The Persian Pickle Club

by Dallas, Sandra

  “It’s a girl, a fine baby girl,” I told the women in the kitchen. They’d known the baby was coming when I went upstairs, so they’d stayed right there instead of going home.

  “Is Rita all right?” Ella asked.

  “Why, she’s fine.” I told them. “I think.” But I wasn’t so sure of that. I grabbed the flour and rushed back to the sickroom.

  Rita was asleep, and the doctor was working over the baby, who lay on a clean towel on the dresser. “How is Rita?” I asked.

  Dr. Sipes didn’t look up from the baby. “Rita’ll be fine, but I don’t know about the baby.”

  “She’s a mewly little thing. She doesn’t have a chance—” Agnes T. Ritter began, but her mother interrupted her.

  “Somebody better tell Tom. He’ll want to be here. Go get him, will you, Queenie?” Her face was damp from tears or perspiration, probably both.

  Before I went downstairs again, I reached under the bed for the knife I’d put there, and discovered two of them lying on the floor. I never knew who left the second one, but I know it wasn’t Mrs. Ritter, because she hadn’t brought one upstairs with her. I slipped both of them into my pocket and set them on the kitchen table on my way outside. I told Tom he had a daughter and sent him up to see Rita, but I stayed outside and put my head on Grover’s shoulder. “It’s too little. It doesn’t have a chance,” I cried.

  Little Wanda, which is the pretty name Tom and Rita picked for their baby, lived only two days, and I grieved as if that child had been my own. Rita kept her sorrow to herself, and I told Grover I thought she was a fine person not to trouble others. Grover replied he didn’t think Rita was as upset as I was about losing the baby.

  “That’s the awfullest thing you ever said, Grover.” He was sitting at the table eating brownies, and I picked up the plate and set it on the counter where he couldn’t reach it.

  “Honey, I know you like Rita, but you see her the way you want her to be, not the way she is. She’s not a country girl any more than Tom’s a farmer. He as much as told us that. Rita’s looking over a different hill than you are, and I have an idea she’s not going to be a friend to you the way you want.”

  “Grover, that’s just not true.”

  “I know how much you still miss Ruby, but you can’t expect Rita to take her place.”

  “She’ll be as good a friend as I ever had, Grover Bean, and I won’t hear a word against her!” But since he wasn’t such a good judge of character, I forgave him and kissed the top of his big, fat head, the spot where the hair’s the thinnest, and put the brownie plate back on the table.

  Rita and Tom had a service for little Wanda. Reverend Olive preached, and Mrs. Ritter told him before the service that if he said a word about that baby being born in sin, the Persian Pickle would never sew a stitch for the church again.

  Tom and Grover made a little coffin, and the members of the Persian Pickle lined it with pink satin. Then we dressed Wanda in a gown that Ella had made. The dress was three feet long, embroidered all over with roses. We put a matching cap on Wanda’s head and tied it under her chin with a silk ribbon.

  When we talked about Wanda later, Rita said she always pictured her wearing that dress and cap. “I can’t believe Ella would give me an heirloom like that for burying,” she said.

  “It wasn’t an heirloom. Ella has trunks of baby clothes just as pretty as that one. She made them all herself. She still makes them,” I replied.

  “I didn’t think she ever had any kids.”

  “She didn’t.”

  “Why, isn’t that the oddest thing?”

  Sorrow wasn’t finished with the Persian Pickle Club. We were still mourning Wanda’s passing when the death angel, which was how Nettie put it, came calling again, right at club meeting.

  We had Persian Pickle at Opalina Dux’s that day, and it looked like it would be a real nice quilting, even though Opalina’s parlor was the most uncomfortable room in Wabaunsee County—and you always had to look where you sat because of Opalina letting the chickens inside the house. Of course, she cleaned up after them, but Opalina’s eyesight being poor, it was a good idea to be careful.

  Opalina had that old-fashioned horsehair furniture, and if you didn’t slide off it, then those sharp little hairs that stuck out poked the backs of your legs. Opalina’s house looked fifty years behind the times with all the embroidered mottoes hanging on the walls and the wax flowers that had melted a little under their glass dome so that they looked like tobacco chaws.

  On the library table in the middle of the parlor, Opalina kept a candy Easter egg with a little scene inside it, but the candy flowers looked as if somebody had tried to lick them. There was a stereopticon lying next to it, and when I looked inside, I saw an Indian lady who wasn’t wearing her blouse. I bet Opalina put in that picture just to shock Nettie, who could be every bit as righteous as Tyrone sometimes. Nettie was too smart for Opalina, however, and never once looked into the stereopti-con.

  Opalina had shut all the windows to keep the dirt from blowing in, and I thought we might suffocate. The room was cold in winter and hot in summer, and today, it felt like midsummer even though it was harvesttime. No wonder we always had the most absences on the days when Persian Pickle was held at Opalina’s. This time, it looked as if Mrs. Judd and Ella weren’t going to make it, the first time I could remember that Mrs. Judd had missed Persian Pickle. She hadn’t called to let anyone know she wouldn’t be coming, however, so there was a good chance the two of them were only tardy.

  “It’s that machine of hers. I fear to drive on the same road with her. I bet it’s broken down out by Ella’s, and her with no telephone,” Nettie said. “Forest Ann and I will swing by on our way home and make sure they’re all right.”

  Rita asked if we ought to go look for them right now. She wanted to get out of Opalina’s parlor. “I’ll drive,” I volunteered.

  “Septima can wait till after club. If nothing’s wrong, she’ll give us ‘Hail, Columbia’ for thinking she can’t take care of herself,” Nettie said. She was right about that.

  Without Mrs. Judd, I felt jolly, like I did in school when the teacher was out sick. Even Opalina’s quilt, which was set in the frame, waiting for us, couldn’t get me down. It was another of her crazy quilts, made from old funeral ribbons, the ones they gave out at buryings long ago in memory of the dead. Who else but Opalina would have saved them? I whispered to Ada June that I’d go cold before I slept under that quilt, and she whispered back that maybe that’s what it was for—to cover a cold body. Every time somebody admired a ribbon, Opalina told us about the person it represented, giving all the details of the death.

  “I never saw a summer that promised so much in June and delivered so little in September,” Forest Ann said, cutting off Opalina, who was explaining that the ribbons that were lined up like sausages were for the members of one family that had been killed by a twister.

  “It didn’t promise me a thing in June,” Nettie said. She was down-in-the mouth that day, maybe because of Velma. Forest Ann had told me that Velma had taken up with a combine salesman out of Coffeyville, which upset Nettie because he was a married man. She was afraid that Tyrone would find out, and I couldn’t blame her. Talk about catching “Hail, Columbia!” He’d thrash Velma within an inch of her life.

  “Would you like to read, Queenie?” Opalina asked. The only book in Opalina’s house was the Bible, and I did not want to read Scripture. The last time I did, Opalina had me read the begats in Genesis.

  “Oh, let’s not. Let’s just talk and tell Mrs. Judd when she gets here that we already read.”

  “That would be a lie,” Nettie said.

  I blushed and felt one of those horsehairs poke right into my back as punishment. “It’d be just a little fib,” I said, defending myself. If fibs were so bad, then I ought to tell Nettie that the goiter on her neck made her look like a frog.

  “Queenie, why don’t you bring us up-to-date on the Celebrity Quilt,” Mrs. Ritter said. “We won�
��t wait for Septima and Ella.”

  Mrs. Ritter always had a way of finding something enjoyable to talk about. The Celebrity Quilt was the reason I’d expected such a nice quilting that day. It was just about the most important thing that had ever happened to Persian Pickle, and I was the one who got to tell about it, because it had been my idea.

  The Persian Pickle Club hadn’t been in any hurry to begin sewing on the Celebrity Quilt, of course. The longer that quilt took us, the more time we’d have before Reverend Olive came back to us with another project. Still, we’d started planning for it right away by making a list of people whose autographs we wanted to include—people such as Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, Ronald Colman, Babe Ruth, and Aimee Semple McPherson. When I put down Mae West as a joke, Nettie got so riled up that Mrs. Judd said, “Let her stay. It’s men that bid on these quilts, and men’ll pay more for Mae West than Sister Kenny.”

  We asked Rita to write the letters to the celebrities because she was the writer in the group. She’s also the only one with a typewriter, but I know how to type, so I helped her. The two of us made a special trip to the library in Topeka to look up addresses of movie studios and radio stations and the White House. Then we went to lunch at the Hotel Jayhawk and paid fifty cents each for tuna-fish sandwiches with the crusts cut off. I had as much fun with her that day as I ever did with Ruby.

  Nettie and Forest Ann cut out the squares of muslin for the people to autograph. Mrs. Judd bought the stamps to mail the letters, but she was against enclosing stamped return envelopes because she said celebrities were rich enough to spend three cents on stamps for a good cause. We’d put the last of the letters in the postbox on Monday, but that wasn’t what I was going to announce.

  When Mrs. Ritter brought up the Celebrity Quilt, everyone stopped talking, except for Ceres, who didn’t hear very well. So I cleared my throat as loudly as I could, and she looked up and smiled and asked, “Yes, dear. Are you ready to roll?” That’s what we do when we finish the exposed part of the quilt. We roll, it over so we can work on the next section.

  “Roll out the barrel,” Rita muttered.

  “I have an announcement to make,” I said, ignoring them both. I looked around the quilt at all my friends smiling at me, except for Agnes T. Ritter, who was being her ornery self and still sewing. I’d thought ahead of time how I was going to put it, and I said, “Our first square has been returned to us.” When everybody clapped, I got so excited that I forgot the nice way I’d rehearsed it, and I blurted out, “It was Janet Gaynor—can you beat it?—and she wrote, ‘Happiness to you’ on it. Now, isn’t that just like her!”

  I took the square out of the envelope and passed it around so everybody could admire the handwriting and the sentiment. “Imagine that. The last person who touched this before us was Janet Gaynor,” said Nettie. “I wonder who’ll send the next one.”

  “Zane Grey,” Rita said. “I forgot to tell you, Queenie. We got another one yesterday.” She reached into her purse and pulled out an envelope.

  “Lookit there. He drew a dog on it,” Ada June said when Rita handed her the muslin.

  “That’s not a dog. It’s a coyote,” Agnes T. Ritter said, peering across the table at it.

  “How can you tell?” Ada June asked.

  “I expect I know the difference between a dog and a coyote.”

  “Maybe Mr. Grey doesn’t,” Mrs. Ritter put in. “Rita, do you want to tell the rest of the news?” I didn’t know what that news was, so I turned to stare at Rita with everyone else.

  Rita blushed a little, and I wondered if she was pregnant again, but somehow, I didn’t think that was it. Besides, having a baby wasn’t something you announced, even at Persian Pickle, until you showed. Rita strung us out just a minute before she said, “I’m going to write an article for the Topeka Enterprise about the Celebrity Quilt, and they might even send out a photographer to take a picture.”

  “Oh!” we all said, and Opalina touched her hair as if she was already primping for the photograph.

  “Naturally, they’ll have to see the article first. I mean, they might not like it,” Rita said, and Opalina took her hand down. Agnes T. Ritter smirked at that. Nettie wasn’t the only Pickle who was out of sorts that day.

  “I’m sure they’ll buy it. Your story about the school-board election was about the best thing I’ve ever read, and it didn’t make a bit of difference that the names were mixed up,” Forest Ann said, and we all nodded. None of us mentioned Rita’d misspelled most of them, as well.

  Even if some of the club members were off their feed that afternoon, quilting went fast. We had barely finished talking about the Celebrity Quilt when Opalina said it was time for refreshments. “I’ll put the kettle on. I’m serving scones,” she announced, as if it was a surprise.

  “I’d hoped you would, Opalina,” Mrs. Ritter said.

  I had hoped she would not, but fat chance. Opalina always served scones, just like Nettie always served fruitcake. The scones weren’t as old as the fruitcake, but they were just as dry, with none of Tyrone’s bootleg to help them go down,

  I slid off my chair, scratching my legs, and went into the kitchen to help Opalina, since the big tin tray she used was the size of a kitchen table. Sometimes things slid off it, not that anybody would miss her refreshments. I made tea while Opalina piled the scones on the tray, dropping one on the floor. It chipped, but it didn’t break, and Opalina brushed it off and set it back with the others. Then she carried the tray into the parlor herself.

  “Oh, Opalina, what a treat,” said Mrs. Ritter. I was amazed that she could be so enthusiastic about those scones, which she must have eaten for forty years. “Might you be English?”

  “French. Dux is a French name.”

  “Dux is Anson’s name. You were born a Cooper,” Agnes T. Ritter said.

  “I became French when I married Anson. That’s the way it works. Don’t you know that Agnes?”

  Rita winked at me while Agnes T. Ritter moved her mouth back and forth for a few seconds, but instead of talking back to Opalina, she caught sight of something out the window and said, “There’s Mrs. Judd.”

  It didn’t sound like Mrs. Judd. You could always tell her car because Mrs. Judd turned off the motor and coasted to a stop to save gas. The car outside was parked with the engine running.

  The rest of the Persian Pickle realized Mrs. Judd was not acting normal, and we all stood up to look outside. Forest Ann even went to the window and peered out past the red glass plate Opalina kept there to catch the light. With the afternoon sun shining through it, the plate glowed like fresh blood. “It’s Septima, all right. She forgot to turn off the motor, and she’s running,” Forest Ann said. “Anybody ever seen Septima run?”

  I took a step toward the window to get a better view, and it was not a pretty sight. Mrs. Judd moved like a runaway thresher. I knew something was wrong.

  “Ella’s not with her,” I said, shivering. Even with Hiawatha and Duty to watch after her, Ella might have taken ill. Or she could have fallen or been burned by the cookstove. A dozen things could happen to a person who lived alone.

  “I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation,” Mrs. Ritter said quietly, but she clasped her hands so tightly, the knuckles turned white. Only Agnes T. Ritter acted unconcerned. She bit down on a scone, and in Opalina’s parlor, which had grown quiet, the crunching sounded like a cow in dried cornstalks.

  Mrs. Judd lunged through the door, flinging it so hard that it banged the wall and then came flying back and hit her on the fanny, bumping her forward into the living room. Her eyes, behind the thick glass of her gold spectacles, opened wide in surprise, and I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so worried.

  “Ella?” Forest Ann whispered, asking the question for all of us. “Is something wrong with Ella?”

  “Ella’s fine,” Mrs. Judd said. She caught her breath while the rest of us let out ours in unison.

  Mrs. Judd gasped for air again. She looked pale and old as she slumpe
d into one of Opalina’s horsehair chairs and slid into a corner. She looked around at the members of the Persian Pickle Club. “Ella’s fine,” she repeated. “It’s not her, thank the Lord.” Mrs. Judd gulped down a mouthful of air. “It’s Ben Crook.”

  Nettie gasped and put her hands to her face. The blood rushed to my head, and I gripped the back of a chair to keep my legs from sliding out from under me.

  “I said it’s Ben Crook,” Mrs. Judd repeated. “He’s been found. Hiawatha dug him up in Ella’s far-north field right before dinnertime.”

  Chapter

  5

  Mrs. Judd slowly looked around the room, stopping for a few seconds to exchange glances with each one of us. Her eyelids flickered when she came to Rita.

  “How’s Ella?” Forest Ann asked, breaking the silence with a jerky voice.

  “Prostrate with grief. Awful broke up,” Mrs. Judd said. “Just as you’d expect. She thought the sun rose and set … ?” Her voice trailed off and she looked at her hands a minute before she shook her head and told us, “Like I said, Hiawatha found Ben up north on the Crook place. Ben was out there by the road, where somebody’d buried him. Hiawatha came to Prosper and me to ask what to do.”

  “He’s real smart for a colored,” Nettie said. She hadn’t approved of Hiawatha and Duty Jackson moving onto the Crook farm, but she’d changed her mind after she saw how well they took care of Ella. About the time Ben disappeared, Ella’s hired man ran off, so Mrs. Judd had driven Ella up to Blue Hill, where the Jacksons were barely scratching out a living, and the two of them invited Hiawatha and Duty and all the kids to move into the shack behind Ella’s house. They agreed to work the farm on shares and do chores for Ella. Even if they didn’t make much money, they’d have a place to live and something to eat. The day they moved in, Ella told Persian Pickle she’d always wanted to hear the sounds of children on her farm and that the Jackson kids were just like having her own.

  When she heard that, Nettie sputtered all over Ceres’s Drunkard’s Path, which is what we were quilting at the time. Later in the evening, just before suppertime, Tyrone drove into the Judds’ yard and yelled from his truck, “Prosper Judd, the sun never set on a coon in Harveyville, Kansas, and it won’t this evening. You get rid of them Jacksons or I’ll run ‘em off myself.” Tyrone blamed Mrs. Judd for Hiawatha moving to Ella’s, but he was scared to take her on, which is why he threatened Prosper. Besides, Prosper had driven the Jacksons from Blue Hill to Harveyville.