I sewed the patch my husband gave to another woman.
Nobody told me who it was for. In the Salt River Motorcycle Club the old ladies do the stitching, and being asked is an honor. It means the women trust your hands.
So I took my mother's hoop down off the shelf. I drove two hours for better thread because the club buys cheap and it goes gray in that sun. I sat up until twenty to three getting the letters right, and it was the best work I have ever done.
Two weeks later I walked into that clubhouse with a peach cobbler in my hands and saw my own gold thread on a twenty-six-year-old's back.
Forty men found something to do with their hands. Not one of them looked at me.
My husband didn't look ashamed. He looked relieved.
I asked the president for my house key in front of all of them. He put his hands flat on the bar and told me there was nothing in the book about it.
He was telling the truth. Twenty-two pages of bylaws, and the women of that club appear in them exactly once. As something a man is not permitted to take from another man.
Every woman in Salt River learned what she was worth the same way I did. With a needle in her hand.
Here is what nobody in that room remembered.
I am the one who typed it.
