The Nine Knots Marfa Suslova Ties Before Any Name Is Said

Fourteenth day of rain, easing some since the small hours, same as the Gazette said. Mulov Street’s gutters run brown and shallow now, not brimming the way they were a week back.

Marfa Suslova sits just inside her own doorway, out of the wet, a skein of red wool across her knee. She is tying a cord. Doubled thread, an overhand knot pulled tight, then wetted at the lip and worked again until it will not slip. One knot for every morning a child has lived since its birth. She has done this for every child born within an hour’s walk of Mulov Street for eleven years, asked or not, Folk Quarter or not.

She keeps the skein near the chimney between knots. Damp wool will not hold a tight knot — it loosens by the second day, and then the counting means nothing. She tests each one with a thumbnail before she sets it down.

Nine knots total. On the morning the Temple says the name, the cord comes off the wrist and goes under the doorstep stone. Not burned. Burned wool, she says, is a wish you were in a hurry to be rid of, and nine days of a child’s life deserve better than hurry.

Tonight she ties the second knot for the Hollis girl off Guild Row, word carried to her by her sister’s husband’s cousin, who carried it from someone else. Marfa has never met the mother. Guild Row is nowhere she has business in. Seven mornings left before anyone writes the name down.

I count mornings my own way — Yelka’s wet boots, the river’s hand’s-width, Rebrov’s sign going soft on its nail. Marfa counts hers in wool. Neither of us has met the mother. The cord doesn’t need to.