Ten Apprentices

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  She could see the quilting frames poking out of the bags and duct tape.

  “It’s a wonder they let you take these on an airplane at all,” she said.

  “Oh, I’ve converted everything metal to plastic,” I said. “Much more portable.”

  She wasn’t the only one who asked me to come away from my house, but maybe she didn’t know that. She’d written letters, made a weekly phone call, but whatever we talked about, it never came close to the subject of my work. Or the people who paid for it. People who still believed in me.

  She put the three packages in the trunk of her car, a white European model that she must drive to prove she earned a lot of money, because it had no beauty in its lines. Boring. I taught her better than that, surely? Even if I couldn’t get her to pick up a needle, she had watched me put colors together, make patterns, and then patterns on top of patterns with the stitching. She knew real beauty when she saw it.

  “Do you want to put that in, too?” she asked, pointing to the bag I had brought as my carry-on. It was a quilted tote, homemade, with two large straps that let it dangle at my waist, so as not to hurt my back if it was really heavy. Inside was the small hanging quilt I was working on for an early birthday present. I didn’t know if there was a room in her house where it fit, but her favorite colors had always been light blue against navy.

  The pattern was abstract. I knew she wouldn’t want a design of a cabin, or one of the bonnet girls. It wasn’t even a standard design. It was one of my originals, and the colors of all the patches were subtly different, so that you could look at it upside down, and from either side, and always see something different.

  “I’m working on this,” I said. “But thanks for the offer.”

  “You can’t want to work on that here, Mother. You’re supposed to be on vacation,” she said.

  “A mother doesn’t take a vacation from protecting her child,” I said.

  She groaned. “Mother, I’m twenty-nine years old. I’ve been living away from home for nine years. I think I’ve proven I can handle things on my own now.”

  “Of course, Joanie. I didn’t mean to imply anything. It’s just a habit of mine. I like to use my fingers, you know.”

  “Joan, not Joanie,” she said. But I could see her shoulders relax. So long as she thought of my quilting as a hobby, she wasn’t bothered by it so much. It wasn’t a hobby she would choose, but there were high profile women who chose to knit. Why not quilting?

  And she could indulge her mother just this once. Who knew how much longer I’d survive?

  She closed the trunk and got into the front seat. She leaned over to open the door for me, because, of course, I couldn’t do that for myself.

  I settled myself in and got out a piece of my work.

  She didn’t look at it.

  She pulled out of the parking garage and soon we were speeding towards downtown. I could see the skyscrapers ahead. They made my head ache. No one had designed them to be in proportion to each other. And of course, there was no color scheme.

  Why would she choose to live here?

  I reminded myself as she went through three orange lights that she had always been in a hurry. Even when she was born. She’s learned to read at three and kissed her first boyfriend when she was four. She skipped Kindergarten and graduated from high school early. There had always been a list in her head of the next thing she had to finish.

  Sitting down with a quilt around her took too much time. And it never paid well. She asked me once, when she was twelve, if I realized how much I was getting per hour for one of my quilts.

  “You spend at least a hundred hours on one of these, and you sell them for a couple hundred dollars. That’s two dollars an hour, tops. And that’s not including the material. You could get paid more working at Walmart, Mother.”

  “I don’t think I would like working at Walmart,” I said.

  She snorted and muttered something about them not liking my style, either.

  Her house was cold. We walked in through the garage, which was cold to begin with. Barren concrete, with no hooks on the walls, not even an oil stain on the floor.

  Inside, it was hardly any better.

  “Let me take your jacket and get you something to drink. Tea?” she asked.

  I held tight to my jacket. “Hot chocolate?” I asked.

  She said she would have to see if she had any. “It has tons of sugar and calories, Mother. Not good for my figure.” She glanced over at me, but refrained from making mention of my figure.

  I was generously proportioned. My strength was in my fingers and my tongue. I figured the rest of me was made to sit comfortable and that meant having a little meat on my back side.

  She found some hot chocolate.

  Powdered, in one of those packages made from paper. It looked like it had been sealed in a factory five years ago, maybe left by the previous owners of her house. Not a bit of flavor in it, let alone.

  But it was sweet, and hot.

  She sipped tea without sugar or lemons.

  I drank in gulps, burning my tongue.

  “Mother, you’ll—” she said.

  I gasped and wiped my mouth across my sleeve.

  She made a face.

  I remember when she and I had both sat and had hot chocolate together, and wiped our mouths on our sleeves. But that had been a long time ago. More than twenty years.

  “Shall I show you to your room?” she said.

  It made me feel as if I were staying at a hotel. “Go ahead and finish your tea,” I insisted.

  She drank it guiltily.

  When she was finished, and only then, I stood up and waited for her to clink the cups into her dishwasher. Then we went up the stairs.

  She showed me into a room that was big enough to practice yodeling. The bed was a queen, which I would get lost in. There were six pillows piled on top of each other. I wondered what I was supposed to do with them.

  And the quilt—all white, machine made, with no puff in the middle. Not that there was anything wrong with flat quilting, but I could feel the moment I walked in that the room was naked of magical protections. Any thief could walk in here and walk right out again with whatever he chose.

  I had nothing to steal, for a thief would never see my quilting supplies. There was the protection I had placed on them, and also the fact that thieves never seem to notice the value of handmade things.

  But there was a flat screen TV on the wall across from the bed, a laptop computer set up on a desk, and a wall safe above the desk.

  “You need anything?” Joanie asked. “Before I get your—luggage?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “There are towels in the bathroom. And soap and shampoo.”

  She hadn’t needed to buy those for me. Did she think I couldn’t afford my own? Or that I had forgotten to bring it?

  The Lord only knows what she thought of me, at this point, Disreputable old woman. Bag lady, practically.

  I suspected I wouldn’t see many of her friends on this trip. She’d keep us carefully separated, so she could keep pretending that whatever story she’d told them about her past was true.

  I sat on the bed gingerly.

  It was firm, with a pillowtop.

  Makes no sense to me to build a bed like that. If you want firm, you want firm. If you want fluff, you want fluff. Why would you put them together?

  Because you can’t decide what you want.

  You might show one side to the world, and not even realize there was another side underneath.

  Like Joanie.

  I heard her clunk up the stairs, one of my packages dragging.

  I’d told her what was in them, so it wasn’t as if I was worried about things being broken. And she was tired. Probably a long day at the office making points with the senior partners to keep her schedule clear for a few hours with me.

  The door opened, and Joanie pushed the bags on the floor around it, so that when it was open, you couldn’t see them at all.<
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  “So, what do you think?” she asked me.

  “It’s lovely. Very impressive,” I said. The words she wanted to hear.

  She saw me looking at the safe. “I know how nervous you are about safety,” she said. “So I put one of my guns in the safe here. I’ll give you the combination, but try to memorize it and throw the paper away. No reason to make it easy, eh?”

  One of her guns? How many did she have?

  She dialed the numbers on the safe as easy as if it were a phone, then it popped open. The gun inside was tiny, hardly bigger than my palm. Joanie held it out to me.

  “You want me to give you a lesson on how to use it?” she asked.

  “No, thank you,” I said. “I think guns are fairly user-friendly. Aim, and fire.”

  Joanie put the gun back inside the safe. “There’s nothing wrong with having a gun,” she said. “It’s the second amendment. Right to keep and bear arms.”

  “Yes,” I said. I’d always thought it was written by men who wanted to have some way to defend themselves without using “women’s work.” But in those days, they were called patriots, not sexist pigs.

  “Mother, you’re radiating disapproval,” said Joanie.

  “Am I?”

  “You know you are. It’s not that I want you to think it’s not safe here. I’ve lived here for three years, and in the neighborhood for six. Nothing has ever happened to me. I get home late at night sometimes, and go for a jog to calm down and get some sleep. I’ve never seen anything remotely worrisome.”

  “But you have a gun.”

  She tilted her head to one side, as if she had a sore spot she was trying to stretch. “Mother, I don’t want to hear any nonsense about stitching,” she said.

  “Did you think I would bother you with that? After all these years?” I asked.

  She nodded to my carry-on bag. “You haven’t stopped believing,” she pointed out.

  “No. Not in the protection of my saliva. Nor in other things,” I said.

  She took a deep breath and put on a smile. There was tension in every inch of her, but she spoke smoothly. “Well, you’ve had a long day and so have I. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  “Will you be here?” I asked. I thought her job required eighty hour weeks.

  “I’ve got to go in early, about 5. But I’ll be back by 10. You’ve always been one to sleep in, and there’s the time change, too.”

  You’ll wear yourself out, I wanted to say. I didn’t.

  The words we weren’t saying to each other could fill the room.

  She went out. I heard her heels clicking to the room half a flight up from mine, no doubt even larger than this one.

  There was a recliner in the corner, by the window.

  I sat down at it and stared out at the city. I didn’t see anyone outside. No reason to be afraid, really. But I felt something dark with emotion.

  It could be nothing more than Joanie’s feelings at me being here.

  Or it could be more.

  I changed out of my travel clothes and into more of the same. Clean, though, and with a subtle pattern of alternating florals. I took off the quilted jacket, and folded it over the recliner. It looked out of place there, shiny white leather against scuffed cloth.

  I went to unpack my things.

  One of the garbage bags had my clothes in it. I hadn’t known what the weather would be like, so I’d packed a variety of things.

  There was a short dresser by the bathroom with empty drawers. I filled the top one about halfway.

  Then I opened the other two bags. I’d put a special knot in the top, so I could see that airport security hadn’t opened them. They couldn’t have redone my knot, even if they’d bothered to. This was another advantage to using my method of protection rather than Joanie’s. My things were never violated. The security personnel simply passed them through without checking anything. I’m sure they told themselves a story in their heads about why. Harmless elderly woman. What could she have inside there?

  I had a lot of plastic piping and clamps. And fabric.

  I had a half-finished quilt that I was working on for some friends, back home. And some squares that I’d brought along just because it seemed right to do so. There are times when colors speak to you, when you see them and know that you have been dreaming of them and feel them in your hands and in your heart. I had a terrible habit of buying fabric that I had no current project for. It just looked good to me and I thought I might one day use it. Usually, I was right, but there were some things I’d had for thirty years, since before Joanie was born.

  I set up the quilt frames, popping the plastic into place and then spreading the half-finished quilt on top. I had already done some basting stitches to hold it together, so it lay out nicely. I clamped down on top of the edges, and stepped back.

  Now, the room looked less empty. The bed was a little crowded, but this way, I could reach out a hand and touch the quilt at night, just in case.

  Not that I thought anything like that would happen.

  And if it did, the first thing I would do is run for Joanie.

  But I slept better with one of my own quilts nearby.

  It wasn’t as late for me as it was for Joanie, and she was rising early. I was a night owl, when I could be. There was something about the noises of the dark that I liked to put into my quilts. Better for adding protection.

  There was a wooden chair at the desk. Or I could move the recliner over. No, the wooden chair would put me at the right height. I loved to quilt, but I didn’t want to give myself a repetitive motion injury. I knew of quilters who had that problem. I wasn’t living in the dark ages.

  I sat down, scooted my butt around on the chair until I could smell the quilt beneath my fingertips, eyes closed.

  Then I got out my needles. I kept them pinned into an old cloth, tattered and worn with years of use. It was the first one I’d ever received, when I was learning to quilt at my mother’s side. There was history in it. The needles had all been replaced since then, but the saliva that had touched them was still there.

  Joanie hated the sight of that thing. I would have to keep it away from her eyes or it might be thrown into the washing machine while I was sleeping, and then where would I be?

  I took out the needle I’d used to make Joanie’s first quilt, the yellow patch baby quilt I’d made before she was born, before I’d even known if she was a boy or a girl. I threaded the needle, then licked it, and began as far out as I could reach, in the center of the quilt. You never start on the edges. It makes for puckers, and ruins the lines of protection.

  The friends who were waiting for this quilt were from the city, and had retired. They’d seen one of my quilts in the old bed and breakfast that Marie runs. She has one on each of her beds. Wouldn’t do without them. Says she’s never had any trouble in all the years she’s been in the business.

  There was something about it, they said. They had to get one just like it.

  I asked them what colors they wanted, what pattern.

  But they left it all up to me.

  I asked them to let me hold their hands. We sat in a circle for a long while. I thought they would get tired of it and give me up for a witch. But they were still, and I got a sense of them. He had worked too long, thinking only of money. He worried about that, if it would catch up with him. She had stopped watching the news years ago, but even the sound of a dog barking would make her afraid.

  I could see as I felt their needs around me what the pattern should be. It was a traditional one, a Texas star, but in yellows and oranges and reds. I’d pieced it together by hand, too, licking the needle with each new square. Even if I only gave them a top, they’d live quietly the rest of their lives.

  But now it was time to make a quilt that would last for another generation. They’d never told me if they had children or not, but there was something about them that reminded me of myself. If there was a Joanie in their lives, maybe she would let herself be reminded of them in the sha
pe of a quilt, even if she wanted nothing else to do with them now.

  I’ve quilted for more than fifty years, but I can’t say that you’d see me as an expert. I sometimes jumped an inch before putting the needle in again, and sometimes the stitches just looked plain child-like. There was a reason for what I did. I’m not saying I could have managed the tiny stitches you see in Amish quilts, but if that was all that mattered, I could have been neat, at least.

  The yellow smelled like rain.

  The red was corn and beans.

  The orange desert lizards on cactus.

  I lost myself, working on that quilt. The sound of a horn honking brought me back to myself, and I realized how my fingers ached.

  I’d done a good section. Time for bed.

  I looked at my watch and noticed that it was only a couple of hours before Joanie would be awake again.

  I crawled into the bed and slept as well as I could, in the circumstances. I put my hand out more than once for the touch of protection from the new quilt I was making.

  In the morning, I woke to the sound of the door opening.

  I sat up and looked over to see her face dark and curious.

  She’d never been curious before.

  I didn’t press the issue.

  “Would you like to go out for breakfast?” she asked. “I’m not much of a cook, and I don’t keep food around much. It’s better for my diet.”

  I wasn’t going to change that in a few days. “Pancakes?” I asked.

  “If you insist. There is a wonderful place that serves blintzes just a few miles away.”

  “I-Hop?” I asked.

  “There’s one of those, too. I think. I’ll have to look it up in the phone book.”

  “I like I-Hop’s pancakes,” I said.

  I brought my bag along to the restaurant, but it never seemed a good moment to take Joanie’s quilt out to show it to her. It wasn’t that I worried she wouldn’t like it. I just wanted to talk to her about it, and she didn’t seem in a listening mood.

  I ate a big stack of pancakes. Joanie ate one.

  “I need to get in a couple hours at the gym. Do you mind if I leave you at home for a while by yourself? You can take a nap and recover from your jet lag.”

  I didn’t mind.