker than my skin now, spotted with dried blood. My tongue peeked out and touched the delicate fabric, but in an instant, retreated. The lace tasted bitter. I sighed and my breath, mingling with the lace, warmed my mouth. I would have smiled if I wasn’t sewn so tight.
Downstairs, my parents were cooking. Mom flipped pancakes. Dad stood over a pan of eggs. They both turned around at my approach. The silks sewn through their mouths were damp with heat. Red, darker red. Blue, darker blue. They were trying to smile, but I could only tell by the tightness of their cheeks. Grimaces, instead. It was the warmest look they could give me.
At the table, steam rose from our plates. The food spoke more than we could.
I am mouth watering-ly delicious, I believed the pancakes would say. Remember?
Please eat me, sang the eggs.
Of course, we didn’t eat a single thing. Couldn’t, with our sewn lips. We’d leave the task to my brother, whose appetite was just beginning to grow. Harbor would bring the leftovers to school and share them among his friends. They would swallow the food and their words, knowing that by their thirteenth birthdays, they’d have neither ever again.
But still our parents and I could pretend. We slipped our metal straws between the perfect gaps at the center of our mouths, and imagined that the mush we were gulping down from their small containers was, indeed, scrambled eggs. A stack of soft, buttery pancakes—
Mom’s hand seized mine. I’d been stroking the tall container of feed. I hadn’t noticed it tip and fall, and now it spilt all over my lap. The pale grit leaked through my pants, wetting my skin. Quietly, Dad found a towel and pushed it to my mother. She pressed the rough cloth on my thighs. An acidic smell floated to my nose, melting with the scent of sweet maple syrup. Saliva filled my mouth.
I cried, remembering the first time I had to eat through a straw. As the mush slid down, thick, warm bile rushed out. Wads of pork and beans and rice had pushed against the lace and the sutures strained, tearing open another two millimeters. The seamsters had to redo their work. I’d whimpered on the sewing table, staring at those mouths which stretched and widened and opened while mine closed and closed and closed, became tight and still and painful.
Later, when I heard the squealing tires of Harbor’s school bus round the corner of our street, I waited outside for him and tilted my head to the sky. Rain. It fell on my face without pattern. The timing of the drops, the distance between them, the shape of the beads they became. the people within the Bind would see this—the unpredictable nature of rain—and call it unnatural. They would sew up the sky with ribbons of silk, layer upon layer, so that the rain could never come down again.
But eventually those layers would swell. Become full the way clouds become full. They’d grow dark and their darkness would fill up the sky. The wet ribbons would tear. They’d sever as if torn apart by teeth. Rain would fall.
“Goodbye!”
Slowly, my eyes peeled away from the sky.
On the bus, his friends leaned out of their windows and called out their well wishes. The driver didn’t say a word of caution because he couldn’t. Neither could the older students in the back. They were all staring at the kids in front of them, mouths shut and pressed, perfectly knotted. A few of them gazed at me, communicating with their eyes a familiar degree of loathing. I didn’t understand why they hated me instead of the Bind. But probably, they hated us all.
Harbor waved to his bus driver and bus mates as the door unfolded closed. A full-toothed smile split Harbor’s perfect face. And when he turned his smile on me, I felt it prick me like fine needles. Harbor shrugged off his backpack and said, “Guess what we did today!”
I turned my palms up and my shoulders went to my ears. With my wrists and fingers I composed the gesture that told him to continue speaking.
He pressed his palms against both cheeks. “We talked about getting sewn. Teacher asked us what kind of ribbons we’d choose.” To the left, our neighbors walked down their driveway and as they settled into their car, Harbor streamed out a long, loud “Hiiiii!” Their heads jerked at his voice. They found my brother quickly. He was one of the few children left in our neighborhood with words to speak. Opinions to share.
Our neighbors drove away, staring at Harbor’s parted lips. Their own were tied together, straight lines. He understood their attention and tipped his head. I laid an arm across his shoulders. His mouth was kindly shut all the way into the house.
In the kitchen, I stroked the lace on my lips and pointed to him, cocked my head in question. So what did you choose? I asked with hands and shoulders.
Harbor found the pancakes from this morning. He pulled out a vase of orange juice from the fridge and dropped ice into a glass. He answered, “Silk.”
My finger caught on my mouth. I’d been picking dry skin. I blinked at him. Everyone chooses silk.
“I was thinking green. But there are so many kinds of green! Which shade will look best on me?” Harbor cocked his head in thought, juice dripping from the corner of his mouth. “I still have three months until my birthday. But I’ll definitely choose silk. If not, the older kids will look at me the way they look at you . . . My friends won’t invite me over.”
If only I could frown with my mouth, the way he was frowning now.
Harbor bit his lip. “There’s no Ribbon Rule isn’t the same anymore, Rosa.” His voice was small as if he was suddenly aware that he could speak and I could not. “We’re supposed to be sewn with silk.”
I shook my head as hard as I wanted my voice to be loud. No, I wanted to say. They’d already taken our voices. First certain words, then certain sentences. Then, people couldn’t speak from dawn to noon. Mornings became days; days became lives. The Ribbon Rule was a show of defiance: at least we could decide the way we were silenced. Once, there were people who chose to be sewn with velvet, twine, satin, or chiffon. I’d picked lace. It didn’t matter to me that for years now, people settled on silk.
Harbor could only see my anger. He couldn’t hear the words inside my head, the anger I stored for him. He set his cup down with a splash. Orange juice topped the counter. “We talk about you, you know. Our teacher signed that you might be taken away.”
I rolled my eyes and grunted. Harbor’s face scrunched in horror. “Stop that. What if someone hears, what if they—”
I grunted again, because the first one felt strange and I wanted to get that feeling out of my mouth. Like gravel and smoke. It’d been a while since I made such a sound, with my throat. Five years.
Harbor jumped off his stool and wrapped his arms around me. “Please stop,” he was saying. I felt his breath on my belly. “You’ll be put in prison or worse.”
Banging on the door.
Harbor’s heart pounded the way mine did. He closed his eyes and pulled away. “Stay here. I’ll get it.” The door banged again. I shook my head, keeping him in place, and strode to the door myself just as it burst wide open.
It was my seamster, dressed in his coat and mask and gloves. There was old blood on his clothing, tiny smears, and his unsewn lips were pursed in distaste. If he’d heard me grunting, he didn’t comment. His voice was rough, like the improperly healed scars that lined his mouth. He stared at me and said, “You’re overdue for a rethreading.”
On the sewing table I held completely still. The white light flickered above me and the seamster clicked a pair of silver tweezers. The seamstress who’d helped him four times before was not at his side today; only a wheeled cart that was her height, and on its surface, a tray. I did not use my hands to ask where she was. He lowered the tweezers to my mouth. Part of me wished he’d use them to peel my lips apart. Last week I spent hours cleaning the inside. A pointed-tip cotton swab rolled over my gums and inner lip to collect scud; a toothpick pushed into the crevices between my front teeth. Careful swishes of warm salt water before applying dabs of rhubarb and salicylic acid to the white, bursting sores scattered inside my mouth. My seamster wouldn’t yet have to worry about rot.
I felt the lace run through the eyelets in my skin. I wished for the holes to grow bigger, the size of the one in my chest. Perhaps then it wouldn’t hurt so bad. He unlooped the lace from between my mouth and teeth, then yanked sharply to pull the end through. Again, again, again. My skin loosened. My lips parted. I sipped in a breath. The seamster had trouble with the end of the lace. He tugged and then hissed, the lace refusing to fit through the fleshy gap. As if it had finally converged with my skin, uniting as a single mass.
My own fingers rose and picked at the scrap. The nail of my index embedded itself into the wound. It was oddly warm. The wound stretched to accommodate me, a leak of blood lubricating my movement. I scratched until the lace ripped free. The fabric fell limp on my chest, browned and bloodied.
My mouth, for the fifth time in my life, was free.
The seamster peered down at my fingers in disgust. He rubbed an ointment around my lips that made my eyes burn. “That,” he said, “was incredibly senseless.” He began rambling about infection. I could focus on nothing but his voice.
“Did you even sanitize before our operation? You’ve made your scars worse!” He came closer to my ear. “You can still switch over to silk, you know. There’s no reason to suffer or be brave.” Then closer. “Are you listening?”
At some point, my eyes had slid closed and the room went dark. I imagined I was looking inside myself. My tongue traced the hard palate of my mouth. “No,” I whispered.
My seamster went still. I slowly opened my eyes and marveled at the thing that had come out of me. My voice. How many times have I tried to remember what I sound like?
He snatched up his needle, and his words and voice sharpened. “I’m going to sew your lace back in now. I suggest you shut your mouth.” He raked through his cart and pulled out a cord of yellow silk. He encircled my wrist, intending to tie me to the table.
I sat up quickly. “No.” It was pain that kept me from obeying him, but also this strange feeling, an urge to protect the small sounds escaping my throat.
“Silence, or they’ll hear you!”
I was standing on the table now, jerking away from his snatching hands. The seamster chuckled bitterly. And then he grunted as he latched onto my ankle. I collapsed onto my stomach. My teeth shredded my tongue. “I said the same thing once,” he gritted out. “Look where it got me.”
White coat, white gloves, white scars. But also: White teeth and deep lines around his mouth that someone could only get from laughter, frowning, movement. Cold words, beautiful words, words.
“What . . . ” I breathed deeply, tasting, swallowing. “What do you mean?”
The seamster weighed me with his stare. He watched me pat my tongue. The hands that were holding the curved needle and my new lace dropped to his sides. I wondered what he saw or what he heard in my voice, what made him change. But he put down his needle and doused his hands in alcohol. He ground out, “Only this once. Only this and then you will be rethreaded.”
We went to a room that resembled a dormitory. There were two dark wood desks and two scrawny beds. I sat down at the desk on the right and he leaned against the wall. On the desk, there was a tray holding a tincture of amber liquid. I unscrewed the applicator and swiped the bitter medicine along the border of my lips.
“Have you ever wondered why, apart from the Bind, only seamsters are unsewn?”
My teeth nibbled my lip, sucking it in then pushing it back out. “You . . . were punished. Your silks were taken . . . away.” My voice vibrated and scratched on its way out, making the corners of my mouth twitch. “For speaking.”
“That’s right.”
Anger flashed through me. Went right to my throat. “So what?” I breathed. “Now . . . you can talk. We’re talking. Isn’t this . . . what people used to do . . . before?”
“That age is over.”
He moved into the room and my eyes followed closely. He put my unused lace on the opposite desk, to be used later. He slid out the other chair to face me. I stared at his seat, which must have belonged to his partner. “But you have the . . . the other seamsters. You have . . . each other at least.”
He shook his head. “There are only two seamsters or seamstresses in every province. My partner is dead.”
I saw how the desk that he sat at was cluttered with pens and post-its and supplies while the one behind me had only the tincture. I shrank back. Shut my mouth.
“She ended her own life.” He was staring down at his hands. “Like we all do, eventually.”
My tongue traced the seam of my lips. My throat pulsed. “What . . . do you mean?”
“You don’t know what it’s like,” he said, “to exist in a world where you can talk to anyone, and not one of them can talk to you.” He looked at his partner’s desk. “A few dozen stories about our childhoods. Everything after is all the same, even with the children who come to the sewing room: when did we get sewn, and how? She was my fourth partner in ten years.”
This is what you wanted, the both of them had said to me. They’d glared at the lace. Is this what they meant then—a different kind of isolation? Was I choosing the same as them? “Maybe . . . I think you’ve forgotten,” I let out a breath, “what it’s like to not be able to speak . . . at all.”
My seamster sighed. He nodded, then shook his head. He said, “Then let’s not let you forget, too.”
And that was that. He rethreaded my lace and sealed my voice once more.
A week later, I sat at our dining table. Harbor ate mac and cheese while the rest of us sipped from our containers of lukewarm liquid. My fingers twisted around the bundle of lace at the corner of my mouth.
My seamster hadn’t tied it off correctly.
This knot . . . my thumb flicked it, feeling the lace give. It wasn’t the same knot he always made. This one was becoming loose. Too easily. My index wiggled inside the loop.
A new choice? One of the few I’ve had since my first threading. My seamster was giving me a chance to choose.
I pulled the rest of the knot free.
My family jerked from the table and jumped to their feet.
“Rosa!” Harbor yelled. Beside him, our parents were silent. Dad shook my shoulder, but stopped when he saw the blood. I remained seated, my head bent, fingers working on pulling the rest of the lace free. It tunneled through my skin, more painful than ever. I’d just been rethread days before and new sores had formed in my mouth. A second later the scrap of lace fell to the floor.
I looked up, found my brother. He was bundled in our parents’ arms. I hadn’t heard them move. My throat ached. “Harbor,” I croaked. Mom and Dad cowered. Their silks were damp with spit and tears. “Mom.” I stepped toward them. Blood coated my tongue. “Dad.” I smiled, and the movement pinched the holes around my mouth, squeezing the sores. “Ow—!” I gasped and tentatively touched the corners of my mouth, trying to hold my smile in place.
My parents were not smiling. They looked at me in horror. Harbor tried to free himself. And then my mother pointed to the door while my father slid out his keys.
I sat in our car with my bloody lace in my lap. I couldn’t stop prodding the lower half of my face. I smiled all the way to the city.
The streets milled with people. With the window open, there was only the sound of footsteps on sidewalks. Animals could make more noise. They could whinny, snort, and bark. Even insects had their own hums and buzzing. When we arrived, a group of men and women, all ivory or sage-silked, led us to a courtyard boxed in by tall, gray buildings.
Our region’s Bind was entirely clothed in black. He beckoned me to come close. A veil curtained his face, leaving only his mouth exposed.
It was the most ruined mouth I had ever seen. His skin resembled a stratum of wild mushrooms, layers growing before the ones before could properly heal, hanging in flaps. Unhealed holes mottled his nose and cheeks and chin. What remained of his lips was pale and made thin by the patternless perforations and folds. Dark crumbs and pale pink blood beaded his lips, a sign of picking and peeling the skin and scabs.
The Bind smiled widely, noting my stare. He dragged a finger over his ribbonless lips, not quite touching. “My father became an artist after my mother died,” he said. “My face was his canvas. He didn’t like my opinions or my voice, so he punctured holes in my face and bound the segments together.” He pushed a finger against a loose lobe of mouth. Every time he exhaled, my eyes watered from the stench of rot and antiseptic. “You are young and you have fought.” He clicked his tongue, and my family was tugged to stand beside him. “And you’ve caught an infection, Rosa.” I flinched and touched the ridges around my lips. He laughed.“No, no. Well—I mean yes, you’re growing something nasty around there.” His mouth curled in disgust. Thin lines of red ran down the bulging layers of skin. He lifted a hand and flicked hard fingers against my forehead. “But there is an infection in your mind. Is it too late to reverse it?” He turned to face my family.
At his side, my brother whispered, “No.”
I said, “Yes.”
And my parents held each other silently. They bowed their heads.
The Bind smiled, but it was without joy. “I told my father the same thing, that I wouldn’t hush up. So he tore my face apart. Stitch by stitch.” He reached down and ripped the lace from my hands. “At least you saved us from having to take this out ourselves.” He turned to my parents, the sheer black cloth swishing around his face. “I am so, so sorry for your loss.” The Bind turned to me. His attention flicked to my brother. Dimples creased his cheeks. “Your first work of art,” he appointed, “will be young Harbor.”
My seamster smiled sadly when I drifted through the sewing room’s doorway. He took in the white coat, white gloves, my exposed scars. “I’m sorry,” he told me.
By now the lower half of my face was so ruined from my lace going in and out that it hurt so horribly to speak. Every word stiffened my mouth. “It’s not . . . your fault.”
“Oh, I know. But now you will know.”
A small girl, like Harbor, skipped inside the sewing room. She clenched a lovely ribbon of periwinkle silk. Her smile was wide. Her teeth were beautiful. Her sunny hair was coiled and weaved with bows—as if this was a special occasion.
She reached her arms for the seamster, who swung her onto the table between us. “Thank you!” she giggled. The sound bounced inside my chest. And it went flat when she laid herself down.
The seamster was threading a needle. “We have to work together from now on.” He turned to the girl. “I’m so happy to see you’ve chosen silk!” Gleaming with a smile, he held up a small glass bottle of the amber antiseptic and painted it around the girl’s lips.
“I wanted to be like everyone else.”
“Smart.” The seamster shifted his head to me. “Safe.”
He had me adjust the lamp behind him. And then he pierced the little girl’s mouth.
“This is how to sterilize the needle.”
“This is the proper length of thread.”
“Annual rethreadings are free. Any more than three times a year, we let them learn through infection.”
“Do not speak,” the seamster instructed me, “unless you need to.”
Two months later, Harbor walked through our door.
I was on the floor and my arms were around him. I said it with feeling, “Finally, you’re here.”
His laughter seized as soon as I spoke. I led him by the hand to the table that my seamster and I had spent days setting up, just for me. Harbor sat on the sewing table and I stood before him. His legs swung back and forth. “Teacher said you must’ve learned your lesson.”
Yes. Many. Last month I’d learned dozens of ways to tie a knot. “How are mom and dad?”
“They changed seamsters. But I had to go here.”
“Aren’t you happy to see me?” I smiled and tapped the curve of my knee. Harbor nodded and no sound came from his throat. “I missed you. I’m glad you finally came.”
My brother looked all around us, at the blank walls and white tiles. His eyes lingered on the pair of gloves on my lap. He leaned around me, seeming to be in search of something. I made the gesture for What can I do? and followed his gaze around the room.
Harbor pursed his lips. “What color ribbons do you have? I was hoping for a lime green.”
I sat back, wondering what I thought he would say.
This is what you wanted, my seamster and seamstress had grunted during my first threading.
I picked through the ribbon cart, touching all the different materials. Harbor commented on the variations, asking which hurt and which caused infections the least.
I couldn’t stop thinking about my seamster’s voice—my partner. It was never about the lace. It was this.
I’ve sewn up the lips of over one hundred children. Took their voices away.
At first, I would speak to them. Try to ease their pain, soak up their excitement. I was fine for a while. The conversations filled me with distraction and euphoria.
Until I picked up my needle and ran it through their mouths. Again and again and again. Tighter each time. Sealed. Locked. With a knot. Somewhere along the months, a knot began to form inside me. Hard and taut and growing in layers. It knocked around my belly and made a mess of me. It choked me. Sometimes, when I looked into the children’s eyes, bright with excitement . . . I found that I couldn’t speak.
“What do you have there?” I ask the girl sitting on the sewing table. I swiftly switch my coat for one without stains.
She removes her hand from her back and opens her palm. Sitting there is a delicate cord of velvet. “It’s pretty,” she says. Her fingers stroke the ribbon. “No one else has it.”
I gently pull the velvet from her grip. I see how beautiful it would look on her dark face. “Trouble, trouble,” I say. I flick the scrap to the ground. The girl’s eyes glaze with tears. “You’ll get an infection,” I snap. “Here. I brought this for you.” I tear into my pocket and take out a handful of silks. “They’re perfect.”
“That’s not what I chose.”
Choose, choose, choose. The word is lost to me. I surge to find its meaning and tie the girl to the table. I fish for my needle. I fumble with the silk.
“There,” I say with relief, and push the needle through. The girl thrashes. But after doing this for so long, dealing with that becomes easy. Smooth as flesh.
From the corner of my eye, a figure stands and watches. His back is hunched and his arms are limp at his sides.
My partner has only sad eyes. I wish I could sew them up, too.
