by Whitney Otto
But she only says, “I’ll do that. I’ll give him what I can.” She says this like she isn’t scared, like she isn’t seventeen and soon to be unemployed.
GLADY JOE HAS BEGUN seeing Arthur Cleary, a college boy, not from Grasse. It was actually Hy who brought him home first, with her coterie of friends, but it was Glady Joe who held his interest. Even a blind man could see that, Anna notes.
WHEN ANNA IS TAKEN to the hospital to deliver her baby, she finds herself in a segregated ward. Actually, it is a Not White ward, as Anna calls it, since she is sharing a large room with two women of Latin descent and another who looks to be Chinese, maybe part black. Anna is part white, but obviously not the right part, as she likes to say. The staff warms to her because she is so young and pretty, with her perfect brown skin, full mouth, the smart line of her nose, strength of her jaw, balance of her eyes.
Even the mrs. in San Francisco and the people on the ranch used to say, She’s colored but not truly colored, if you know what I mean (whispering this last part). Perhaps her employers were nice to her because her features carried the vague underscoring of their own racial features; without awareness, responding “favorably” to them. Not that they want to claim her, thinks Anna, this part of her over which she has no control and is constantly judged.
Anna wonders if this is what the father of her baby made love to: the mix of her blood. Was he drawn to her kindred to him or to the contrast she posed?—for surely she embodied both in equal measure. She kisses Marianna’s bald head.
GLADY JOE AND HY come to see Marianna, though Hy fidgets so you can see that she’d rather be somewhere else, her bright smile not fooling Anna, and the sharpness of Glady Joe’s voice when she speaks to her sister giving her away as well.
“Mom sends her best,” says Hy, moving the blanket aside to get a good look at Marianna, hidden there in the circle of Anna’s arm.
“Thank her for me,” says Anna, not looking up. Marianna’s eyes do not focus and she seems to flinch at the passing of a hand high above her eyes, or delight in the white uniform of the nurse as she leans across the child to take Anna’s temperature.
“How do you feel? When do you go home?” asks Glady Joe.
“A couple of days. I got some ladies coming to see me from the church.” Adoption ladies. She does not say this, because she is not going to let them take her baby. (Mrs. Rubens alluded to the “shame” of raising a child without a father, while Anna wanted to scream that she could not be made to feel any more ashamed than the townspeople have already made her feel at being seventeen, unmarried, and pregnant. Been treated that way for so long that she had grown accustomed to it and it hardly touched her now.)
“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.
ANNA 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.
WHEN GLADY JOE 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.
AGAIN ANNA 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 th
e 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.
THEN CAME that nasty business when James Dodd was dying and Glady Joe nearly destroyed every fragile object in the house. Certainly, it was no secret to Anna, who kept the house (the same way she kept books at the five-and-dime), that Arthur and Glady Joe Cleary maintained separate bedrooms. (“Why, if I had a man of my own,” mused Anna one afternoon, “I’d hold him close to me at all times, revel in his warm breath, thrill to his touch. We would exchange love; even if miles apart, we would exchange love. He would walk the world and still know that we belong to each other.” Glady Joe did not look up from her embroidery. “Yes, one would think that, I suppose.”)
There is the night, with James laid up in the hospital and Hy over to the house, when the three of them decide to watch slides. As Arthur sets up the slide projector, Anna hears, “Goddamn bulb.” (To Glady Joe:) “Did you think to buy some extra?”
Hy swings by Anna, through the dining room and into the kitchen, to pour something to drink while Glady Joe searches for a good light bulb and Arthur tinkers with the projector.
“I know about you and Arthur,” hisses Anna.
And Hy is not stupid enough to say something like Whatever do you mean? like some wronged, simpering belle. Instead she meets Anna’s look head-on and says, “Actually, I don’t believe you do.”
“No one expects you to live an exemplary life, only a truthful one.”
“Anna,” says Hy, “I’ve known you most of my life and I love you like family but this is none of your business.”
“I can see how you love your family,” says Anna.
“If you were married,” says Hy, “you’d understand. If your husband were dying.”
“You mean I’d understand loss? About wanting something for yourself? For someone who has known me practically her entire life, I am surprised at how little you understand. Do you really think you are the only person ever told, No, you can’t have this thing? The only one set aside by God?” Anna trembles. “Just don’t love me like family. Will you do that for me?”
GLADY JOE AND HY sit side by side on the sofa, with Arthur behind them working the projector and Anna secreted in the shadows of the dining room. Tonight they are searching out photographs of James, who lies in the hospital, close to death.
There is Hy on the screen, just after Will was born; he stares uninterestedly at his mother. Hy’s attention is focused on Will, though James is by her side. She is wearing a sophisticated black suit with gold hoops in her pierced ears and a custom-made gold choker about her throat. Her hair is pulled back with a black velvet cord and her eyes are hidden behind cats’-eye sunglasses. James looks more like Grasse in his white dress shirt, jeans, and work boots. “God, look at us,” says Hy, laughing. “I can’t believe I dressed like that around here.”
“Yes,” says Glady Joe, “but you looked like somebody. You really did.”
“And James,” says Hy, “like he can’t seem to make up his mind as to being a farmer or a businessman. Poor James.”
“Wait, wait,” says Arthur, holding a slide close to the light before slipping it into the projector. “This one you’ll remember.” And suddenly all four of them are seated at a dime-sized table, at the Coconut Grove in Hollywood sometime in 1963. They are drinking martinis and sweet Manhattans, unaware these cocktails are out of vogue. Both Hy and Glady Joe, easily in their mid-forties, look ageless; they could be just that much younger or slightly older, each at a point where she has a certain glow or grace, which comes for the first time in a woman’s life when she is very young, then visits a second, final time, in middle age.
Glady Joe’s black dress is cut straight across her bosom with a jade-and-ruby broach affixed to one of the spaghetti straps. Her hair is done up in a French twist. Hy, on the other hand, glitters in green velvet with beading. Around her neck, again, is the gold choker, and in her ears antique emerald earrings—a gift from James for their wedding anniversary, which they are all celebrating this night. James’s forearm lies across the table, his other arm rests on Hy’s bare shoulder. He smiles for the camera, but one can imagine him turning all his attention back to his sparkling wife as soon as the shutter clicks. Glady Joe and Arthur are not touching, but smiling over at Hy and James, both looking in the same direction without crossing their lines of vision.
“God, that was fun,” says Hy, “to be out of Grasse for the weekend.”
“And remember the Ambassador?” asks Arthur.
“I remember,” says Glady Joe, as she fights with the anger that wells up inside her, looking at this record of their lives, now made so false by her husband and sister. She does not want to give herself away. She sits quietly, as if she feels nothing.
More slides of Will as an infant/toddler/child/teenager/college student. Slides of Gina. Of Francie and Kayo. Slides of Finn, Will’s daughter by a girl named Sally, who believed in free love and no ties that bind. (“But you have a baby,” insisted James when they announced they would not marry in any case. “What stronger tie is there in nature? Why not give her your name? Tell me that. Make me understand, Will.” Hy winces at the memory of Will storming from the house with Sally and little Finn, saying, “Just kiss your granddaughter good-bye, James.” Which broke James’s heart—to have his grandchild taken from him and to hear his own son call him “James,” never again to call him Dad. And the way he spat out his father’s name, with such naked disregard. Crazy to think that Will and Sally ended up married after all, only to divorce a short time later.)
Birthday parties with James dressed like Zorro; Christmas with Arthur decked out as Santa Claus (“Of course I’m not the real Santa Claus,” he told Will and Gina and Francie and Kayo, who always spent Christmas Eve together; “I’m only one of his helpers”).
Photographs of James’s new office or Arthur’s new building; pictures of investments like an oil well or a citrus grove.
There were Easter Bunny suits, Halloween face makeup when James took the kids out, leaving Hy at home to dole out candy to the trick-or-treaters. Anniversaries, birthdays, holiday meals. And the changing furniture of their respective houses, as Early American gave way to Danish Modern, which eventually made room for some low-slung Japanese items; the best of each era always remaining to be blended with the new arrivals. Always upscale; never looking back. Their houses eventually reflecting the many tastes and stages of their lives, the embarrassingly tacky juxtaposed with the refined.
Anna stands behind all of them as she watches the screen from the dining room. She sees herself serving cake or posing with Marianna in the garden. Marianna older than the other children by a good ten years. She looks solemn and smart and gorgeous. Anna shy to stand beside her.
Marianna’s high school graduation goes up on the screen along with the celebration dinner at the Clearys’ house; Marianna�
��s excitement at being accepted to an agricultural college up north (not knowing immediately that her tuition was being paid by Anna and Glady Joe together).
Anna watches this summary of their lives, feeling just the smallest regret that she did not allow herself to be photographed more often—as if by hiding from the camera she could somehow deny just how inextricably bound her life was to the people in the pictures. Why, there is no simple way to show either of our personal histories without including the other’s.
Mostly she thinks, My Marianna was a beautiful child, and the pump of adoration into her heart almost feels as if it could knock her over. My Marianna.
INSTRUCTIONS NO. 7
Take a variety of fabrics: velvet, satin, silk, cotton, muslin, linen, tweed, men’s shirting; mix with a variety of notions: buttons, lace, grosgrain, or thick silk ribbon lithographed with city scenes, bits of drapery, appliqués of flora and fauna, honeymoon cottages, and clouds. Puff them up with: down, kapok, soft cotton, foam, old stockings. Lay between the back cloth a large expanse of cotton batting; stitch it all together with silk thread, embroidery thread, nylon thread. The stitches must be small, consistent, and reflect a design of their own.
The inexperienced eye will be impressed by the use of color, design, appliqué, and pattern, but the quilter will hold the work between her fingers and examine the stitches. Or she will lay out the quilt and analyze the overall pattern the stitches follow. The quilting can resemble birds and flowers and hearts afire and fleurs de lys. It can look like anything. While the nonquilter will recognize the craftsmanship of this quilt, she will not be “consciously” aware of it; she will only sense that she is viewing a superior work and mistakenly attribute it to a clever use of fabric contrast and color.