The Funeral Dress (19 page)

“They felt better all tied up. I didn’t want to undo it like Mettie said. I didn’t want to nurse no more, with or without the baby,” Emmalee said, her voice choked with tears.

“It’s okay. This is a lot for anyone, especially a young mama.” Wilma leaned close and patted Emmalee’s hand. “There you see, Emmalee, your milk’s starting to come on its own. We just needed to get you all cozy and warm. But I’m going to touch you a little. Need to help it along a bit. You holler if I hurt you too bad.”

Emmalee nodded. Her body stiffened as Wilma placed a dry towel on her stomach. “Honey, I haven’t even touched you yet and getting all tight like that is only going to keep the milk from coming.” Wilma rubbed Emmalee’s shoulder first and moved her fingers in a small, circular motion down her chest. “Relax, baby,” she said as she kneaded the hard, tight skin.

“Oh shit,” Emmalee yelled as the pressure of Wilma’s touch strengthened. “Don’t touch me no more.”

“Squeeze my hand,” Easter said as Wilma mashed her fingers against Emmalee’s breast. Emmalee screamed louder, but Wilma pushed her fingers into the hardened mass. Soon the milk flowed more steadily, wetting the towel spread across Emmalee’s stomach. The women discussed collecting it for the baby but decided Emmalee
was too uncomfortable to trouble with the effort. The milk flowed faster, and Emmalee relaxed on the sofa.

Easter replaced the wet towel across Emmalee’s stomach while Wilma massaged the other breast. Emmalee grimaced, but this pain was not as sharp as the other. As the milk dripped onto the towel, Easter wrung out a small cloth soaking in a bowl of warm salty water and set it on Emmalee’s chest.

“Easter, did you find any salve in Leona’s bathroom? These nipples here are a mess, cracked and raw. No wonder the girl got so engorged. I doubt you was taking the baby to the breast like you should. Probably because it hurt too bad, am I right?” Wilma asked as she lifted the cloth to better examine Emmalee. “The problem is you can get real sick if you don’t nurse the baby like you should. The milk gets backed up and you end up like this, or worse. You two need each other. The baby needs you to grow, and you need the baby to nurse real regular. When you going to see her next?”

“Soon as I finish with Leona’s dress, probably tomorrow, maybe the day after.”

“Well, first things first. Let’s get you feeling better,” Wilma said. She rubbed Emmalee’s breasts with a cold white cream and wrapped her chest in fresh cotton strips cut from an old sheet Easter found in a bathroom cabinet. She handed Emmalee a glass of water and watched her drink it all up while Easter warmed the casserole in the oven. They fed Emmalee, spooning each bite of chicken into her mouth and wiping her lips clean with a paper napkin. They covered Emmalee’s body with the crocheted blanket and kept vigil by her side as she slept on Leona’s bed.

L
EONA

O
LD
L
ICK

1965

The sun kissed the horizon early as it climbed high into the July sky. The temperature would soar close to one hundred by afternoon even on top of the mountain. Curtis promised a thunderstorm would surely roll over the bluff later in the day, soaking the land with a quick but heavy rain.

Leona smelled the thick summer air as she stepped from the trailer. The katydids had already begun to sing, and she knew their oscillating trill would escalate along with the day’s rising heat. This was her favorite time to work in the garden, before the day grew too hot and crowded with other chores. Curtis had bought her a new pair of work gloves, pink ones speckled with little white dots. The gloves were tucked in her back pocket as she reached to pick up a tomato that a squirrel had tasted and left behind.

Leona moved into the bright morning sun and shielded her eyes with her hand, but she swore her garden had grown twice in size since yesterday afternoon. The tomatoes were already heavy with fruit and their vines, bent from carrying such a burdensome load, rested against the metal cages supporting them. Leona pinched a weak rambler between her fingers. She examined the leaves, checking for any signs of blight or other disease, and tossed it onto the ground.

She grew beefsteaks for Curtis and Arkansas travelers and Cherokee purples for herself. She preferred the mild taste and tender flesh of the heirlooms. Leona spied another large cluster of green fruit with a hint of pink to their skins, and she daydreamed of the full jars she would put up for winter. Leona would start picking before long, and she would offer Curtis the first one, sliced and salted and served up on a paper plate. She would eat hers whole, sinking her teeth into its soft skin, its juice dripping down her chin.

This was the only day of the week when neither the factory nor the church forced Leona to keep an eye on her watch, and she paused to count the ears of corn with sprouted silks and the yellow squash with faded blossoms on their tips. Leona pulled stray weeds and sprinkled fertilizer on the ground. She cleared a spot for a late-summer planting, maybe another crop of beans.

Curtis had left a few minutes earlier to cut wood on the backside of Brown Chapel Mountain. Runt Bullard had come looking for help, seeing how his brother never showed. Curtis never went back to the poultry business after they lost the baby. He never ventured far from home
anymore and acted nervous when he did. He worked plenty of odd jobs around town while he claimed to look for steady work and was always eager to lend a hand at the church. But Curtis preferred spending most of his days on Old Lick, chopping wood for sale or tinkering with his truck.

“Things will get better soon,” Curtis promised every morning when he dropped Leona off at Tennewa. “Yes, they will. They’ll get better real soon.” Then he’d lean across the seat and kiss Leona on the cheek. These days Leona was grateful whenever Runt called to offer Curtis a day’s pay and she found herself alone on the mountain.

The rough sound of tires rolling across loose gravel suddenly drew her attention beyond the woods shielding their property from the main road. A large green wagon, with a cloud of grayish dust trailing behind it, headed toward the trailer. Leona had seen this car at Tennewa, parked outside the factory’s office door. Most of the seamstresses carpooled to work, but this oversized wagon, with its wood-paneled sides, did not belong to any of them.

Leona ran into her garden and stood behind the wiry cages, planting her feet firmly in the fertile soil. She recognized Mr. Clayton sitting tall behind the steering wheel, his long sleeves rolled to his elbows and dark sunglasses hiding his eyes. The manager from Tennewa looked out of place up on the mountain in his crisp white shirt. Leona slipped her hands inside her apron pockets.

Her heart beat fast, and she feared Mr. Clayton had come to the mountain to reprimand her. Maybe he had noticed her staring every time he walked from the front office to the cutting room in the back of the factory building.
She was ashamed of it, of the looking, that is, but Leona couldn’t stop these feelings or her wandering eyes. She thought everything about Mr. Clayton was handsome, his crooked nose and his square jaw, his large hands and thick chest. Leona had looked at Curtis that way once. But she had done nothing wrong, she told herself. She had only looked.

“Leona,” Mr. Clayton said, shouting out the open window. His broad smile revealed the gap between his teeth. “I guess by that look on your face my visit is not what you expected on this beautiful Saturday morning.” The wagon rolled to a stop in front of the trailer.

Always dressed in suits and wing-tipped shoes during the week, Mr. Clayton looked more relaxed today in his blue jeans and faded sneakers. Although the sunglasses shaded his eyes, his face appeared more at ease.

Leona picked at another vine, snapping its brown tip between her fingers and tossing it onto the ground. “Good morning, sir,” she said, reaching for another stem spilling beyond the metal cage.

“Good to see you, Leona. Don’t worry. This is not an official visit of any kind. I’ve come about my wife.” He pulled his dark glasses from his face.

Leona’s heart beat faster, afraid Mrs. Clayton had heard of her wandering eyes.

“Your wife?”

“Yes. You see my wife wants to have a slipcover made for a bedroom chair, and I heard you do that kind of work on the side. If I’m going to be completely honest with you, I’ve heard you’re the best around.”

Ever since Curtis lost his job in the mines, Leona took
in sewing from women she barely knew—women who drove their fancy cars from Lookout and Signal Mountains and dumped their fine French fabrics in her tired hands so she could turn them into beautiful slipcovers for their ratty old club chairs and camelback sofas, pieces these women called antiques. They told Leona her sewing was beautiful, the best they’d ever seen. They praised her as if she were a child of their own, not a grown woman, although they pursed their lips and asked for discounts when they paid.

Leona was well aware of her excellent reputation as a seamstress, a reputation that had spread south to Chattanooga and north to Manchester. Yet when she met these women at her trailer’s door, she avoided their eyes and instead focused on their fabrics and detailed instructions. Now with Mr. Clayton standing in front of her, Leona found she couldn’t look at him, either.

“Anyway, I can’t really show favorites, you know. Wouldn’t be good for morale. I’m sure you can understand my predicament,” he said and grinned.

Leona turned her eyes to the fresh dirt beneath her feet.

“That’s why I came to your place. On a Saturday. Off the record. You know what I mean?” he asked, his pace slowing. “I hope that was all right?”

“Yes, sir.” Leona tried to keep her gaze fixed on the ground.

“Good.” Mr. Clayton grinned a little wider. “Would you mind taking a peek at this chair I’ve got here, and this bolt of fabric my wife’s bought? I’d love to know what you think. And tell me what you charge for this kind of work.”

Leona stepped from behind the metal cages. She glanced back at the trailer door, half expecting to see Curtis standing there, watching his wife with the factory manager. She pulled off her gloves, their tips stained with mud, and stuffed them in her apron’s pocket.

“Looks like you’re going to have a generous crop of tomatoes this year,” Mr. Clayton said.

“Yes, sir,” Leona answered as she followed him to the back of the wagon. “Kind of late getting some of them in the ground.”

A small wingback chair and a bolt of pink-and-white gingham fabric sat next to a child’s bicycle and a gray tackle box. Leona wondered about the little boy who must ride this bike with the blue seat and shiny blue frame. Maybe he was nine or ten years old and carried his daddy’s same strong face and deep brown eyes. She wondered if they fished together down in Sequatchie River, if Mr. Clayton had taught him how to bait a hook with a fresh worm and how to scale a blue gill. Leona felt like she was spying, discovering a part of Mr. Clayton’s private life not meant for a collar maker to know.

“So what do you think?” he asked, pulling the fabric into the sunshine.

“Yes, sir, a slipcover. When you need it by?”

“We’re in no real hurry. My wife’s expecting our third child, and she wants to use this in the nursery.”

“Congratulations,” Leona said. She cocked her head to the side and narrowed her eyes. “How she know it’s a girl?”

“She doesn’t.” Mr. Clayton laughed. “She’s hoping and praying and wishing on every star in the sky for a girl
this time. I told her it was silly to spend the money covering this chair if the baby turns out to be another boy. But she doesn’t care. She thinks if she plans on a girl, then she’ll have one.” Mr. Clayton sat on the wagon’s open gate and held the bolt between his legs. “To tell the truth, I’m in no mood to argue with that woman right now.”

Leona looked away.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Leona, this is terribly insensitive of me. I wasn’t thinking. I forgot you lost—. Please forgive me.”

Leona fell quiet, and a crow called out in the distance. “It was a long time ago.” She tried to speak but wasn’t sure Mr. Clayton could see the effort. And with the toe of her canvas loafer, Leona pushed a chunk of gray gravel into the soft dirt.

“Let me ask someone else to do this. I should never have come up here with all this.”

Leona fingered the fabric. “That’s okay. I can do it for you,” she said, her tone soft but resolute.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Clayton reached for Leona’s hand. “I don’t imagine a woman ever quits grieving the loss of a baby.” He squeezed her hand in his.

Leona did not pull away. She knew she shouldn’t linger like that. Nothing good would come of it, but she liked the warmth of his hand on hers. “I wouldn’t feel right about taking your money,” she finally said and withdrew from his grasp.

“Well, I wouldn’t hear of not paying you. Not for this kind of work. I insist. How does forty dollars sound?”

Leona laughed. The sound surprised her, and she clapped her hand across her mouth. “That’s too much.”

“Not for quality work.”

“Seems like an awful lot to me. Almost what I make in a week sewing collars.”

“I tell you what, you feel like gambling a little?”

“I don’t know about that.” Leona lifted her hand to her brow, shading her eyes from the brightening sun. “Don’t think it’s a sin or nothing, just never done it. Doubt Curtis would care for it much.”

“Hear me out. I’ll give you fifty dollars right up front.” Mr. Clayton reached for his wallet in his back pocket. “I’ll hand it to you right now. But if it’s a boy, you’ll agree to make me another slipcover, a blue one, free of charge. If it’s a girl, you owe me nothing. How’s that sound? All legal, I promise. Don’t even think the good Lord would have a problem with this one.” He handed Leona a crisp fifty-dollar bill.

Leona giggled, excited about the prospect of placing a wager, even if it was a legal one. She would keep this to herself though, certain that Curtis would not approve of such an arrangement. Truth be told, she was relieved he was not there, catching her smiling back at Mr. Clayton.