The Knitted Underthings (Knickers)

Lyrics

The air on Point Nemo held the damp of a May morning. 
A Tuesday. Ten-thirty. 
The sky was the color of a rinsed tin bucket.

Mrs. Patterson stood by the sagging clothesline.
A wicker basket at her feet, smelling of soap flakes and lavender.
Her fingers, cold from the rinse, fumbled with the wooden pins.
One by one. 
The tea towels. 
The Reverend's collars, stiff with starch. 
And then, the small, off-white cotton things.

A voice, clear and round as a bell, from the edge of the lawn.
It was Bouba.
"Mrs. Patterson? What is the word for those?"
She held one up. It dripped onto the wet grass.
A small, practical garment, knitted by her own hand in the winter of 1957.

"Knickers," Mrs. Patterson said.
The word felt too loud in the quiet yard.
"They are called knickers."
And then, because the child looked so earnestly at her, 
she began to explain. 
Which was her first mistake.

"It is an old word, you see. From Knickerbockers.
The trousers that men used to wear. Dutchmen, a long time ago."
She pinned the waistband to the line.
"During the war, we knitted our own. There wasn't much else.
Just wool and time and patterns from a magazine."

She did not say that on the hem of this very pair,
hidden from the world, was a small, blue-threaded 'E'.
For Eleanor. Her own name.
A secret she'd stitched on a lonely evening.
A quiet piece of pride that no one else would ever see.

"Knickers," she said again, her voice a little thinner now.
"That is the proper English word for them."
Bouba just nodded, storing the information away
like a fact about geology or the tides.
No giggle. No blush. Just data.
And the regret began to bloom in Mrs. Patterson's chest, warm and unwelcome.

The breeze caught the line.
The small cotton things danced.
Mrs. Patterson turned back to her basket.
She should have just said 'unmentionables'.
She should have just said 'smalls'.
She should have said nothing at all.