How to Make an American Quilt (35 page)

M
arianna has more lovers than she is aware of; that is, she is admired from afar. These admirers court her in secret, in the safety of their dreams. When they see her sitting in a café or walking to her job at the nursery or buying bread for dinner, they think,
In my dreams we are together
, then they return home to their wives and children and girlfriends. It is harmless; they would never think to force themselves on her; she is simply a passing fancy. Because she is so exotic in her looks, as well as being an expatriate, as well as being a woman working at a man’s job, where virtually no women work. Because it is difficult to discern her heritage at a quick glance. Because she walks with the grace of her mother, Anna Neale, who is back home in Grasse, United States.

What her admirers do not, cannot, know, is that even her “real” lovers cannot truly have her, cannot claim her for their own exclusively. This leaves them unhappy and confused.

For Marianna, the wedding vow is as binding as the deathbed promise. Her lovers do not know this about her either.

By the time Marianna went to college, Anna was living outside the Clearys’ house, coming back only to cook supper occasionally for Glady Joe and Hy. Anna also arrived, once a week, to lead the Grasse Quilting Circle, which had begun at Glady Joe’s house. Anna now made enough money to live by making and selling quilt patterns in town. She told her customers (some of whom came across great distances),
“Yes, you could send away for a pattern, but mine are better because they are specialized. Not a factory item.” And that was Anna’s gift; that she could meet with a woman and translate her story onto tissue paper, which was then used as a pattern for a custom quilt. Anna could always come to understand at least one important element in the character of her customer—perhaps not understand the entire woman, but, then, quilters work in patches and bits.

Sometimes, if a particularly nasty woman came to her, Anna represented her personality as an extreme opposite; if the woman was a bitch, Anna fashioned her pattern as if she were a saint. Imagine what her friends thought as the woman proudly displayed her quilt, saying, “And this is me.” The viewer looking from quilt to woman back to quilt, wondering how someone could be so blind to themselves, could possibly be flattered by such a subtle insult.

Anna never lost her edges; never truly yielded. Marianna inherited her internalized strength, the way in which she kept her own secrets. It was not easy to be close to Anna or Marianna.

M
ARIANNA TOLD HERSELF
,
I will never keep house for anyone
. It was by luck and talent that Anna had parlayed her association with Glady Joe into a business and quilting circle.

“Why do you continue to cook for those people?” asked Marianna.

“Because I’m very good,” Anna told her.

“I don’t see how you can do it. Not that it isn’t honest work, but you have your own things now. Things that belong to you.”

“This is true,” said Anna, “but Glady Joe and I go back. I don’t have to tell you. And the money helps out.”

“I can give you money,” said Marianna.

“Maybe I want my own,” said Anna.

M
ARIANNA GREW UP
and went to an agricultural college in northern California, with every intention of returning to Grasse (Bakersfield is the “Bread Basket of the World”). But when she graduated in 1953, there was not a farmer in Kern County who would hire her. “A woman?” they said. “A Negro woman? Not in this life.” Sometimes they laughed or ignored her or called her honey.

No one ever suggested to Marianna that she “understand” the men’s perspective. No one ever said, Look, it’s their ignorance. Anna told her, “Don’t listen to that trash,” and Marianna was not raised to “listen” in any case. Not by a mother with distinguished quilting skills and her own business.

Sometimes people said, “How extraordinary that Marianna wants to work in agriculture, out in the fields with the farmers.”

“Why extraordinary?” asked Anna. “Because she’s a woman? Because she’s black?”

And the people would shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, both.”

So Marianna ended up tending roses in the south of France, fairly close to a town called Grasse (“I like the symmetry of it,” she laughed), for a company that supplied flowers to much of Europe.

C
UT ROSES
and miniature roses grow in a greenhouse. Garden roses and roses to be planted along the highway are grown outside. Marianna lies on a flat board with wheels, slowly rolling up and down the furrows, grafting roses—lying on her stomach to save her back.