from...Imagining Enid

Enid the Desperado

She thinks she looks tough, but her bandana has weird little fruits and flowers all over it and keeps slipping around under her chin. She wears a white nine-gallon hat which some crafty haberdasher stuck her with at the end of the season. Sometimes she tries to grow a beard or a mustache, but she has this crooked little smile so it doesn't shave right. When she walks into a bank she brandishes her red water pistols and pretends to look fierce with a diabolical sneer, but people can't tell whether she's laughing or crying. She gives the tellers notes in Yiddish about using all the money to save the world. No one is afraid, but they never forget her.


Enid the Seamstress

She is bent over an old-fashioned machine that sews words. The treadle says SINGER, but a seventh letter appears after the S as she works. At different times it looks like slinger or stinger or swinger. She uses little swatches of cloth that have been thrown away in an old factory in a far-off town, but sometimes even with the buttons still on, so it's hard to stitch in the ordinary way. The bobbins are hidden in secret drawers, odd colors that no one has ever seen before. They're all tangled up, but she picks the right ones as if by magic. Sometimes she hums her own little song off key, but it sounds like it could be a catchy melody. She sews in the dark.


Lila Zeiger

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