by Belinda Anderson
I was made from star light, my
grandmother told me. She took me to raise after my
momma died. My grandmother was born a slave on a piddling
tobacco farm in Virginia, but she was the proudest woman I
ever knew. She told me I was somebody. “You got divine
light in you, child,” she would say, taking hold of my
chin and staring straight into my eyes for so long that I
felt the universe start to swell inside me. I still
hold the universe, even though my joints crack and my hair
looks like bleached steel wool.
My name is Twilight Dawn Johnson. I am
an old, old woman, but I got a pile of work to do before I
can go. There’s a lot more folks need my quilts before I
can lay down my needle and thimble.
It don’t seem like my sight is as good
as it used to be, and I know my mind wanders like a cow in
the woods, but somehow my stitches turn out just as small
and even as ever. My hands seem to move now without my
guidance, the silver needle winking in and out of the
cloth, stitching one little ridge after another.
If I thought my eyes were bad before,
this quilt will blind me. Some fellow brought over enough
bolts of fabric to make a rainbow. I’m talking scalding
red, yellow, orange, blue and green. “It’s for a
special friend of ours, a young woman who hasn’t had it
very easy,” he said. “Mother asked me to see if you could
make a starburst pattern.” I examined his kindly face and
I knew he’d adopt every orphan in the world if he could. I
also knew right away that I’d make a Star Everlasting
quilt.
Orphaned is just what one
blonde-haired woman was feeling when she stood in my
living room clutching her daddy’s beach shirts. She said
she wanted me to piece a quilt from those clothes, but I
could tell she wanted to run when she spotted the scissors
lying beside my cardboard diamond pattern.
“They say you do wonderful work,” she
said, ready to cry.
I took the shirts from her. “Honey,
I’m going to make you a happy memory quilt. You just leave
all this with me.” I already knew I’d make her a Trip
Around the World, even though cutting and sewing all those
little bitty squares is hard on my eyes.
People seem happy with what I give
them. Well, I had one complaint about price from Wanda --
hmm, right now I can’t recall her last name. All I said
was, “That’s what it’s worth to me to do the work. If you
want to find somebody else, that’s fine.” I quit arguing
with people a long time ago. I’ve never seen an argument
yet that changed anybody’s mind.
“Well, I’m already here,” she said,
and handed me a Wal-Mart bag filled with small triangles
her grandmother had cut from feed sacks, but never got
around to quilting. Wanda wanted me to make a quilt for
her cousin Dotty.
“If I was you, I might be tempted to
keep this for myself,” I told her. “There’s history here.”
“Dotty never had much growing up,” she
said. “Besides, I’ve held on to these old scraps too
long.” Then I knew her for a woman who was generous,
despite her vinegary words. I sewed those triangles into
diamonds and made a Lemon Star quilt.
And so they keep coming to me, from
Lewisburg, Bluefield, Princeton, even out of state. I
don’t go anywhere. I’ve lived on this border all my life.
It’s always made me a little uneasy, roosting where West
Virginia parts company with Virginia. I am one hundred
percent West Virginian and proud of it. But there’s a lot
of West Virginia I don’t know anything about. Never been
to a coal camp. Never even toured the exhibition coal mine
in Beckley. I hear there are glass factories all over the
state, but I couldn’t tell you a thing about them.
My piece of West Virginia looks more
the way my grandmother described the Shenandoah Valley of
the Old Dominion. Monroe County is an earthen quilt of
green farmland patches, stitched in place by chains of
mountains. My trailer roosts in a valley, so I can quilt
in my living room and look out the window at those
beautiful hunks of blue and green.
My land may resemble parts of
Virginia, but those folks don’t seem like my people. When
my grand-niece left her husband and went to work in
Roanoke, people at work teased her, called her a
hillbilly, told terrible jokes about incest. I believe
they’re still smarting over losing a big chunk of land
during the War Between the States, so they try to make
themselves look bigger at the expense of others. They keep
gnawing that old bone. Of course, this part of West
Virginia was mostly sympathetic to the Confederates. I’ve
heard politicians used the war and the issue of slavery as
an excuse to grab power from Richmond. All I know
for sure is what my grandmother taught me, never to take
freedom for granted.
My grandmother taught me the secret of
the Underground Railroad when she taught me to quilt.
Slaves couldn’t read, but they could creep up to a yard
and see a cotton quilt hanging on a clothesline. Certain
quilts spelled freedom. Birds in the Air, that was safe.
And Tail of Benjamin’s Kite. The Evening Star pattern gave
directions.
Most folks today hem themselves in.
Take my grand-niece’s ex-husband, for example. Randall is
all right for a white boy -- who knows what that girl was
thinking when she took up with him -- but he doesn’t
have a lick of gumption. He’s just waiting on life to
happen. His cousin, Jason, doesn’t have any gumption,
either. He wastes his life drinking beer and chasing
women, just because he thinks he was cheated out of his
chance at the Big Leagues. He’s still grieving over what
might have been. And don’t even get me started on that
other cousin that headed south to find himself, leaving
his wife to raise their boy alone. I worry about the boy.
He’s got a dark, inky shadow in his heart.
I worry just as much about that
Serena. Her mother brought her by when she came to pick up
a quilt. That young woman has the attention span of a
chicken and a tongue that loves to flap. She went on and
on about how she’s going to become a famous writer, just
like Louisa May Alcott. That girl doesn’t know
enough to doubt herself. I fear she’ll get bruised in this
old world.
It would be hard to raise a child like
that, trying to make her understand without ruining her
spirit. I never had children. Never married. Never been
away from these hills. Got my heart broke once and decided
to keep the pieces to myself. I learned a lot about life,
anyway. People bring their stories to me, telling me more
with their bits of fabric than they ever could with words.
A girl gently unfolds a tattered old gown, running her
fingers over the rough lace before she hands it to me. A
widower brings me a dozen silk scarves, as bright and fine
as the woman who wore them.
“Jimmy! Edward Thurman Junior!” Sounds
like I’ve got company. By the time I get to the screen
door, two moon-faced rascals, one with red hair and one
with yellow, have beheaded half a dozen of my
tulips. “Quit it, y’all,” hollers a good-sized woman
unloading herself from a minivan. They pay her no mind
whatsoever until she says, “I reckon you don’t want to go
to the Cracker Barrel, after all.” The boys leave the
flowers and start chasing each other around the yard.
“I’m sorry, hi, I’m Margaret.” For
such a big voice, it holds a lot of doubt. “Are you--um,
the quilter?”
“That’s me, honey. Come on in.” I hold
the screen door open for her.
“Oh, no, I don’t have time.” She’s
carrying a plastic bag. She starts to give it to me, then
stops. “Could you make a quilt from the boys’ baby
clothes?”
She wants something to hold and
remember the sweet clean smell of her newborns. When the
boys are at school and her husband’s at work, she’ll wrap
herself in that quilt and think back to the time when
sticky, chubby little hands used to wind around her neck.
The woman whips her head at a big
cracking noise, the sound of wood screaming. “Jimmy!
Junior!” And then I see them. Those boys have ruined my
grape trellis trying to play Tarzan. They’re standing
there, looking mighty disappointed at the vine lying
torn and shredded on the ground, the vine my grandmother
brought from Virginia. “That’s it -- you can forget about
the Cracker Barrel.”
The boys start howling. “You
promised,” the redhead says.
“You said we could order breakfast for
supper.” The blond one wipes his nose with the back of his
hand.
“I said we’d stop if you behaved
yourselves.” Margaret turns to me. “I’m really sorry. Can
I pay you for that?”
How could she ever replace the one
living, breathing tie to the woman who showed me my soul?
I feel my blood heating and percolating through my thready
old veins. Well. There’s a surprise. I thought I was done
with anger. Anger don’t do a thing but eat at the spirit,
unless you can do some good with it, like Dr. King.
“You must think I’m a terrible
mother.” Those eyes are the palest blue, but I can’t see
any light in them.
“I’ll make your quilt,” I say,
reaching for the bag. I’m going to piece Grandmother’s
Flower Garden. I’ll cut those powdery pale baby clothes
into real delicate-looking blossoms. She needs something
soft and pretty.
“We’ve caused you enough trouble,” she
says.
“Honey,” I tell her. “Let go of the
bag.” And all of a sudden, she does. She starts like a
deer that just heard the first blast of hunting season,
grabs hold of her children and drives off. I walk over to
the trellis, but I’m too stiff to bend down and pick up
the vine. I wish I could hold it just one time before it
withers.
Letting go is the hardest thing.
I was just seventeen when I found my grandmother slumped
over a Log Cabin quilt she had just finished. When I
lifted her cheek from the cloth, I looked more closely at
the pattern. Instead of using red patches in the centers
of the squares, she had sewn the dark blue signal of
freedom.
I didn’t see how I could live without
her. They found me rocking her in my arms, petting her
hair, singing her favorite hymns. It took me a long, long
time to learn that holding on hurts worse than letting
go.
I look at that old vine again.
It will return to the earth. The earth is part of the
universe that lives in me, and my grandmother’s spirit
rides the Milky Way.
I go back in the house and settle down
at the quilt frame again. I need to finish this Star
Everlasting. Got a lot of work to get done before my
century is completed. People need these quilts. With every
pull on the thread, I try to stitch them a little
hope.
Copyright © 2001 Belinda Anderson |