"Rose-ann"

          Rose-ann stood in her living room, her back to the open doors that invited in the fragrance of summer flowers that grew in the gardens that surrounded her house.  Rose-ann loved flowers!  Her front yard barely had a blade of grass in it.  Her lawn was, instead, covered with flowers!  A riot of colors; reds, yellows, purples, golds and pinks danced in the sun.
          But it was not the flowers that held Rose-ann's attention this Sunday morning, the day after the last meeting of the Book Woman Club.  Rose-ann's eyes traveled from the piles of fabric scattered around the living-room, to the bins of buttons and beads that cluttered her office attached to the living-room, to the storage boxes that covered every piece of furniture in the dinning-room and every square inch of the floor.  A corridor of closed doors lined the hall that ran down the right side of the apartment.  The doors were closed to hide the content of the three bedrooms.  The first room was filled from floor to ceiling with bins of fabric. The second bedroom was filled with bins of ribbons, bindings, trims, lace and still more fabric.  The third, Rose-ann's bedroom, was stacked high with old sewing machines, rescued quilt squares from dead women she had never met, and old quilts from e-bay.  There was a narrow path to her bed and a still narrower space cleared on the bed where Rose-ann slept at night!   A tear ran down Rose-ann's face.  Every time she looked at the mess that covered her house, she felt utterly hopeless!  "How will I every get any of this in order?"  Rose-ann wiped the tear off her face, and felt another one replace it.  It rolled down her cheek and fell into a pile of yellow tie-dyed cloth that was tangled around her feet.  Rose-ann shuddered.  It was all so hopeless!  She felt like she was drowning!  She began to sob out-loud!
          Rose-ann stepped over the pile of yellow cloth, shoved a pile of half finished quilts over into one corner of the fabric covered sofa, and sat down.  Waves of shame rose up in her, as powerful and as destructive as a tsunami!  "Awaaa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a!"  Rose-ann wailed, wrapping her arms around her body, rocking back and forth.  For almost two years Rose-ann had been lying to the women of the Book Woman Club.  She had not been remodeling over the past year and a half!  Not one workman had ever stepped into this mess of a house!  She would have been too ashamed to let them in!  No, Rose-ann had never hosted a meeting of the Book Woman Club because of the horrible conditions in her house!  "I'm a hoarder!", Rose-ann whispered to herself in terror!  "I'm one of those sick people I see on T.V., who find dead cats they never knew they had, under the piles of their chaos!"  Rose-ann felt like a betraying adulterer admitting their sin for the first time!  She screamed at the junk that began to crush her in the weight of her admission, "I'm a hoarder!"
          Rose-ann hadn't always lived like this.  She had been a neat freak until 10 years ago.  Her motto had been "Everything has it's place and there's a place for everything."  People used to tease her about her obsessive house-cleaning.  But about 10 years ago, Rose-ann's obsession changed.  She joined a quilting circle called The Sankofa Piece Makers.  They met at the Beauchamp Branch Library, on the south-side of Syracuse.  She began to buy cloth; 5, 10, 15 yards or more at a time!  At first, she bought so much cloth, out of ignorance.  A novice quilter, she didn't know how much cloth quilters used!  But soon, she began to buy 5, 10 and 15 yards at a time because she liked the color of the cloth.  Or...she liked the texture of the cloth.  She bought 20 yards because it was on sale....or... 25 yards because she liked it's unusual decorative pattern.  She bought 50 yards because the color was so unusual and she might not see it again. She bought fabric because she didn't have any fabric of that exact color; because she didn't have any of that width; because she didn't have enough of that particular color at that width!  Then Rose-ann began to buy embellishments for her quilts.  Buttons, beads, lace, trims, ribbon, shells, and bindings!  Friends gave her cans of buttons, boxes of lace and cards of trims, that they found at bargain prices at garage sales.  So, hooked by the tales of the hunts that her friends had been on, Rose-ann began to make the weekend circuit of garage sales and yard sales.  She brought back cans of buttons, boxes of lace, suitcases of trim, shoe boxes of thread, and arm loads of fabric!  She began to justify this weekly gorging, saying that she was rescuing the histories of dead quilters; the lifetimes of women who's art had been thrown into the streets without last rites or proper burial!
          Periodically, Rose-ann would try get a handle on the mess that her living quarters had become.  She would donate fabric to a school art program, or donate buttons and thread to a Senior Center, or give beads as presents to her friends.  But then....she would feel duty bound to rescue an old sewing machine that had been set out on garbage day!  Or...she would find herself unable to drive past a half-price fabric sale at Joanne's Fabric!  Sometimes she just couldn't say no, to a gift of fabric from a well-meaning friend that didn't know that Rose-ann was addicted to cloth like some folks were addicted to alcohol or drugs!
          Rose-ann continued to sob into her salt stained hands.  She couldn't keep lying to the Book Women Club members!  That nosy Karen had started to ask questions about why Rose-ann had not ever hosted a meeting of the book club!  Rose-ann moaned. "They can't find out I live like this!  They just can't!  I'll just die of shame, I'll just die!!!"  Rose-ann shifted on the couch, starting an an avalanche of cloth that fell from the couch to the floor, burying Rose-ann up to her knees!  Rose-ann stifled her tears, a twinge of fear tickling the edge of her consciousness.  "There are piles of fabric in here high enough to bury me!", Rose-ann wailed. "I'll die in here! I'll be buried like one of those cats!  I'll come up missing and by the time someone finds me, I'll be a mummy!"  Rose-ann's tears began anew.  "It's hopeless!  It's all so hopeless!"  The fabric surrounding her knees soaked up Rose-ann's endless tears.