Leaving Gee's Bend

Table of Contents

 

 

 

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
A division of Penguin Young Readers Group.
Published by The Penguin Group.
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Copyright © 2010 by Irene Latham.

 

eISBN : 978-1-101-17152-3

MAMA PULLED A CHICKEN EGG FROM BEHIND THE azalea bush in our front yard and narrowed her eyes. “Ludelphia Bennett! You go back in there and get your eye patch.”

I jumped off the edge of the porch. Mama always noticed right away when that old triangle of denim wasn’t strapped to my right eye. Didn’t matter that she hadn’t hardly slept a wink on account of the awful cough that seemed to come from someplace deep inside her. She knew my eye was bare.

I walked two steps toward the woodpile. “I’m only going out to feed Delilah.” Now that I was closer to Mama, I could see her cheeks was missing the brown glow that always reminded me of the smooth bottom of an acorn. The brown glow that made us look so much alike. Instead her whole face had a tired gray look to it, and her long, thin fingers shook as she slid the egg into the deep pockets of her apron.

Mama moved on to the next bush without giving me another glance. “Don’t matter,” she said. “Ain’t polite to be showing that eye.”

“But, Mama!” I stomped my feet in the dirt. I didn’t like that old eye patch. It itched so bad sometimes I couldn’t think of nothing else.

Besides, Delilah was waiting for her breakfast. She stood at the corner of the barn same as she did every morning, her big ears standing up tall and her eyes bright, not doing nothing at all except waiting for me to get past the woodpile so she could start braying to the whole wide world that she was about to get her belly full.

Daddy said he ain’t never seen a mule disagreeable as Delilah. Seemed like if the sun was shining too bright she’d up and decide not to work. But me and Delilah, we got on just fine—I reckon because Delilah never once complained about whether or not I was wearing my eye patch.

Suddenly a fit of coughing took hold of Mama’s body. She bent over and grabbed on to her knees till it passed. As she straightened herself up, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then reached around and pressed the palm against her hip. A sharp breeze caught the tail of her apron and made it fly up like a kite. Beneath the apron, Mama’s belly bulged with baby.

“Delilah can wait just a minute,” Mama said, her voice coming out jagged as a saw blade. “She won’t starve in the time it takes you to go back in there and get your eye patch.”

I crossed my arms against my chest. Ain’t my fault I only got one eye that works. Just because the other one’s stuck in my head like an old marble that nobody can play with. Ain’t no need to cover it up, like the whole thing never did happen. Folks in Gee’s Bend got better things to think about than what’s polite and what ain’t. Like them fields. Don’t matter what season it is, there’s always picking or planting or pulling to be done.

I mean to tell you, there ain’t noplace in the world like Gee’s Bend. For one thing, you can’t hardly find it. It’s like a little island sitting just about in the middle of the state of Alabama. Only instead of ocean water, it’s caught up on three sides by a curve in the Alabama River. Ain’t noplace in Gee’s Bend you can’t get to by setting one foot after another into that orange dirt that likes to settle right between your toes. I reckon the hard part is how once you’re in Gee’s Bend, it ain’t all that easy to get out.

But that didn’t matter much to me, not on that November morning in 1932 when I was just ten years old. And wasn’t no point in arguing with Mama, neither. She’d take a switch to me if I sassed her. Didn’t make no difference that she had a baby on the way and a barking cough that was keeping her up nights. Wasn’t much of nothing that would keep her from doing all the chores a mama’s got to do.

I turned back to the cabin and climbed the steps two at a time. I knew I’d best get on back in there and get my eye patch from under the pillow. But I stopped on the top step when I saw the way Mama hunched over the last azalea bush, the baby in her belly pulling her whole body low to the ground. Three times in my life I’d seen her look like this. But them babies didn’t make it, on account they was born too soon.

What if this one didn’t make it neither?

Mama always got real quiet after Daddy shoveled the last bit of dirt over the grave and Reverend Irvin stuck in one of them little white crosses. Last time that quiet lasted from planting time to harvest.

I slipped my fingers into the front pocket of my sack dress and felt for the needle and scraps of cloth that was tucked inside. I sure didn’t want Mama to fade away again. Wasn’t but one thing I could think of that made Mama smile no matter what bad things was happening. And that was stitching quilts.

Mama always said every quilt tells a story. Every piece of cloth, every stitch and every bit of cotton stuffed between the seams tells a secret about the one who made the quilt. And same as me, Mama sure does love a story.

Which is why I decided this next quilt—the one that so far was just pieces in my pocket—I was making that one for Mama. So no matter what happened with the baby, Mama would have my story to give her something to smile about. It’d be just big enough to wrap around Mama’s shoulders when she sat in her rocking chair telling us stories before bed. And since I was making this quilt all about me, I was gonna make it
my
way.

I grinned. Wasn’t a single thing Mama would be able to say about that.

BY THE TIME I GOT MY EYE PATCH IN PLACE, MAMA was done collecting the eggs and had started to sweep the dirt yard with a broom she’d made out of sorghum stalks. Usually she would hum church hymns while she worked, but wasn’t no humming today. Seemed like she was doing good just to get air flowing in and out.

I rubbed the goose bumps off my bare arms, then felt again in my pocket for my needle and cloth. Best I get started on that quilt right away. I crossed the yard on my tiptoes, careful not to make a mess of the clean lines Mama had just made in the dirt with the broom. Just as soon I got Delilah fed, I could pull out my needle and start stitching.

It was Mama that first taught me how to stitch. Just like her mama taught her. I still remember the first time she let me hold a needle with my own fingers. It was a few weeks after the accident that made my eye cloud over and stop seeing things. Wasn’t nobody’s fault about my eye. It was just a sliver of hickory that went flying from Daddy’s ax, then had to go and land square in my eye.

I was a little bitty girl, not even in school yet. But I still remember the way my eye burned like it happened just this morning. And I remember how soon as I wasn’t in pain no more Mama started teaching me all sorts of things. She’d rush through the washing, then sit down beside me.

“Them fields ain’t the place for you, Ludelphia,” Mama said. “Not with that eye.” Mama pulled some scraps of cloth from her quilting basket. Most of ’em was ripped into squares. “You got to learn to do quiet things. Ladylike things.”

Mama laid out a few pieces, then handed me the rest. “First thing you got to do is sort the colors. You puts the reds in one stack, the blues in another.” She watched while I sorted. I didn’t say nothing because it wouldn’t have been ladylike, but I didn’t see no point in sorting. Seemed to me some of the best things just happened with no order to ’em at all. But Mama, she believed in having a plan.

“That’s good, Ludelphia. Real good. Now comes the hard part. You see this needle? It’s real sharp, and I ain’t got no thimble to fit your little finger. So you got to be careful.” Mama held the needle between her finger and thumb as she licked the end of the thread. Then she handed ’em both to me. I’d watched her enough times to know the next thing I needed to do was push that thread right through the eye of the needle.

I may have only one eye that works, but I got to tell you, it works real good.

“It’s like you was born to stitch,” Mama said when she looked over my work. And I reckon I was. Ain’t hardly a day passed since then that hasn’t found me with a needle in my hand.

Trouble was, we didn’t have no cloth except scraps. Wasn’t no money for buying nothing new, so we made do with patched-up clothes until they was too small or too worn. It was like Christmas morning when Daddy’s work britches finally gave out and Mama tore the faded denim into long strips.

But that was months ago. Which is why I wasn’t in too big a hurry when I went out to feed Delilah. I searched the ground as I walked, hoping to find a stray piece of burlap or feed sack to put in my quilt.

Soon as she saw me pass the woodpile in the middle of our yard, Delilah started braying like there was no tomorrow.

“Hush up, Delilah! Don’t want to make Mama mad. Not today!” It didn’t make no difference to Delilah that Mama was feeling bad. She kept up her racket until I got to the fence. Once I was there, she turned her ears forward and back, then stuck her nose through the fence for me to scratch. As I scooped grain from the feed sack, she nibbled my arms with her lips, her warm breath chasing away the cool autumn air. Soon as the feed was in her bucket, she buried her head and didn’t pay me no more mind. I scratched her neck for a minute more as the sky began to lighten.

In the yard the hens squawked as Mama raised the broom and banged it against the side of the house to let all the dirt out of the sorghum stalks. Then she started beating it against the One Patch quilt she had strung up on the clothesline. Mama always said banging a quilt with the broom was just about the only way to keep the cloth clean in between washings. You knew you was done when those little clouds of dust stopped puffing up. But this time those little clouds sent Mama into another fit of coughing that forced her to stop and grab her knees again.

“You okay, Mama?” I hollered. She just nodded and waved me away. So I sank down to my spot on top of the feed sack and pulled out my needle. As Delilah crunched the grain between her teeth, I held my needle up in the air till it caught the light and started to shine. Not that I needed light to put in a good stitch. I could touch the knot with the tip of my tongue and know it was tight. I could trace them stitches with my fingers and know if they was straight or not. I didn’t even have to think about what I was doing. When I was stitching, I could just let my mind go.