Wedding Ring (11 page)

“Boy, that’s the truth,” Nancy said. “You remember everything I ever did that you didn’t want me to.”

“And then some,” Helen said. “And don’t forget it.”

“And…” Tessa ladled crowder peas on her plate and passed them, although nobody else had much room left. “I found the wedding ring quilt. Not the first place I looked, but almost.”

Helen was surprised. She hadn’t hidden that quilt, exactly. After all, she was the only one who lived here. And a woman couldn’t hide something like that from herself. But she had buried it deep and hoped, as she did, that it wouldn’t resurface in her lifetime.

And now Tessa had found it.

“How’s it look?” Nancy asked. “Did all my quilting fall out over the years?”

“I haven’t had time to examine it, but I thought maybe we could do that after supper.”

Nancy and Tessa chatted about other things, but Helen worked on her meal without another word, finishing before they did. She took her plate to the sink, then pulled the pie from the counter where it had been cooling. Without asking, she dished up three hearty slices and brought them to the table, followed by a quart of vanilla ice cream and a scoop. No one refused their share.

By the time they had finished their dessert, everyone, even Helen, had mellowed. She had to admit that sitting at the table with her daughter and granddaughter was not all bad. It was a pleasure to have her cooking so genuinely enjoyed. And it was nice to have someone to talk to—not that she had anything much to say.

“Let’s look at the quilt now, then I’ll do the dishes.” Tessa rose and stretched. Helen admired how lithe and lean she was and just wished that the tension in her granddaughter’s face would disappear, to be replaced by something that matched the overall impression of good health and inner strength.

They filed into the parlor, since the living room smelled of paint and the furniture was draped. The parlor was a small room, a useless ornament, really, for a farm family with nothing nice enough to save for company. Helen’s own mother, Delilah, had realized this. When she was alive, the room had held a big quilting frame and little else but chairs to sit around it. During Delilah’s reign there had been neighborhood quilting bees every Wednesday morning right here. The Fitch Crossing Ladies Homemakers’ Society.

“This is a cozy room. It was my favorite as a little girl,” Tessa said. “I used to curl up in here and read whenever we came to visit.”

Helen switched on lamps that had shone during her mother’s day. Delilah had always insisted on plenty of light in the parlor, because she claimed that quilting could ruin the eyes. “You were the reading-est child. Not like that daughter of yours. Kayley liked to run and play. She never even came to see me ’less she came with a kite or a ball.”

There was a silence, the way there always was when Kayley’s name was mentioned, then Nancy said, “Tessa would have been a tomboy, too, if I’d let her, but I was determined she had to be a young lady.”

Helen shook her head. “In my day, nobody had time to think like that. Everybody got their hands dirty, and not by playing ball, I can tell you.”

“That sounds bleak,” Tessa said. “Did you ever have fun?”

“I never said we didn’t have fun.” Helen heard herself laughing, and the sound surprised her.

“I never found
any
of the chores I did here fun,” Nancy said.

Helen was sorry that was true, although she understood the difference. “We had more fun than you can ever guess at. Nobody ever said you can’t work and have fun at the same time.”

She lowered her considerable bulk to an armchair and made herself comfortable. Nancy sat in the faded love seat where Tessa had always read as a child, and Tessa disappeared, returning in a moment with a bundle wrapped in a white sheet.

“This sheet was protecting it, so I thought I’d better bring it along.” She placed the bundle on a table in the corner and began to carefully unfold it.

Tessa’s movements were always fluid. Helen supposed that her granddaughter’s natural poise and grace had come from Billy’s side. No Stoneburner woman had found time to develop either, while Billy’s mother and grandmother had honed both at fancy debutante cotillions. Helen watched Tessa unfold the sheet and smooth it over the sides of the table. Like a dance or an elaborate pantomime.

Next Tessa unfolded the quilt and smoothed it over the sheet. “This was like finding an old friend you were afraid had moved away for good.” She finished and stepped back. “There are a lot of memories here.”

Helen could have told her a thing or two about that, but she sat silently as Nancy got up to view the quilt. “Well, the stitches don’t look like yours, Mama, but I have to say, they’re not too shabby, either. I wasn’t good, but I wasn’t bad.”

“There are so many colors and patterns.” Tessa lightly stroked her hand across the top. “But it’s really damaged. More than I remember.”

Helen got to her feet at last. She moved over to look at the quilt, too. It was about eighty by ninety inches. She wasn’t sure why, exactly, except that she had probably thought that was a reasonably standard size. What had she known when she was only a poor teenaged girl with big dreams for her future? And how much time had there been at the end? She’d wanted to finish the top before her wedding day. For some reason that had seemed imperative.

“There are two wedding rings,” Helen said. “The single wedding ring, which is a whole lot simpler. Then there’s the double wedding ring, that’s the one you see the most. This here’s the double. I started piecing it when I was a girl. My mama thought it would be a good learning quilt because it teaches patience and accurate curved seams.”

“Was it?” Nancy asked.

“I suppose.” This wedding ring was a scrap quilt, plain and simple. Only the corners of the intersecting ovals, a scalloped border and the backing were alike, a blue fabric that had meant so much to her as a young woman.

“There’s damage here, here…” This time Tessa didn’t touch the quilt, but she passed her finger over the worst areas. “Some of the fabric looks like it’s disintegrating.”

“It’s a mess, all right,” Helen said. “The way you and your mother throw away just about anything that doesn’t have a sheen or a sparkle, seems to me you’d have this old heap in that horse trailer of Claiborne’s before I could whistle ‘Dixie.’ I’m surprised you didn’t get shed of it instead of bringing it down here.”

“I didn’t bring it back to you so we could just toss it in the trailer,” Nancy said. “You know when I brought it I asked you to look it over and see if it could be fixed. I thought you’d do it a long time ago. But when I didn’t hear anything about it, I guess I just forgot.”

“It’s an heirloom,” Tessa said. “Not a stack of unread newspapers.”

Helen was still fuming about their meddling and not about to give ground. “Fixing it would take a lot of work. Besides, I’ve got to say, I don’t know how to go about it. I make tops, and I quilt. Sometimes I’ve put new binding on an old quilt that’s wearing thin. But that’s all I know how to do.”

“I guess we could take it apart and start all over,” Nancy said.

“No sense in that. You could make a brand-new quilt in the same time.”

Tessa lifted an edge of the quilt, almost reverently. Despite herself, Helen was touched. She hadn’t realized how many memories had been bound into it for her granddaughter.

“There are so many fabrics,” Tessa said. “Where did they all come from?”

“It’s a regular family bible, this quilt. I worked on it for a lot of years, a little here, a little there. Like I told you, some are feed sacks. Some of the pieces come from old dresses, mine and family’s, friends’. Most likely those are the pieces with the most damage. I traded for some of the fabric, a piece of mine for a piece of theirs. I wanted each section to look different, which is why it took so long. We didn’t have money in those days to just go buy something pretty we liked at the store. Nobody in these parts had any money.”

“I’d like to hear about it. About the dresses and the feed sacks. About what it was like to make this quilt.” Tessa looked up. “About your life, Gram.”

“Why?” Helen frowned. “What do you care? It was a long time ago. Nobody left but me. I could tell you about the dresses and the people I traded with, about this.” She pointed to a piece. “That belonged to my mama. It was cut from her favorite apron. That was the first section of this pattern I ever sewed.” She pointed to another. “That piece right there, that was from my grandma’s wedding dress. But why do you care? You’ll never know them.”

Tessa didn’t fuss or try to make her feel better. “You don’t have a TV that works well enough to see most of the time. It’s early. I’m tired of reading.”

Helen had been prepared to refuse. What did she have to tell her upstart daughter or her grieving granddaughter? She was just an old woman whose life was nothing in the world like theirs. But there was something about the offhanded way Tessa asked, something underneath it that tugged at Helen and made her think twice.

“I might tell you a little. But only if you scare up some of that wine we had the other night. I could do with a glass if I have to talk. Reminds me of the dandelion wine my papa always made in the spring, only his was sweet enough to make your teeth ache.”

Tessa stretched and swayed a moment. “You get comfortable. I’ll be right back.” She left the room.

“What are you still doing here?” Helen demanded of her daughter. “I tried to tell you about your grandparents and such when you were living here. You didn’t care then, and you probably don’t care now.”

Nancy leaned forward, and the smile that was always so hard for Helen to get behind disappeared. “You are one nasty, stubborn old woman, you know that? All my life, you’ve gone after me like that. I never said I wasn’t interested in my own family. I just wasn’t interested in being told how much better they were than I would ever be.”

Helen stared at her. “I never said that. You’re making that up.”

“I was never good enough for you, Mama.”

“You got that backwards. I was never good enough for
you
.”

Nancy sat back in the love seat and crossed her arms. “These may be your memories to share or not to share, but when you’re making up your mind, just remember this is my family, too. And I’m not going anywhere.”

Helen flinched. There was no room for ambiguity in her life. She had lived so close to the edge that she’d had to make snap decisions and stick closely to them to keep from falling into the chasms of poverty and despair. But she had always known, deep in her heart, that there were problems with moving so quickly and decisively. Now one of them was sitting across the room from her.

“I never said I wouldn’t tell you about your family,” she said. “You show me when I said that, and I’ll apologize.”

Nancy didn’t respond, which was so unlike her that Helen knew how important this was. She tried to find words that fit the turmoil inside her, and none occurred to her.

“I’m glad you want to hear,” she said at last. She didn’t sound glad. She knew that, but at least she’d managed something.

Nancy, arms still folded, nodded.

1932

H
elen knew better than to complain to her mama. Delilah Stoneburner moved faster than her husband Cuddy’s best squirrel dog, and she got mad if she had to slow down. Like the other women who lived up and down Fitch, Delilah’s workload had gotten heavier in the past years, but her step had only gotten quicker to make up for it. Now that Cuddy had a job unloading sacks of grain at the feed store, Delilah had her husband’s chores, as well as the ones she had always done. Helen’s brothers Tom and Obediah—Obed for short—did their share, and so did twelve-year-old Helen, but that still left too much work and not enough time.

Despite knowing her mama wouldn’t take kindly to an interruption, Helen followed her out to the chicken yard. “Those two in the corner.” Delilah pointed out two chickens pecking for insects at the far west edge of the coop. Tom, fourteen and already nearly as tall as Cuddy, looked like he wanted to protest, but he knew better. He might not like wrenching the necks of chickens the way Delilah had taught him, but it was his job. Besides, that meant there would be chicken on the supper table, a rare enough event these days.

Helen didn’t want to watch. She fed the chickens every day, and even though she knew better, she secretly gave them names. She was pretty sure Daffodil and Lilac would be sitting next to the potatoes and gravy that night.

“Mama.” Helen turned from the sight of Tom trying to corner the hens. “Mama, I want to quilt like everybody else. I don’t want to watch the babies. I can quilt just as fast and straight—”

“You still here?” Delilah looked down at her daughter and frowned, as if everything about Helen from her glossy dark hair to the length of her toenails displeased her. “You still talking back to me?”

“Mama, I won’t ask for another thing. I’ll help with supper after the bee’s all done, and I’ll clean up the dishes all by myself. I’ll put Aunt Sarah’s baby to bed and stay in the room with the other children all night if you want. But, Mama—”

Delilah actually slowed her pace. “You still talking back to me? You still using those big brown eyes to show me how sad you are?”

Helen fell silent.

Delilah’s voice softened. “Lenny, I told you before. We gotta have somebody watching the babies. Pretty soon one of the other girls’ll be old enough to watch ’em. They’ll help you today. But today you gotta be the one in charge. You understand?”

Helen did. “Maybe just a little? Just a little while?”

Delilah laughed. “Maybe. But you go on now. You got things to do before everybody gets here.”

Trying to ignore the squawks coming from the vicinity of the chicken yard, a heartened Helen scampered down the path to the pond and raised the latch on the high wooden box her father had built just above the shoreline. She hoisted a scoop of corn and scattered it for the ducks and geese, then followed with another. Standing at the edge, she did a quick search for the ducklings that had hatched that week, but either something had gotten them or they were hiding in the tall grass at the pond’s edge. Philosophically, she hoped for the latter.

An hour passed, and she filled it with chores. Delilah liked a clean house, and even if she had a hundred other chores to do, the house never suffered. Rugs got beaten. Floors got waxed whenever they needed it, and twice a month all the wood furniture got a coat of the beeswax and turpentine polish Delilah made herself.

These days Helen did most of the inside work. As the only daughter, the women’s chores fell to her so that Delilah could do her husband’s. Cuddy got home after dark and left before the sun rose, but nobody complained. For the first time in recent years there was a little money now to buy the things they couldn’t provide for themselves like coffee, salt and sugar, things Delilah had tried to trade eggs and butter for when she could.

Helen emptied the slop jars first, a chore she despised and wanted to get out of the way. Then, after she washed her hands at the pump in the farmyard, she went back inside with her mother’s feather duster and swept it across every surface in sight. Beds needed making; dishes needed doing. By the time the neighbor ladies and the Stoneburner and Lichliter women who lived near enough to walk or catch a ride in a wagon were supposed to arrive, the house was clean enough to suit Delilah. Helen knew her mother was pleased because she didn’t point out a single thing Helen hadn’t done.

Today was a special quilting bee. Each woman had made a friendship block and signed it for the teacher at their schoolhouse, who was moving away. Helen was sorry to see him go. He had loaned her books from his own bookshelf and helped her figure out the hardest words without making her feel foolish.

Helen’s Aunt Mavis had gathered up all the blocks and sewn them into a quilt top. Today, with everybody working on it, they could pretty nearly get it finished. Delilah would complete and bind it in time to present on the last day of school.

Aunt Mavis arrived first, with the top folded neatly under one arm. She was Helen’s favorite aunt, Delilah’s youngest sister, and Mavis always seemed to remember what it had felt like to be the youngest child in a family. Today she singled Helen out for a shoulder squeeze, the way she always did. Then she winked and presented her with a poke tied off at the top with a piece of string.

“Done brought these for you, Lenny,” she said, exchanging the poke for the broom Helen was holding so that Helen could open it.

“What is it?” Helen picked at the knot in excitement. Her nimble fingers just couldn’t seem to do the job right.

“Wait and see.” Mavis swiped at a speck of dust on the threshold. “Anybody else here?”

“Not yet. I don’t know who all’s coming, but we got a room upstairs all ready for you. And there’s chicken for supper.”

“A good enough reason to stay.”

Delilah’s other three sisters lived closer to Front Royal than to Toms Brook, so any time they came, they stayed the night. Some of Cuddy’s family lived well beyond Woodstock, and when they visited, they stayed, as well. Tonight the house would be full to bursting, because even some of the women who lived closer, like Mavis, were staying so they could work late into the night.

Helen finally loosened the knot, and in a moment the poke fell open to reveal fabric scraps in a rainbow of colors.

“Aunty Mavis!” She dug through it in excitement. “These are all for me?”

“Just a little of this and a little of that for your wedding ring quilt. Some dress goods from a neighbor, an old dress of mine that give way at the back ’til I couldn’t fix it no more. And best of all, a little piece of the dress your own grandma was wearing when she got married.” Mavis peered into the poke and dug around with one finger, lifting a square of fabric sprigged with tiny faded roses. “This here’s the one. I know you wanted pretty pieces, and that’s what I got for you.”

“They
are
pretty. Now I can make some new blocks.” Helen folded the top to seal it. “It’s so much. Thank you.”

Mavis pushed her niece’s hair off her square face. “You’ll think of me every time you see it. That’s what I did it for. So you’d remember me.” She rested the back of her hand against Helen’s cheek for a moment before she went off to join the other women.

Spring had arrived early this year, but by ten the sun had gone behind clouds, and those women who hadn’t dressed warmly enough were sorry. Helen took shawls and hats and hefted a baby on each hip when the mothers handed them over. She was surprised that nearly every one of them handed over a poke, just like the one Mavis had given her.

“For taking care of the babies today,” one of the neighbor women said. “Your ma said you’d be real glad for the gift.”

Helen was more than glad. Her mother had been thinking of her, and she had asked the other women to do the same. Rewards were unusual in the Stoneburner home and always treasured more for it.

She took control of the babies with a bit more enthusiasm, although she wanted nothing more than to steal upstairs and dump all her scraps on the floor of her bedroom to sort through them.

She didn’t mind hard work, but she didn’t like to mind children. Her older cousins couldn’t find enough hours to talk about all the babies they would have and what they would do with them. Helen figured someday she might have to have a baby or two, just to keep her man happy, but she would sure rather be outdoors doing men’s work or inside making quilt tops on her mother’s sewing machine. And most of all, she would rather be sitting at a quilt frame, rocking her needle back and forth the way Delilah had taught her when she was only eight.

More children arrived, some who were walking or running, some who were still in arms. She greeted cousins and neighbors and the preacher’s wife, who had brought a particularly ornery little boy for Helen to look after—along with half a brand-new flour sack patterned with tiny blue houses. Some older girls arrived, too, but they were only good for helping, not for talking to. At eight and nine, they knew very little.

The women drank coffee that Delilah had roasted and ground herself, and cut a large swath through a trio of coffee cakes she had risen at dawn to begin. The children were given bread and jam and fresh milk. Afterwards Helen took them outside and set the older girls to minding the toddlers while, baby on each hip, she took the children who could walk the distance down to the creek that was close kin to the Shenandoah river and fed into the pond.

The women were settled around the quilting frame when she returned with her charges. Helen’s fingers ached to take their own place there, but she knew better than to ask so soon. With the help of the other two girls, she entertained the little ones, but by the time another hour had passed, the babies were fussing. She gave them to their mothers to feed, then put them down for naps in the front bedroom, where their cries could be heard when they awoke.

The older children were tired of the games Helen and the others had devised. Helen was tired, too. She wanted to be in the parlor where the women were laughing and telling stories. She could hear just enough to know what she was missing.

“I got an idea,” she told the older girls.

There were four children to care for besides the napping babies. After a little preparation Helen led them all into the parlor. “They want to play groundhog under the quilt.”

“Groundhog?” Delilah spoke first and looked suspicious.

“That’ll be the groundhog’s cozy old den. They’ll be quiet underneath.” She was fairly sure they would be, since all the children looked like they needed a good rest by now. This close to their mothers, they would probably curl up and go to sleep.

“You going under with them?” Delilah asked. “Or you leaving them here for us to mind?”

“I’m going under with them.” Helen tried to look innocent. “I’ll watch out they don’t hurt nothing.”

“You can try.” Delilah sounded skeptical.

Helen was elated. Underneath wasn’t as good as sitting beside the quilt with a needle in her hand, but at least she could hear what was going on. She herded the children between chairs and under the quilt; then she settled them in the middle, with old quilts she’d gathered, and dried apples and black walnuts from the autumn’s harvest. At first their excited chatter drowned out whatever was being said above them. But just as she’d hoped, the children, snug and well fed, began to drift off to sleep. Only the preacher’s devilish little boy continued to squirm, but even he stopped making so much of a fuss when one of the women thumped his head through the quilt with her thimble when he tried to stand up.

Helen curled up beside one of the sleeping children and listened to the talk above her.

A woman spoke, but Helen wasn’t sure who. “Becky, Mavis here never did hear that story you tell ’bout the boy who didn’t go to church of a Sunday.”

Helen had never heard it, either, and she hoped Becky, a grandmotherly woman who lived about a mile down the road, would cooperate.

“You never did?” Becky’s voice was easier to identify.

“I don’t remember hearing it,” Mavis said. “If you have a powerful need to tell it, I have a powerful need to listen.”

The other women laughed. Becky followed up. “You won’t never skip church again, once you hear it, I can tell you that.”

“I never did hear it, either,” another voice said. Helen recognized her cousin Lenore Lichliter, who was going to be married in June and made sure everybody in the whole wide world knew about it.

“Then I’ll tell it,” Becky said. “’Cause if I don’t, you might find yourself in nearly the same situation one day.”

One of the children turned over and kicked another. Helen held her breath, but the abused child didn’t even stir. She breathed easier as Becky began the story.

“They tell this down to Page County, where my grandma went to spend her final days. They say it really happened, you know, and I believe them.”

“Lots of these old stories really happened,” someone said.

“You better believe they did. Well, this time it seemed there was a young boy name of Herman. Nobody ever said his last name, and I never did ask. You’ll see why. Anyway, Herman woke up of a Sunday morning, and it was mighty hot that day. He decided he’d go a-swimming instead of sitting in church where it was bound to be hotter.”

“I’ve felt that way a time or two,” someone said, and the others laughed.

“Well, this Herman, he knew a good ol’ swimming hole on the deacon’s farm. And he figured the deacon would be at church like he was supposed to be. So he went over to the swimming hole, and he took off his clothes ’til he was stark naked. But just about the time he was planning to jump in, he heard a noise behind him.”