Judit's second-hand

Why do I know this? How do I recognize her?

Sally came to Stockholm to visit me in the spring of 1994. Every chance we had to share her story was precious. We were seldom alone. One day, as we boarded the bus to go out to the castle in Drottningholm, we managed to find and occupy a couple of empty seats alongside one another for one of those all too brief moments. Her second husband took a seat behind us. We were passing Judit's Second Hand, a vintage clothing store, when I pointed to the shop window and mentioned that Judit and I had come to Sweden the same year, and studied at Stockholm University together in the 1970s. I told Sally that Judit was a Hungarian refugee.

That's when Sally told me about her dream of having a second-hand shop, a dream that had been awakened a few years earlier (see previous blogg entry today) as she was hanging her mother's wardrobe in the bay window. She had wanted to keep her first wedding gown, to do something with it. That's why she had stored it in her mother's closet in the first place, nearly fifty years earlier, and why she had pinned the note "To be left behind" on it when her mother had died just a few years earlier. The removers hadn't seen her note, and when she returned to the empty house, it was gone. Too late, but the dream had lingered.

A second-hand shop, where she dreamt of fondling all the old clothing that people might bring in to her to sell. A place where she could put the past on display, pursue a legitimate occupation whether she made any money at it or not. Hadn't she loved and hoped and dispaired? She could spend each workday touching and feeling the grain of worn fabrics, breath in and listen to their stories. She would clean and iron them, sort them on racks together with other skirts and blouses, dresses, slacks and jackets, by color, material and season. They would be hers for a while, as she observed others rummaging, sliding hangers to get a better view of one lift one and lift another out with curiosity and delight, to take to a dressing room. Her eyes would follow them to the intimate space, and watch them as they emerged from backstage, from behind the curtain, to strut around the shop. She too would catch their reflection from a little distance, in a full-length mirror, and sense the dizziness as they spun around and stopped, shifting weight and planting the palms of hands on hips. Did this piece suit them? Together for a moment, they would observe how the fabric fell over shoulders and across breasts. Did it do the trick, and manage to conceal a vulnerable bulge in their thighs or buttocks? Did they see something new, in themselves, some unexplored territory? Look what a nice cut, such a flattering color or line around the waist. She would relish in the chatter, the giggles. What do you think? Doesn't the color do wonders? She would look back with them, and meet new owners, new lives.