How to Make an American Quilt (30 page)

I
N THE EVENINGS
, when Anna had finished with her tasks, she frequently took nighttime walks, as she had on the ranch. Her center of gravity had shifted, making her stride less supple, a little more awkward, yet still carrying that same odd allure lusted after by the boy from Chicago. She would wander with her hand to her stomach, growing larger daily, her eyes scanning the sky. That was how she walked: hand to belly, eyes to heaven. As if she could somehow link the two. In the Philippines there is a Tagalog word
lehi
, as in “making
lehi
.” Translated, it means that when a woman is pregnant, whatever obsesses her will manifest itself in the unborn child; so if one dreams of chicken beaks, one’s child will be born with a chicken beak.

Anna was unaware of this as she moved in the shine of the moon, her palms resting on her stomach and her gaze cast upward. Perhaps making
lehi
is an instinctual reflex among women heavy with child. Or maybe she was simply crisscrossing it, unconsciously, with the tradition of wishing upon a star. Pauline had told her,
The sky belongs to nobody. The sky is free
. Her unborn child, in this world, belonged to nobody.

You belong only to yourself.

W
HEN SHE CAME BACK
one night, Glady Joe Rubens asked, “Where do you go at night, Anna?”

“Just walking,” Anna said. “Nowhere special.” Inside Anna had not forgotten the price paid earlier in her life for walking alone beneath the stars.

“I thought maybe I could go with you sometime.”

No, no
, she could not share her walks with anyone, certainly not another child of the family for which she worked. “Maybe,” she said, vowing to herself that her nocturnal wanderings were now over for the duration of her stay in this house.

“I’d like that,” said Glady Joe. “I truly would.”

Anna suspected that, like Mrs. Rubens, Glady Joe wanted to show the world how charitable she could be to the “less fortunate.” She did not stop to differentiate between what was genuine and what was false. What the difference between mother and daughter could be.

A
NNA QUIT HER STROLLS
, confined herself to her room after the dinner dishes were washed and put away. At first, she wrote letters to Pauline; sometimes she thought about getting in touch with the father of her baby, maybe just show up at his college back east. Really shock his parents.

The Rubenses provided her with an old radio that Anna felt might have belonged to the Rubenses’ daughters, or the Flower Girls, as they were known around town. She was certain that it was donated at Mrs. Rubens’s insistence. Oh, Anna could just hear her: “Now, Glady Joe, Hy, we have to be big enough to share with those who cannot get for themselves. You two can listen to the one downstairs.” But there was so little on the radio that captivated Anna. There were the girlish, fey white singers who tried their hands at jazz or light blues, late at night, but often it did not sound right.

A
NNA BEGAN QUILTING
. Pauline, who almost exclusively sewed and quilted for the mrs. by then, frequently sent her scraps, which Anna shoved into an old flour sack. Mostly the dark colors associated with the Amish quilts and some patterned pieces thrown in, maybe a true red or yellow. So heartbroken was the mrs. at the loss of
The Life Before
that she gave Pauline carte blanche to purchase yards of matching fabric (a luxury for the serious quilter) to fashion superior quilts. Anna’s quilts cleverly joined scraps from Pauline’s remnants. She made do with what came her way.

She began a crib quilt for her baby, using a traditional Amish pattern called
Broken Star
. Anna lay the back cloth and batting; she worked the tiny diamonds to create one huge star against a background of indigo.

One night, Glady Joe knocks softly on her door. Anna is momentarily startled; she often felt that once dinner was through and she retired to her room, she lived alone in this house. So separate from the Rubenses. “Anna?”

She sets her work aside, opens the door, and steps back to let in Glady Joe. Glady Joe holds a book in her hand.

“Is this what you do?” Glady Joe fingers the hundreds of tiny diamond shapes. “I haven’t seen you walking. That is, you must be quite fast because I don’t see you leave.” Glady Joe sits primly on the edge of the bed while Anna thinks,
Man, another white child of the house sittin’ on my bed
.

“I haven’t felt like walking.”

“Oh.”

Glady Joe shyly holds up her book. “I was wondering if you’ve ever read this?” Anna reads the title
Wuthering Heights
and shakes her head no.

“Would you like to borrow it? I mean, it reminds me of you—all that walking around—um, these people are always walking around, too. Across the moors. They spend a lot of time wandering.” Glady
Joe says, “I can’t believe you are making this yourself. So many little pieces—how do you keep them all straight? And so striking. The colors, I mean.”

“The women in my family quilt,” says Anna, then, “Look, I’m pretty busy with this quilt. I want to finish it for my child”—she smiles briefly—“so I’m in a hurry.”

Glady Joe rises. “I could leave the book. You could look at it when you have time.”

“Don’t bother,” says Anna, then sees the hurt in Glady Joe’s face. She feels guilty, then annoyed. Doesn’t she have somewhere to go? Of course, she’s not with Hy tonight because Hy is out with a group of friends. Anna heard her mention a special boy—Lee, Anna thinks—but her parents won’t allow her to single-date; she’s only fifteen. But Hy refuses to stay home; she is far more stylish and sociable than her sister. Glady Joe, too, seems “different” from most people in Grasse, but it is Hy who is more noticeable, with her tortoiseshell combs, sparkling dress clips worn with one of her mother’s old sweaters, her embroidered school socks. New hairstyles copied from magazines published in New York and all her talk about Paris and Berlin and artists and such.

The Flower Girls often seem like outsiders when compared to the residents of Grasse;
Glady Joe more than Hy, but neither as much as me
, thinks Anna. Then Glady Joe is gone from her room and Anna is back at her
Broken Star
.