A Day in Mossy Creek

by Deborah Smith

  “The batting is real cotton. Not the polyester stuff you buy in the craft stores nowadays that comes in a roll,” continued Miss Inez.

  “She carded the cotton herself to get it smooth and even,” Miss Addie Lou said. “After she’d gotten the top and the batting and the backing put together and put in the quilt frame, she had her sisters and aunts and cousins like old Big Ida over to help her quilt it. They sat around all sides of it and worked at once. When you got one row of squares done, you’d roll the quilt up and re-hang it and start right in on the next row.”

  “We helped, too. By that time we were expert quilters ourselves. I still remember that quilting bee, with all our womenfolk gathered around the fire. We quilted in winter when the planting and the gathering and the canning was over.” Miss Inez said.

  “And after the hog killing in the fall,” Miss Addie Lou added. “In the winter we quilted and did needlework and sewing. That quilting bee was special because it was the last quilting that our own grandma did before she died. We had a big time then. Our mama had baked a caramel cake and a devil’s food cake with buttermilk icing.”

  “And a coconut cake with divinity icing that was crunchy with fresh coconut when it cooled just right,” Miss Inez said. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply as if she could still smell the fruits of her long-dead mother’s oven.

  The two old ladies exchanged brief but tender looks, remembering better times, I reckon. Times when they didn’t need canes and oxygen tanks and youth was forever and the world was safe and secure with warm cozy fires and doting females.

  Miss Inez pointed to a piece of fabric that formed one of the sunbonnets. “That red piece was from a Christmas dress I wore when I was five. I tore it when I went out with Daddy to help him cut down a little cedar for our Christmas tree. I just hated to tear that dress.”

  “But Mama fixed it and the next year I wore it,” Miss Addie Lou said.

  Miss Inez pointed to a different square, a pretty print of tiny blue flowers. “I wore that dress when I first met the man I would marry. It was at a church barbecue and I spilled some of Daddy’s Brunswick stew on it. He always made the Brunswick stew at the barbecues, you know. You can still see the stain if you look real close.”

  “I reckon y’all’s family makes the best Brunswick stew in the county,” I said, and all three women beamed. I was actually just trying to be diplomatic. (That’s important in crisis negotiations.) Their Brunswick stew was good, but my own family, the Bottoms, made the best Brunswick stew in the county. Not that it was all that different from the Brunswick stew in the Hamilton family. Among Creekite cooks, Brunswick stew is always red and tomatoey. No potatoes for us, not on your life. When you see pale stew, you’ve got potatoes. Just so you know what to watch out for when you’re evaluating stew.

  To be fair, wherever you go in the South, everybody thinks their Brunswick stew is the best there is anywhere. It’s just one of those things. But my family’s stew is really the best. When it comes to stew, you can’t get better than a Bottom’s.

  Lucy Belle pointed to a beige colored piece with tattered embroidery. “Mama embroidered flowers on this muslin. They’re almost all worn off.”

  “That’s not muslin. That’s a flour sack,” Miss Inez said. “We wore plenty of flour sack dresses in the old days. Everybody did. Mama embroidered on them so they wouldn’t look so plain. She used those old iron-on embroidery patterns over and over again. When they got so pale she could hardly see the transfer, she’s go over them with a lead pencil.”

  I had always thought all the Hamiltons were wealthy, but after hearing the old ladies talk about wearing flour sacks, I remembered Lucy Belle telling me once a long time ago that their branch of the family were the church-mouse variety of Hamilton.

  In fact, now that I think about it, she used to tell me about standing in line for government cheese with her grandmother one time back in the seventies. It was the processed kind that melted real good, like Velveeta, and made extra fine macaroni and cheese and grilled sandwiches. Those Hamiltons had land but not a lot of cash, so Miss Inez qualified.

  Lucy Belle told me that when her father found out his mother-in-law was seen standing in line for a five-pound block of welfare cheese, he like to have hit the roof, it embarrassed him so bad. But like I’ve said, nobody’s ever been able to reason with Miss Inez. But I’m getting off the subject again.

  “Well, I can certainly see why this quilt is so special to both of you,” I said.

  “I guess it’s too much to ask for one of you to back down and just let the other one have it,” Lucy Belle stated, a complete waste of breath if I ever heard one, knowing both Miss Addie Lou and Miss Inez the way I do. After a considerable pause, in which both old ladies pooched out their lower lips in identical pouts, Lucy Belle sighed and looked at me with a shrug. “Well, Sandy, you’re the law. I guess it’s up to you to decide. Do you take Grandma to the jail house for larceny or do you take Aunt Addie Lou for fraud?”

  I paused just a moment to savor the mind picture of both of those fractious old ladies behind bars and almost had to laugh. But the situation was too serious, and besides, if they were in the jail, I’d have to take care of them and I’d wind up being sorely tempted to shoot them both in the leg with my service revolver so Bigelow Regional Hospital would have to take them off my hands.

  Miss Addie Lou had a heart condition and Miss Inez, thanks to using up her lung tissue on unfiltered Camels, wasn’t in very good shape either. Why, one of them might have a stroke over this feud if I didn’t handle it carefully, and I couldn’t let Lucy Belle down like that. My gaze fell upon the Bible on the night stand by the bed, and I got an idea.

  “All right, ladies, here’s the situation as I see it. Miss Addie Lou here says that her mama told her she could have this quilt. But I take it the old lady never put that in writing.”

  “Are you calling me a liar?” Miss Addie Lou demanded, her bristly chin thrust forward.

  “No, ma’am,” I said.

  “I am,” Miss Inez said.

  “Grandma!” Lucy Belle warned.

  I continued. “On the other hand, Miss Inez is the oldest, so you could make a case for the quilt going to her.”

  Miss Addie Lou started to protest, but I held up my hand for silence. “The way I see it, there’s only one fair way to settle this. Lucy Belle, go get your aunt Addie Lou’s scissors.”

  The two old ladies were stunned speechless (probably the first time in eighty-something years that had ever happened, at once anyway) and stood with their mouths gaping open. Lucy Belle winked at me and went back to the living room.

  “You can’t mean . . .” Miss Addie Lou trailed off, looking mighty like she was on the verge of a spell of the vapors.

  “Surely not,” Miss Inez said. She pressed the oxygen hose to her nose and look a deep breath.

  “Do you want regular sewing scissors or pinking shears?” Lucy Belle called from the other room.

  “I don’t know, ladies, would pinking shears keep the batting from falling out as bad?” I asked innocently, looking back and forth between them. Lucy Belle appeared from the living room then, a pair of large scissors in each hand, working them open and shut vigorously and with a vicious clicking sound.

  The two old ladies continued to look horrified. “You can’t do this,” Miss Inez said. “Not to Mama’s quilt.”

  With a flourish, Lucy Belle handed me the huge shears handle first, like I was a surgeon and she was my trusty assistant. “Sure I can,” I said. “I have a pair of big scissors and the opposable thumbs to use them.”

  Lucy Belle and I pushed past the old women to the foot of the bed, where we sized up the quilt. “I’d say the middle was right between these two rows here,” Lucy Belle said, indicating the proposed cut with the side of her hand, as if she was getting ready to deal a death blow via Karate chop.
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  “Here goes nothing, then,” I said, and opened up the huge shears, guiding the quilt binding between the shining blades.

  “Stop!” Miss Addie Lou and Miss Inez hollered in unison.

  Lucy Belle and I looked up at them. Two pairs of little dark eyes stared back at us as round as saucers. I felt kind of ashamed of myself then, for scaring them. Of course, I’d never intended to cut into the fruit of their dear mother’s labor of love for them.

  “Don’t cut it,” Miss Inez said, wringing her hands. “Addie Lou can have it. Just as long as I know it’s safe and sound and I can see it now and then.”

  “No, no. You can have it,” Miss Addie Lou whimpered. “Mama never really gave it to me. I just wanted it so bad. I didn’t think it meant as much to you as it did to me, but now I see that it does. I’ve had it all these years, so now I want you to have it.”

  “Aw,” I said, genuinely touched. “Ain’t that nice?” I asked Lucy Belle.

  Lucy Belle looked at me and a strange expression came over her face. “Actually,” she said, “I think you should cut it up.”

  “Child, have you lost your mind?” her grandmother Miss Inez demanded. Miss Addie Lou and I just stared.

  “Hear me out,” Lucy Belle said. “This quilt is a precious family heirloom, so why not spread it around? Aunt Addie Lou, you know those beautiful patchwork pillows with the layers of lace edging that you make and sell at the church auction every year?”

  Miss Addie Lou nodded. I was beginning to get an inkling of what Lucy Belle was driving at.

  “Why not take the quilt apart, carefully, a block at a time. I can help you. Then you can put on a new binding on each square and use the blocks to make a pillow for you and Grandma and me and your two daughters and their girls and Mama and aunt Jody and her girls. That way all the women in the family will have a little piece of Granny’s love for her girls.” Lucy Belle looked at the two old women hopefully.

  The hard line of Miss Inez’s mouth began to soften, “You are the best seamstress in the family, Addie Lou. Hell, you’re the best seamstress in the county. You’d make those pillows look real nice.”

  “Do you really think so?” Miss Addie Lou’s cheeks pinkened and suddenly I could see just a glimpse of the girl she used to be.

  “Sure as shootin’,” Miss Inez declared.

  Lucy Belle had been counting the quilt squares. “There’s enough for all of us, with two left over,” she said. “I suggest we frame one and put it on display at the local history room of the library.”

  Both old ladies grinned from ear to ear. “I know what to do with the last extra one,” Miss Inez said.

  Lucy Belle nodded and gave me a wink. “I think we’re on the same track.”

  “Yeah,” Miss Addie Lou said. “We give the last pillow to Sandy.”

  I do declare I was touched. Really touched. Being raised with a couple of brothers, like I was, I would have loved to have had a sister. I was glad that Miss Addie Lou and Miss Inez were back on good terms. It would have been a tragedy if, at their advanced ages, something had happened to one of them while they were still feuding over a quilt. “Do you mean it?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Lucy Belle said. “Who better to give it to than Mossy Creek’s newest police officer? The one with the wisdom of Solomon.”

  I gave Lucy Belle and Miss Inez a ride back to their house, and before I left, Miss Inez loaded me up with free jars of chow-chow. I was glad to get them, cat hair and all. I’m going to make a batch of Brunswick stew pretty soon. (There’s nothing like a dollop of that chow-chow to fire up soups and stews.)

  You know, Brunswick stew really hits the spot on a cold January day. I’ll use my Grandma’s recipe, (the one I told you about) that has been handed down from generation to generation, and cook it nice and slow in an iron pot over an open fire. Just like the women in my family have always done. Beef, pork, and chicken—it takes all three. Always has, always will.

  I reckon you could say we cherish our traditions here in Mossy Creek, most especially our women’s ways—whether they’re likely to produce a quilt that represents the love and care a mother gives to her daughters or a good stew recipe. My feeling is that when we get crossways with each other, especially if we’re kin, we need to just do whatever we have to do to patch things up and get along.

  Mayor Ida and Governor Ham, are you listening?

  WMOS Radio

  “The Voice of the Creek”

  Good afternoon, radio listeners! This is Bert Lymon again, welcoming you to a second hour of your musical favorites. First, let me mention again that Honey and I really appreciate all your kindnesses and sympathy concerning the death of Honey’s sister. Honey will be flying back here this afternoon with her sisters’ babies. We know everybody in Mossy Creek will welcome these two sweet children and help us start them on their new lives.

  Well, that’s enough about that. You can tell I get choked up whenever I talk about it.

  Okay! Here’s my regular Saturday afternoon “shout-out”—as the kids say—to Miz Eula Mae Whit, who says to tell all of her fellow Creekites, as usual, “I’m still alive, dammit.”

  Miz Eula, here’s something that’s guaranteed to keep you with us for another week, at least. Lena Horne, singing one of her classics.

  Stormy Weather.

  Chapter 10

  After you hit one hundred, you got a right to cause trouble.

  Eula Mae Turns Another Year

  MY NAME IS EULA Mae Whit, and last fall I celebrated my hundred-first birthday. To say I’m disappointed is an understatement.

  Now, don’t get me wrong. I like living and breathing just like the next senior citizen, but I feel slighted. God done already called home my sisters and brothers, cousin Chicken and other relatives, but He left me here with my great-granddaughter, Estelle, and my granddaughter, Clara.

  Clara gives me the hives somethin’ awful. She cain’t stop fussin’. I think that’s her callin’ in life. Fuss until her relatives drop dead.

  The way she goes on, sometimes, I take my own pulse to see if I checked out by surprise.

  Still ticking. I sigh. See, all the Whits die by their hundredth birthday. It’s a family tradition. I been working on dying for the better part of a year, so that’s why I’m taking short, shallow breaths and holding them as the sun warms my cheek.

  Still, nothin’.

  Just like that vacuum salesman got from me one time, after he vacuumed my whole house.

  “Great Gran, you awake?”

  I put on my glasses and sit up straight. I had been taking my early afternoon nap, worn out after protesting in the scooter parade, enjoying Lena Horne on the radio. It was a bit chilly in my bedroom in January, even with two space heaters and an electric blanket. I poke my left hand with my right forefinger. Cold as a corpse.

  “Great Gran?”

  My great granddaughter hates to enter my room without my answering. Every time, she’s scared I’m dead. She’s got a thing against dead bodies. I figure they ain’t never bit me and so far, none has come back alive, so we ain’t got a problem.

  After she knocks, I always tell her she’s safe. But you know how thirty-four-year olds are. They are sometimes very much like children.

  “Come in,” I say.

  Estelle is my only great grandchild under thirty-five. The product of my daughter, Alma, God rest her soul, who birthed my granddaughter, Clara, the snorer in the other room, who birthed this beautiful gal.

  She’s got a full head of black hair, rich brown skin married from Georgia clay and New Jersey topsoil. I forgive her for her heritage problem. I’m not big on Northerners.

  “How’d you sleep?” Estelle asks me.

  “Well enough to stay alive.”

  Her stricken expression reminds me of someone captured in a picture
when they’ve been asked to be a substitute teacher at the middle school. It’s obvious they’d rather donate ten pints of blood.

  “Great Gran, you know what you need? A job.”

  I focus my keen eyes on Estelle. “Have you been in my homemade soap again? That lye can be a very persuasive mind-altering drug. I’m a hundred-one. Not eighty-five. Working ain’t really an option.”

  She laughs like I used to, all tinkly and sweet. “I learned my lesson about the soap, believe me. I just think, instead of you waiting for death every day, you might think about focusing your attention on something else. Something you can do in the community that will be of service to others.”

  “It’s not enough that I used to ask Al Louis to take me to the grocery. Now that’s community service! Retarded boys need jobs too.”

  “He’s not retarded. He’s just a little slow.”

  “That’s the way I like my men,” I say and smile.

  “Great Gran,” she admonishes, as if we don’t know where babies come from. Younguns are the strangest creatures. They think they invented everything. Kissing, huggin’, fornicating. My mama used to say all the good stuff’s been done so you’d better take a lesson and enjoy yourself. I happen to agree.

  Estelle is looking at me like I had a passel of men callers who didn’t leave my house before 8:00 p.m. Now I believe in a lot of things, but it better happen before bedtime. I didn’t live over a hundred years without getting my beauty rest.

  “Estelle, if I have to tell you about the birds and the bees again, I’ll make a flip chart.”

  Her lips shake like they do on people with too much coffee in their system. I recommend decaf, but she doesn’t say anything. Her eyes flutter, and she waves her hands in the air.

  “Great Gran, I was just thinking that maybe if you volunteered, you’d feel more fulfilled.”

  It was as if an alarm clock went off because my bladder started croaking like a Christmas goose. God bless Depends.

  “I’ll be right back. While I’m getting cleaned up and dressed, will you make sure my funeral dress is pressed? I can’t go home to Jesus with it looking like a used brown paper bag. No, suh. I’ve got to be right. Cain’t nobody do me like Jesus, can’t nobody do me like the Lord.” I sing as I hurry.