How to Make an American Quilt (33 page)

“Oh,” says Glady Joe.

“Where will you go?” asks Hy.

“I’ll find a room and a job.”

“Maybe Mom—” says Hy, turning to Glady Joe, who gives her a look. Hy’s voice drifts off. “Maybe not.”

“Don’t think about it,” says Anna, gently rocking Marianna in her arms, heavy-lidded and tired.

Glady Joe looks down. “Whatever is best,” she says, then, “I brought you something. A pamphlet I got from Arthur, who got it from someone else; anyway, it’s called
Renaissance
and it has some stories I think you’ll like.” Anna takes it, recognizes it as a booklet already sent to her by Pauline. It is writing by black Americans in New York. But she is moved by the thought.

“Thank you,” she says.

A
NNA GETS A JOB
working as a bookkeeper for the local five-and-dime. At first, she enjoys the challenge of balancing the figures, ordering the day’s take in a general ledger. But soon it becomes rote, a task she could perform in her sleep. It doesn’t even pay that well, and she is cooped up in an airless, windowless back office without company. It occurs to her that what she does is not unlike housework; that is, she repeats the same tasks day in, day out, the figures unbalanced yet properly totaled by the end of the day. Even though there may be a variety of things to do, they are always the same each week (“Make the beds on Monday, laundry on Tuesday, the floors on Wednesday, dusting on Thursday, and so on”). Debits and credits. Balance. Housework. And sitting all day is as bad as being on your feet, she discovers. Since she is the only black person here, she is virtually friendless. Sometimes she wonders if this job was given to her as a favor to someone else.

But then there is Glady Joe, who occasionally stops off for a visit. Or comes by the room Anna rents to play with Marianna. And who is seeing a great deal of Arthur Cleary, fueling the rumor that they are, in fact, engaged.

W
HEN
G
LADY
J
OE
was expecting the twins, Francie and Kayo, she asked Arthur to hire Anna to help her. So there was Anna, standing at the Cleary’s front door, holding three-year-old Marianna by her soft, fat hand, again living under the same roof as Glady Joe.

If Anna was attractive, then Marianna was striking, embodying the graceful movements of her mother, the same full mouth; her father’s hazel eyes; her skin neither as dark as her mother’s nor as light as her father’s; her hair softer, more relaxed; her father’s hands; her mother’s pretty smile; her mother’s figure, only stretched a little taller, but Anna just the same.

Even when she was a child, Marianna’s beauty made people stop on the street. The usual look for the citizens of Grasse is white, heavy, pliable, gone to early middle-age before thirty. The women married so young, worked so diligently beside equally hardworking (sometimes, difficult) husbands, with housework to do, meals to prepare, children to raise, that they let themselves go until the effort it would require to reclaim their lost looks seemed insurmountable. But even on their best days in their younger years, they would fade away beside the beauteous Marianna, rich, smooth child of Anna, maid to Arthur and Glady Joe Cleary.

A
GAIN
A
NNA BECAME
the ghostly witness to the American Dream; not much changed from the Rubenses’, though Glady Joe explained early on, “This is not my mother’s house.” Anna nodded, wanted to finish the wash already so she could get Marianna to bed and work on her newest quilt. It was another for Marianna, made of shoe appliqués in all styles, sizes, and colors. Glady Joe preferred it to the
Broken Star
, which was a traditional pattern. The shoe quilt was pure Anna.

Next came
Forest Leaves
, with its green-and-brown accents, a tall tree at one side, the rest of the quilt filled with wild, kicked-up swirling leaves. This, too, for Marianna.

Now Anna makes a quilt for herself of invented constellations pressed against a field of deep blue. Polaris dominates the design. Glady Joe still occasionally reads to Anna, but now it is in the afternoon, when Francie and Kayo are down for their naps and Arthur is at the office. Her evenings are filled with Arthur these days, and the twins, too, require her attention. Anna and Glady Joe read and quilt in the sun room so Anna can watch Marianna playing in the garden, watch her as she roots around in the dirt (“Don’t touch,” commands Anna; “be gentle with the flowers,” and Marianna looks up at her mother, eyes trying to puzzle out what she is being told, testing to see if it is good advice to follow), patting the earth around the base of the plants, mud beneath her fingernails, tasting the mud on her tongue. Tasting the grass and lifting an earthworm pinched in her filthy fingers, only to drop it quickly (as if it were aflame), vigorously rubbing her hand on the front of her dress in revulsion. But Anna can see that Marianna derives odd pleasure from the taste of the mud.

Anna longs for a man of her own with whom to have another child. Someone for Marianna to grow up with, to be kin to; Anna worries that Marianna will grow up, disconnected with the other children around her, unable to find her kindred. She appears occasionally bored, but not lonely, Anna has to admit. Perhaps it is only Anna who feels lonely.

Glady Joe becomes more adept at quilting and seems to enjoy it. Actually seems a little sad when Francie and Kayo cry from their cribs and quilt time is past.

Glady Joe takes over more of the tedious grunt work, freeing Anna to devote her energy to design and detail. She grows more experimental: Showers of light fall from the sides of flying sailboats;
flowers grow feet and walk about in hidden canyons; Miró-like abstracts fill vast fields of lavender, scarlet, and amber. Glady Joe does not seem to mind her part in the quilts. She is a fast learner.

They still read aloud: Hurston’s
Drenched in Light
as well as other stories.

Two things happen: Glady Joe begins her circle with Anna as the unspoken leader and teacher; black Anna and white Glady Joe find equal footing. They become true friends because they share, complement each other; one does not solely take on the role of comforter or comforted; one does not exclusively receive while the other takes. Theirs is an exchange. Of course, Anna recognizes her status is changing in the country with the advent of civil rights, but she sees civil rights as a demand and a gift when it should be neither. Black Americans should not have to demand, plead, or cajole any more than white Americans should be in a position to withhold or bestow. And there is the “gratitude” issue; the one side wishing the other side would be grateful, when the other side cannot for the life of them figure out exactly
what
they should be grateful for. So here in this little town of Grasse, Anna achieves equality in her own way. Let anyone try to tell her otherwise or wrest it from her. Just let them.