Fiction and Drama

Maria Marchinkoski

Real-Life Angel was a full-vicious woman

Pia Paulina Guilmoth, we make a flower . 2024, archival pigment print. 27 × 22". Courtesy of the artist and CLAMP, New York. © Pia Paulina Guilmoth, 2025.

A t the end of May, my students shared their designs. I paused over the thick coverchief, pleated wimple, and gaudy green beads for the nun. They looked more medieval on the workbenches, by the awls and needles. We would take them to Drama, a black box theater designed to resemble a barn. There, the limp forms would wait for a pair of shoulders to give them warmth and shape.

Every six months, the parents paid the price of a luxury car for their children to blow glass or sing madrigals. The students were exceptional at everything they did. I taught them fashion design and needlework. When they fit a swatch of charmeuse to the limbless torso of a dress form or hand-sewed a fell stitch along the hem of a gown without slipping, I marveled.…