How to Make an American Quilt (27 page)

This causes Will to laugh. “I certainly am that. Why I was just saying to Corrina that I am real persona non grata around these parts.”

Jack wraps an arm around his wife, as if he is shielding her from Will’s bad influence. But Corrina has started crying and is balking at the idea of returning to the inside of the house. “Honey,” she says to Jack, “I really can’t go in there. Not inside. You know what I mean. So, let’s just go around through the gate and walk home.”

“But we have to say good-bye,” Jack reminds her gently.

“Oh, no, no, they’ll understand. Really.”

“What about the car?” asks Jack.

Corrina quietly considers this, then says brightly, “Will. Will can be trusted. You’ll drive it back for us, won’t you?” She feels Jack tense up but says, “You better say yes, Jack, because I am not getting into any car tonight. I truly am not.”

Jack hesitates, takes in the smirk on Will’s face, says, “Honey, I’ll come back for it tomorrow.”

“That would be fine,” says Corrina. “We have to go home now.” She kisses Will on the cheek. “Good-bye.”

Will holds her hand a little longer than he should, pats her on the back as she turns to leave.

“I don’t think much of you at all,” hisses Jack.

Will nods his head. “Yes, yes. That is no secret.”

B
UT AS IT WAS
, Laury was killed, not taken prisoner. And years later, when all those living boys were coming home in defeat, Jack and Corrina took a long trip to Pendleton, their fingers wrapped around the links of the metal fence, fiercely; they dare not let go.

T
here is a South African myth regarding a being called
Sikhamba-nge-nyanga
, which translated means “She-who-walks-by-moonlight.” This is what is said of her:
It is man’s privilege to gaze upon her
. But when he violates
the customs which protect and nourish her, she returns to nature
. In order to ensure her survival, she must be allowed to walk freely, untouched and unmolested.

A Guyanese story says of black slaves that the only way they can be delivered from “massa’s clutch” is to
see the extra brightness of the moon in their lives. The darkness will always be there, but they can use the light of the moon as hope
. The light of the moon. The dancing buffalo gal with the hole in her stocking.

One can survive without liberation but one cannot live without freedom. You know it is essential to find one’s freedom.

Here are some things you know:

That the English adopted slavery from the Spanish. Found it useful when the white English were no longer motivated to come to the New World. Some masters were unnecessarily cruel, running their “investments” into the ground (you are appalled to learn that in Brazil and the Caribbean this was considered sound business sense). Squeezing every drop. Other masters were benevolent, treating their slaves with a modicum of kindness. Of course, words like
kindness
and
fairness
lose all meaning in a labor system founded on the purchase of human flesh, based on involuntary bondage. To paraphrase a Famous Writer: A master is a master is a master.

Female slaveholders are called mistresses.

A sewing slave in the antebellum South could be had for $1,800. Anything less would be a steal—worth gloating over with the neighboring slaveholders. You get the idea.

Most slave owners did not have fancy Taras and owned just one or two slaves. This meant a female slave could work in the fields all day, only to fill her nights with mountains of sewing and quilting for the family. A slave was fortunate to be in a household that allowed her specialized work like sewing, exclusively. But a word like
fortunate
tends to lose its meaning in a context such as this.

You personally find the piecing together of the work tedious—arduous and dull. Likewise for cutting the pieces, securing the batting between the back and top work. But you find the designing and creation of the quilt theme exhilarating. As if you are talking beauty with your hands. Make yourself heard in a wild profusion of colors, shapes, themes, and dreams with your fingertips. The tedium of quilt construction some days can make you cry; you long to express yourself. To shout out loud in silk and bits of old scarves.

You know that it was not uncommon during the Depression for a wealthy woman to hire out to a poor woman the drudgery of quilting. And that that same wealthy woman could still enter that quilt in a competition solely under her name—no thank-you or acknowledgement to anyone else.

You hold no stock in the prefab, purchased-pattern quilt. You do not understand the point of stitching without your own heart-involvement. Without your ideas incorporated into the work, it is just an exercise, something to fill the long evening spent without companionship.

More things you know:

That only you can tell your story.

That most abolitionists were women striving for suffrage as well. That a significant number of abolitionists were prejudiced against the Negro they fought to free; it was the institution they considered
immoral. So the word
free
begins to lose its meaning in a context such as this.

So little in your life has changed. Despite the civil rights movement. Here is an incident emblematic of that time: Myrlie Evers, the widow of Medgar Evers, wanted to tell President Kennedy, at the funeral of her much-loved husband, that she was devastated; that her husband fought for his country in World War II and came home to be a second-class citizen; that she was furious he had been murdered trying to secure his constitutional rights for himself and his people. But all she said, finally, when Kennedy asked her how she was doing, was
Fine, thank you, Mr. President
. This impresses you; this is something you understand without effort. That the story of your life and history should be so plain, so obvious, yet you will be asked to explain it. You, too, can imagine shrugging your shoulders or registering the same reaction to such an inquiry. This is what it is like with your quilts; you simply design and stitch them. You say nothing more than what you have said with fabric and thread.

Here is a glossary of some of the quilts you have designed:

Stars Like Diamonds:
Beauty’s hands fill with them, as she cries her disloyal tears. You think that tears of diamonds have no value when shed falsely. Embroider the tears with silver thread that was left over from an evening gown made for the lady of the house.

Winter Wheat:
Do not use a repeating pattern but instead fill the pale blue field with thin, pliant stocks that undulate in the cool wind. Use blue denim, cotton, down, and flannel from farmer’s clothing to comprise the wheat, earth, and sky. You are both drawn to and repelled by agriculture.

Pomegranate Fish:
Dyed natural linen for texture, deep red-purple. Fish that swim in blue water; faceted beads of antique garnets circle your neck. Refracts sunlight, calls to mind your own mother, now gone.

Moving by the Light of the Moon:
The moment he wanted
you. You did not know him, nor did he know you. Even after, he did not know you. Batik cotton allows for the color of the moonlight through the trees. Indigo silk spans the night sky. We all crave the human embrace. We cannot guard our hearts with vigilance.

The Life Before:
Reminder of ancestors. What cannot be told to someone who does not want to listen or does not express curiosity. You feel better when you hold the story patches between your fingers. Use yarn, shredded curtain fabric, yards of amethyst satin.

Forest Leaves:
A childhood quilt for your daughter. A great and powerful trunk surrounded by swirling leaves in hues of green: hunter, kelly, verdant, grass, dark-green-almost-black. Bull Connor turned hoses on protesters in Birmingham, with water pressure great enough to tear the bark from a tree, roll a small girl down the main street. Not for your child; not for Marianna. Leaves are appliqué.

Broken Star:
Traditional pattern made from print fabric on a field of peach. You wanted to study the stars. They made you feel whole. The quilting pattern is of tiny hawk moons.

Blue Moon:
That which is rare and hopeful. Comes along when it is the second full moon within the same month. More indigo. Appliqué a Spanish fan hovering in the sky. With trails of gold and scarlet, as if flung by a dancer.

Friendship Across Time and Distance:
Many colors, dyed cotton, scraps of royal-blue velvet, heart of pink muslin. Understand that friendship arrives from the least likely sources and flourishes in the least likely locations. Understand that someone can know you very well though you have not told her about yourself. The base is from bleached white and amber cloth.

Many Shoes:
Also for your daughter. Sarah Grimké said,
May the points of our needles prick the slave owners’ conscience
. And a quilted needle book made to look like shoes said,
Trample not on the
oppressed
. Your daughter will not be trampled upon. Your daughter will travel distances.

A Profusion of Hearts:
Pale red satin; appliqués of wings and wheat fields shine golden across the work. This is a moment of love made for Pauline, Marianna, Glady Joe. Imported Chinese embroidery thread; you did all the work on this quilt alone, beginning to end. The tedious next to the inspired. It never felt like work.

When you embark upon a quilting project, you must decide between traditionally American designs using print fabric and the Amish or Hawaiian style of solid blocks, appliquéd in contrasting colors. You are philosophically drawn to the Hawaiian way, because they believe it is bad luck to appropriate another’s design, to tell another’s story. Hawaiian women learned quilting from white Christian missionaries. Before the missionaries arrived, the Hawaiians had their own way of making garments, which left no excess material. Nothing with which to make a quilt.

The Hawaiian women shunned the quilting bee as soon as they were proficient in the skill, preferring solitude and secrecy. You know in your own life that the quilt made solely by your hand, beginning to end, is very different than those made at Glady Joe’s house. Even down to the length of the stitches.

You should share the work but not the idea behind it. You understand this. But in a small, close circle it is difficult to do this. You trust the Hawaiian notion that to share your personal pattern is to share your soul. To compromise your power.

You also understand the Hawaiian woman’s perplexity with the concept of sewing and leaving remnants of excess material as well as her rejection of group quilting. (Another concept introduced by the Christian missionaries.) You comprehend that need for solitude. Or for a handmade garment to use all the cloth with nothing left over.

And it seems to you a good idea to limit your “sharing” with the
other women, and expect they should see that, too, with you. Do not share.

Many years ago a visitor to Hawaii bought two quilts, took them home to the mainland, copied their designs, and entered them under her own name in a contest. Which she won.

You are sad for the winner of the contest, because she “borrowed” someone else’s story and fashioned it as her own. Sorry because she was rewarded by judges who did not understand that these quilts were not truly her own. The loss of power this entailed on the part of the Hawaiian woman; this loss of her history by having another woman appropriate it, in turn, increasing the second woman’s already estimable social strength through stealing these designs. Increasing her own power. On your back. At your expense. You feel it most profoundly.

T
o know my story, thinks Anna Neale, is to understand my superimposition on the world, to see that I am in the world as shadow, as film laid upon the more vibrant picture. All underneath my image are people with families, children, husbands, houses, college degrees; all of one color. I am placed upon them as an architect uses an overlay sheet to illustrate the details of the structure he will build—and just as quickly, the overlay sheet can be again lifted, removing all traces of detail, leaving the bare structure.

I refused, at an early age, to be a specter in my own world. I decided that I would not be whisked away, so I sought to anchor myself to society, to make them see
me
, Anna Neale, child of a black mother (deceased) and a white father (whereabouts unknown and unacknowledged); gave birth to one child, my daughter, Marianna Neale; became undisputed leader and founder of the Grasse Quilting Circle (recognized nationally for superior and original work). Of course I know that outside of the quilting world, the Grasse women remain unknown. But I am not invisible because of this closed circle; I am not unknown. I learned to speak with needle and thread long before society finally “gave” me a voice—as if society can give anyone a voice; it can only take a voice away.

Anna Neale wore a necklace of faceted antique garnets that belonged to her great-grandmother. It hung low on her thin child’s neck and sometimes irritated her, getting in the way at inopportune
moments. She would reach her two hands up to it, as if to tear it from her throat, but Pauline would tell her not to worry, that she would grow into it. “It is part of your legacy, honey. Don’t threaten it.”

Anna loved a quilt that had been made by her great-great-grandmother, called
The Life Before
. It was now in Pauline’s care, but it was promised to Anna one day. Anna measured her height by lying flat upon it, stretching her hands and feet between the designated squares.

It was divided into fifteen large squares filled with appliquéd animals, birds, men of dark brown, hovering angels blowing trumpets, serpents as large as life, stars, the outsized sun, flaming candles of dripping wax. These were African scenes: animals with tusks, warriors clashing with spirits and themselves and beasts. Candles that burned upside down. Giant fish devouring unfortunate men, who tumbled from enormous balancing scales. The colors of dense, earthy tones; yellow stars blaze a midnight field; the unforgiving sun.

This was all before the ships and the block and the coffle. Before the mix of blood that no white family would acknowledge in its own house but could readily identify in a neighboring family. All this because one race did not have the decency to be ashamed of dealing in human flesh.

Again. The quilt as dream-desire placed against the reality of the world.

A
NNA LIVED
with her great-aunt Pauline in a couple’s house in San Francisco. The man had inherited enough money (making him not rich but “comfortable”) so that he did not have to work and could, instead, pursue his interest in astronomy, with his telescope trained on the heavens and his charts and maps and volumes. Anna would examine the books in his study as Pauline picked up and
dusted; she would make the connection between the stars in the book and the overscaled stars in the quilt. “Pauline,” Anna asked, pointing to an illustration, “is this Africa?”

Pauline glanced at the picture as she passed by. “No. The sky belongs to nobody. The sky is free.” So different from the earth.

P
AULINE DECIDED
that she would send Anna to college; Anna, with her love of heavenly bodies, stars, and comets. The man of the house was forever showing things to Anna, happy to have anyone interested in his hobby. He would pull up a chair and place Anna upon it so she could look through the telescope. Pauline heard him tell her about the nature of the planets, introduce her to the cosmos. Someday, he said, we’ll go see for ourselves. Anna answering that she will be the first on board, to which the man replied, laughing, Now, that is not likely, is it?

Pauline hated the man for saying that to Anna. She walked into the study and pulled Anna off the chair. Anna slapped her arm; Pauline shook her niece and said, “I’m getting you your own telescope. Your own.” With Anna looking back over her shoulder, smiling at the man.

T
HE MRS
. of the house lusted after
The Life Before
. Pauline explained to her, “These are African stories, African dreams and myths,” and so on, but the woman was excited by and only interested in the quilt, not the story behind it.

“A real beauty,” she said. “How much?” The mrs. fingered its edges, lay her hands upon the appliqués, clicked her tongue at the craftsmanship, the sophistication and elegance of the work.

Pauline gently extracted it from the woman’s grasp. “It’s not for sale.”

Not long after, Pauline overhead the mrs. telling her friends about
The Life Before
. She heard her say, “I’ve never seen anything quite like it….No, I’m sure you haven’t, either….Oh, it is
very
different. There are some stories that even go along with it….Well, I don’t remember them offhand, but I could find out….”

Pauline ran to the kitchen, where Anna sat doing her homework; who looked at her aunt’s frantic expression and asked, “What’s wrong?”

Pauline shook her head. Continued to her room, where she tore the quilt from her bed and folded it inside scented blue paper. Stuffed it high above in the back of her closet. The mrs. so coveted her quilt that Pauline no longer trusted what she would or would not do. It was better to remove all temptation.

When Anna asked after it, Pauline told her, “I have put it aside, baby, saving it for you.”

“I want to see it now,” said Anna, suspicious that it wasn’t set aside at all but given to someone else.

“No,” said Pauline firmly, not wanting to release it from the sanctuary of the closet and into the world of the mrs. “You’ll just have to believe what I say.”