The Funeral Dress (21 page)

“Too afraid of the quiet,” Wilma said.

Easter picked up a piece of damask and draped it over her arms. She stroked it over and over again. “I understand that now. Only wish I had let Leona know.”

Wilma turned to Emmalee. “Kelly Faye is a real pretty name, hon, real pretty.”

Clutching the damask, Easter returned to Wilma and Emmalee. “Yes, it is. A real pretty name.”

The three of them huddled together in the narrow hallway, their heads bobbing one against the other.

Emmalee’s milk suddenly dropped through her breasts, and she wished Kelly Faye was there so she could fill her
tummy. She wanted to kiss her cheeks and press her nose to Kelly’s tender neck, drawing in the sweet smell of her newborn baby. Instead, the binding grew wet, and Emmalee pictured Mettie tickling Kelly Faye’s lips with the tip of a bottle.

“You done good here,” Wilma said, breaking the silence. “And I’m going to tell you exactly what Leona would tell you. Hold your head high. Way up high.” Wilma took Emmalee’s chin in her hand. “ ’Cause you can’t find your way clear, hon, if your eyes are glued to the ground.”

Easter worked in the kitchen, humming an old hymn while she spooned her casserole into one of Leona’s Pyrex dishes. She placed the dish on the top shelf of the refrigerator and set about washing the dirty plates and glasses left soaking in the soapy water. “Looks like the weather’s changing,” she said as she looked out the wide-set window above the kitchen sink. “Storm heading over the plateau.”

“If that’s so, I want you both off this mountain before the rain comes,” Emmalee said. “I ain’t going to lose anybody else.”

Easter and Wilma hesitated to leave Emmalee alone. They offered to stay and help finish the dress. But Emmalee wanted to do it on her own. Besides, it felt good to offer a caring note to the women who had mothered her so well there at Leona’s trailer.

They scribbled their phone number on a piece of paper and encouraged Emmalee to call if she needed help with her sewing or the baby in the weeks to come. “Anytime,”
Easter said. “We mean it.” Emmalee promised she would, not bothering to tell them there was no phone at her father’s house.

As they walked across the gravel drive to their car, Easter turned around and reminded Emmalee that three-fourths of a chicken casserole sat in the refrigerator. “Don’t let it go to waste,” Wilma added. “You got to keep your strength up what with nursing a little one. You’re a mama now, remember.”

“Mama,” Emmalee said. She let the word simmer on her tongue as she waved good-bye. She liked being called that, at least the way Easter and Wilma said it. She blew a kiss to a redbird darting about the trailer and rushed inside, eager to return to her dressmaking.

The sewing machine sat quiet in front of her, and Emmalee wondered if it was missing Leona, too, waiting for her to come and guide another piece of fabric underneath its stainless foot. Emmalee believed the trailer and everything in it was aware of Leona’s passing, and the redbird still darting about the window only punctuated her belief. She blew another kiss. “Go on. Bring me some good luck,” she said and picked up a piece of damask.

Emmalee rolled the balance wheel and dropped the needle below the throat plate, then pulled it up, lassoing the bobbin’s crimson thread. She held the thread and a similar length from the spool mounted on top between her fingers and pulled them both to the back, away from the machine. She placed the dress panels underneath the presser foot, allowing only a half-inch seam, and pumped the floor pedal. The motor moaned and Emmalee pressed
harder until the machine surged forward. She remembered what Leona had taught her and steadied her foot against the pedal.

“This ain’t a race, Emmalee, keep it steady,” Leona once told her.

The motor fell into a steady purr, and stitches dropped in rapid succession, the needle bobbing up and down. With the tips of her fingers, Emmalee navigated a straight seam through the thick fabric, only slowing her pace as she neared the point where she would fit the sleeve. She turned the balance wheel with her hand and finished the last three stitches before breaking the threads free.

She raised the presser foot and quickly turned the dress but not before running a short seam along the left and right shoulders’ edges. She worked the other side of the garment as she had the first, and the machine hummed along amid the early-evening calm.

She took to Curtis’s chair and basted the collar and sleeves in place with long loose stitches. Pleased with her work, she decided to set them by hand instead of returning to the machine. Besides, Emmalee loved sitting snug in Curtis’s chair with the yellow crocheted blanket spread across her waist. She made small, tight stitches, pulling and tugging the thread at the seam’s edge. She grew giddy as she knotted the final threads, again not stopping to notice the late hour.

At last, Emmalee held the finished dress out in front of her and admired her work. She pressed it against her body and ran into Leona’s room to look at herself in the mirror. She turned to the left and then to the right, studying the crimson dress from every position. Emmalee
rubbed her hand across the collar. She pressed it between her fingers as she stared at the photograph of the sleeping baby boy left on Leona’s dresser. Emmalee ran back into the living room with the dress draped over her arm and the photograph in her hand. She plopped down on the carpeted floor in front of Curtis’s reclining chair and opened the frame, careful not to tear the paper or cut her fingers on the glass. Emmalee removed the photo; and with Leona’s sewing scissors in her hand, she cut away all but the baby looking back at her.

Emmalee placed what was left of the photograph inside the dress, over the darting on the left side. She pushed a needle into the damask, careful not to pierce the needle through to the other side. Working slowly, she whipstitched the picture onto the dress. For all eternity, Leona’s baby boy would rest on top of her heart.

“There. Now it’s done.” She placed the dress on the carpeted floor and smoothed it flat with her hand. “Now it’s perfect.”

Emmalee had not noticed that the rain had stopped or that night had settled about the trailer. It was dark, too dark for Runt to come up the mountain for her tonight. She would call first thing in the morning and then finish the hem and press the dress under a hot iron.

Emmalee woke again on Leona’s sofa with the sun warming her face. She snuggled under the afghan. Although her breasts were full, they did not ache as they had yesterday. But she was eager to see her baby.

She raised her arms above her head and arched her back. Her spine, stiff and sore from the hours spent
hunched over her sewing, popped as she stretched her body backward. She had pinned the hem in place before going to bed, and it wouldn’t take long to finish it. Mr. Fulton said this kind of detail was not necessary, but she knew Leona would never leave a dress undone, especially one as important as this one.

She was certain Leona had intended to finish that woman’s fancy slipcovers. She would have folded them and left them ready in a box by the trailer door, just as she had promised to do. Emmalee knew that about her friend. Only then would Leona and Curtis have come down the mountain for her and Kelly Faye. She liked to think of Leona perched on the edge of the truck’s seat, waiting for her first glimpse of Emmalee and the baby walking out of the holler. She smiled at the thought of it.

Emmalee went straight to the phone. She dialed her uncle’s number, and he answered after the first ring. She had finished the dress, Emmalee told him, and she needed a ride to town. “How’s Kelly doing?” she asked.

Emmalee wrapped the yellow afghan around her shoulders and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She stumbled into the bathroom, her bare feet sliding across the cold linoleum floor. Emmalee squatted on the toilet and dropped her forehead in her hands. Her toes scraped the side of the tub.

Two faded blue towels, trimmed with an eyelet lace, hung across a bar set above the back of the tub. The towel’s cotton trim was another frilly detail Emmalee never expected of Leona. She wondered what all she did not know about the woman who had invited her to come
and live on top of this mountain. Emmalee knelt by the tub’s edge and held her hand under the water running hot from the faucet. She watched the water spill into the tub until it was nearly overflowing.

Back in the first grade, Emmalee had come home with notes pinned to her dress reminding Mr. Bullard his daughter needed to arrive at school clean, in clean clothes, with clean underpants. Even before she could read, Emmalee understood what the notes said. She imagined the other kids did, too, although Mrs. Tate said it was grown-up business. Her teacher folded the paper twice and pinned it to the thin cotton dress Emmalee wore most days. Emmalee kept her hand to her chest as she took her place in line by the classroom door, waiting her turn to board the bus for home.

Once a week, while the rest of her class walked on to the library, Mrs. Tate led Emmalee into the janitor’s closet instead where she hurriedly washed Emmalee with a wet cloth and a bar of Ivory soap. Emmalee shivered in her teacher’s care as the cool air touched her damp skin. “Sorry, honey, I can’t get your hair washed. Maybe someday I can take you home with me and give you a good scrub in the bathtub,” Mrs. Tate said, holding Emmalee’s elbow firmly in her hand as she wiped underneath her arm. Emmalee looked away.

Emmalee thought of Mrs. Tate as she slipped out of her clothes, unwrapped the binding, and dipped her toes into the water, steam rising off its surface. Her skin tingled and burned as she touched the hot water, but she slowly lowered her body into the tub. A bit of milk leaked from her breasts but quickly dissipated into the
bathwater. Emmalee relaxed and kneaded her breasts some more as Wilma had taught her to do. Milk spilled into the water.

The fullness in her breasts eased, but her back ached, a dull throbbing pain. She hurt for Kelly Faye from someplace deep inside, and the pain seemed to settle in the pit of her stomach. Emmalee pulled her knees to her chest. She wanted a better life for her little girl, but all she saw was Mrs. Tate leading her into the janitor’s closet, her classmates staring as she followed her teacher down the hall. She could still smell the Ivory soap on her skin.

Emmalee held the terry cloth in her hand and scrubbed her body, washing away what she could and could not see. She soaped her hair and dipped below the water’s surface. Holding her breath, Emmalee lingered there, rocking her head back and forth, rinsing her long hair clean.

Stepping from the tub, she wrapped her body in an eyelet-trimmed towel and then rolled the binding and tucked it under her arm. She would nurse her baby soon and no longer need this cloth. She felt exhausted from the bath, the hot water leaving her body limp. But Emmalee hurried to dress and brush her hair and take her place at Leona’s sewing table.

She slipped a tip of crimson thread through the needle’s eye and pulled the thread tight, knotting one end. Emmalee held the dress with its pinned hem in her left hand and pushed the needle into the fabric with her right, pricking a single thread from one layer of damask and then the other. Twice more she threaded the needle as she worked the circumference of the dress, each stitch setting the hem in place.

She stopped often to admire her work, not wanting to rush, even if no one would see it. Emmalee placed five tight little stitches, one on top of the other, careful not to push the needle through to the front. She cut the remaining thread close to the fabric. She would take the iron to it later and press the hem down.

Emmalee glanced out the window while she tidied Leona’s sewing table—stacking remnants of fabric, collecting straight pins and loose threads. She positioned the scissors next to the machine exactly where she had found them, as if Leona would come looking for them. She walked to the kitchen and packed what was left of Easter’s casserole and the other food that had been carried to the trailer. Easter had promised it was fine to carry all of it with her even though Emmalee didn’t feel right about taking something that wasn’t hers. In that way, she guessed she was like her father. But Easter had insisted the food would only go to waste.

Emmalee tiptoed into the bedroom readied for her and Kelly Faye. She reached for the crib and then patted the teddy bear’s nubby head. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to know you, but I bet you won’t mind if I take a few of these,” she said and pulled three plastic diapers from the cloth basket hanging on the side of the crib. These had been meant for Kelly Faye, Emmalee told herself, and scooted backward out of the room.

With her eye fixed on the clearing, Emmalee sat at Leona’s sewing table and waited for her uncle Runt. The sound of a truck speeding down the gravel drive startled her even though she watched it barreling toward the trailer, kicking up bits of mud and rock in its wake.
Emmalee grabbed the dress and the paper sack stuffed with her other provisions and headed outside. She was eager to meet Runt at the driveway. But standing on the stoop, Emmalee realized it was not her uncle who had come for her.

It was Nolan. He barreled farther down the drive and stopped his truck a couple of feet from the trailer. Emmalee’s eyes grew big, and she leaned against the trailer as Nolan charged toward her.

“What are you doing here?” Emmalee called out to Nolan as he scrambled out of the truck.

He rushed toward her, stopping only inches from her face. She turned her head, but she could almost feel his whiskers prickling against her cheek. Nolan pressed closer.

“Ought to be no surprise to you I’m the one come to get you. Ain’t you the one done give her baby over to Mettie and Runt,” he said. The scent of tobacco stunk on his breath.

“I ain’t gave her to nobody. They’re just keeping her for a couple days.” Emmalee pushed Nolan back. She held the dress out in front of her, crimson proof of what she had done and why she had needed her uncle’s help.

“That ain’t what Mettie’s saying.”

Emmalee’s eyes widened. She had made it clear to Mettie she would be returning for her baby in a day or two. She was Kelly’s mama, and with every stitch she had become more certain of her purpose. But Nolan’s voice only grew louder, and Emmalee’s fear grew sharp.