Ada Unraveled (5 page)

“Rhymes with provolone,” Andrea quipped.

She grinned, and insisted I call her Gerry.
“Geraldine is too formal.”

I said, “Okay.”

Elixchel brought Victoria back into the room
and slowly got her across to the quilt rack. I tried not to watch
her halting progress. It was painful and sad. At last she was
seated, the empty frame before her. Elixchel rushed from the room
again and returned in seconds with Victoria’s queen sized quilt
folded over her arms.

I’d researched quilting racks in all their
forms, and found that there were two main types intended for group
sewing, one of which was hung from a ceiling and consisted of
rather flimsy frames that screwed together. Called a ceiling rack
for obvious reasons, this type could be raised up out of the way
when not in use.

But the quilting rack before me was the
other kind, the one that stood on supports placed on the floor.
Victoria’s rack was obviously hand-made, of a rough-hewn but
carefully sanded oak. Since the group moved from house to house for
their bees it made sense that the rack would be portable, but the
structure I was looking at appeared to be very heavy. I said as
much.

Hannah said, “We have a travel version for
anyone who doesn’t own their own. Do you think you can host a bee?
I mean do you have a room we can use?”

“Sure. I think our walkout basement would be
fine. I just need to shove some stuff aside. We mainly use it for
storage now. And I don’t have a rack so I may need to borrow that
portable, if that’s okay.”

“Absolutely.” Hannah smiled and I saw her
shoulders relax for the first time that evening. I guess she was
worried about how I was reacting to them.

Examining the rack more closely I saw that
it consisted of two ten foot long wooden dowels placed parallel to
each other, each suspended by two saw horse shaped supports. The
dowels were padded and covered in muslin, and I knew from my
reading that the quilt would be secured to these dowels, and then
the whole thing was rolled up scroll-like and placed on the horses.
The horses would be moved away from each other as needed to allow
the continual expansion of the rolled quilt as the sewing
progressed.

Now however, the rack stood empty, and the
first job was to layer the three pieces of the quilt in preparation
for pinning to the dowels. I stood watching as they worked,
fascinated.

Two rectangular tables had been pushed
together and four of the women began layering the quilt. First the
backing (a solid beige cotton) was placed face down and carefully
smoothed and made to hang evenly on all four sides. Then the
quarter-inch-thick cotton batting was placed. This was the filler I
used with my own quilts. It was closest in results to what women
had used in early America. The youngest, Abigail and her buddy
Andrea got down on their knees and, using yard sticks to check
their progress, carefully cut around the bottom of these two layers
to make them even. The patchwork top was then opened and placed
very carefully and smoothed. The top was never trimmed as it held
the design.

The final step, the border, usually a thin
edging of material, was done after all the quilting. I assumed this
would be done alone by Victoria as it was a one-person job. She
would also apply a label listing her name, the date the quilt was
completed, and her title for the quilt.

But this was the first of two times tonight
I would see the entire top of the quilt and I found myself drawn to
it, circling the table and the busy women slowly. It was a
genealogy quilt. Sixteen houses in various bright solids of blues,
purples, wines and dark browns placed four-by-four on a varied
beige background. The houses had been constructed first as
individual patchwork blocks.

Three different beige fabrics had then been
cut into wide strips and sewn together to simulate the sky, far
ground and near ground behind the houses. It took four sets of
these three materials to form the whole background, and the sixteen
individual house blocks were then carefully placed and sewn onto
this. Victoria had done all this part alone. Tonight, we would sew
the three layers of the quilt together as a group.

To add to the value of the quilt, Victoria
had sewn sixteen paths leading up to each house, on which she had
stitched the names of her family tree, some in black and some in
white.

“Why did you use two separate colors for the
names of your relatives, Victoria,” I asked.

“We’re members of the Daughters of the
American Revolution….”

“Really? So am I.”

She smiled. “The names in white are the
people in our family that lead back to our Revolutionary
Ancestor.”

As the process of layering the quilt neared
an end, Andrea and Abigail took to kneeling, and I was struck with
how their attitudes--hands raised, pinning the three fabrics
together--looked so like praying. Religious correlatives crept into
my mind, the joining of the three to make the one. As in the Holy
Trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit--another name for
the Holy Spirit being the Comforter.

The parallels were lovely.

I was grateful for the opportunity to watch
and learn this time, but also wishing I could join in
somewhere.

That was when Ruth said, “Help me lift a
dowel, Rachel.”

It was beginning to get to me--her capacity
to appreciate and articulate the inner thoughts of those around
her. It’s possible she was just very observant of body language and
so other-directed that she can guess accurately what others are
thinking, but rarely have I seen it so keen or constant.

Together, Ruth and I held one of the padded
dowels in position, down low along one side of the waiting quilt.
We’d pulled up chairs to sit on. Hannah and Gerry began pinning the
quilt to the padding on the dowel, and then together the four of us
rolled the heavy dowel up and placed it on one side of the
rectangular table while Andrea and Abigail leaned their weight on
the other side to keep the materials from slipping out of
position.

We repeated this process on the other side.
A few minutes later, as a group we lifted the two rolled dowels,
careful to keep the quilt taut, and placed the whole thing onto the
waiting saw horses.

At this point the setup ritual was
interrupted. Victoria, head bowed, hands clasped in front of her in
an attitude of prayer, said, “A moment of silence for she who is
gone from us.”

The others followed her lead. We stood for a
full minute this way.

Then the women took what I assumed were
their regular seats at the rack. I ended up in the seat across from
Victoria, with my back to the windows.

I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the
seat of the woman I’d replaced. If it was, she had held a seat of
honor—directly across from the leader.

At either end of the frame and behind the
two middle seats on each side were four small wooden tables. Sewing
materials had been placed on these, but they were big enough to
handle cups and plates of food as well.

The quilters had fallen into quiet side
conversations as they prepared to begin sewing and the scene
suddenly seemed like a timeless snapshot of women creating together
and cementing bonds of friendship and family.

I glanced across to either side of me taking
in the open area of the quilt more closely. Visible now were parts
of the central two rows of houses. Four paths could be seen, and I
read the names in the middle of the quilt. They looked to be the
parents of Victoria and Jake, and others from that generation. The
quilt was facing me, so I would begin sewing at the bottom of
Victoria and Jake’s house, and then finally over their children’s
and grandchildren’s houses. There were no dates.

I can’t explain why I said what I did
next—or the reaction my words drew.

“It looks like I’ll be sewing over your line
of descent, Victoria, your children and grandchildren.”

All talking ceased and all eyes turned to
me. Some of those eyes cast painful glances at me and at Victoria,
others just looked away. Victoria’s fleshy face folded in a bulldog
scowl and she looked down. I was painfully aware I had somehow
misspoken. Was Victoria estranged from all of her children? Why
would reference to them be so disturbing to the group? What was
this dark secret I had unwittingly blundered across? My face turned
beet red. I could feel it. Elixchel rescued me, with an explanation
of how we would sew in a cross hatch pattern.

I was barely conscious of a clock striking
seven times somewhere in the house. The women began to settle
around the stretching frame, sipping and munching and threading
their needles. Elixchel placed another log on the fire—an act so
bizarre at the beginning of October I felt transported to some
frozen Oz. But the chill night air was pressing through the windows
behind me onto my back, so I was grateful.

On my side we sat Hannah, me, Gerry and
Ruth. Across from us sat Andrea, Victoria, Abigail and Elixchel.
The fit was tight at this stage, each of us having two and a half
feet of space so we were shoulder to shoulder. The distance between
the two rows of women was equally close, knee to knee. The
multi-colored quilt would be sewn in beige hand-quilting thread to
match the background.

I found myself wiping my hands on my pants.
I was nervous about my stitching. The others were silent, heads
bowed. Were they readying themselves to begin or were they praying?
I mirrored them.

Finally, Victoria broke the spell and placed
her needle in the center, directly in front of me. Her gnarled
hands were testaments to years of quilting and house work, and I
caught myself looking down at my still relatively normal looking
hands, wondering when mine would begin to swell and twist. When she
had sewn about six inches of that line, Victoria secured the
needle, and began another line of stitching on the left of the
first. Minutes later she began a third line on the right. With each
additional line Andrea and Abigail carefully smoothed the materials
for Victoria. I watched in fascinated silence until she had sewn
six inches toward herself on all twenty lines directly in front of
her…and in front of me. At that point the two on each side of her
began sewing their inner most line of stitching. Elixchel then
smoothed the materials for Abigail, patiently waiting for her turn,
as did the four of us on my side of the quilt.

“You can begin sewing now, Rachel,” Victoria
prompted.

I did as I was instructed with my heart in
my throat, following her stitching as closely as I could, and
following the central line drawn on top of the material. As I
sewed, Hannah and Geraldine assisted me by smoothing the material
away from my work.

Hannah said, “Just so you have the big
picture, Rachel, whenever we open the quilt another few feet we
keep the fabric smooth by sewing sequentially like this. When we’ve
finished the vertical lines, we’ll rewrap the quilt on the dowels
and sew the horizontal lines. That direction will go much faster
because the materials will have been well secured to each other, so
we’ll be able to use the plastic stretchers on the sides. Don’t
feel intimidated. Victoria sews faster than any of us. We have to
wait for everyone to finish before we can open the quilt further,
but the good news is those who finish earlier get longer naps.
”

I silently vowed not to be the slowest.

Eventually every woman was bent to the task,
in silent concentration for the better part of an hour.

Chairs began scraping across the wooden
floor as each woman reached a place where she could pull back, rest
her shoulders and shake out her hands. Ruth pulled her chair
slightly to one side, freeing up more elbow room for the rest of
us. Andrea followed suit on her side of the quilt. It wasn’t until
then that I realized everyone was right-handed.

Another hour passed. Through the large
windows behind me I could hear the rain and wind battering the
house as if trying to get in. The chill in the room testified to
its partial success.

Ruth was fussing with the fireplace again.
Elixchel was making the rounds with an old fashioned English
teapot, refilling everyone’s cups. Very Colonial. Very
romantic.

”She married badly, her husband is rich. She
has way too much money. Too little to do with it.”

What? Who was Victoria talking about? I’d
been lost deep in thought.

“Oh now, you’re not going to pick on me
again, are you Victoria?” Geraldine Patrone whined good-naturedly.
She’d just draped her leopard print jacket on the back of her
chair, revealing a perfect figure. Underneath she wore a black
spaghetti strap cami hemmed with lace that barely reached her
leopard print pants. I wasn’t sure why, but she was getting away
with this outrageous outfit and hair.

“Gerry, why don’t you share something about
yourself so our newcomer can get to know us?” Ruth said.

Gerry looked at me and smiled warmly, “Okay,
sure. So I’ll begin with the fact that Victoria is always picking
on me because of where we live.”

“Rancho Santa Fe, yes. But not just where
you live Gerry, how you live. And take that fool watch off before
you snag something.”

My eyes went to her wrist. Good grief. The
blond was wearing a pink mother-of-pearl watch with a gold lamé
strap. The light playing on the face of the watch as she removed it
and tossed it casually on the nearest tray, said diamonds. Right.
So the Patrones were rich. Suddenly it hit me.

“
Marshall
Patrone?”

She looked at me with languid green eyes and
a serene smile. “Yes.”

“My husband Matt has apoplexy watching your
soccer team. He loves them.”

“Wonderful.”

I couldn’t wait to get home to Matt and tell
him who I was sewing with. He’d be green. Emerald.