Julia's Hope (8 page)

“Don’t recall that I know nobody out that way,” I told her. “But send ’em in anyhow. Can’t hurt to say hello.”

The door opened up wide and Rita brung in a pretty young woman with squared shoulders and a real slow step. Even though I never seen her before, she acted like she was almost scared of me, all nervous an’ wringin’ her hands like she figured maybe she already done somethin’ wrong.

“Just give me a holler if you all want tea or anything,” Rita told us. Then she shut the door and left us alone.

The lady was young and fair for looking at, with a blue button-front dress, a flowery scarf, and the most amazin’ green eyes. She was gazin’ over the place and me. I must have been quite a sight in that old rocker, with my hair all down a mess, quilting scrunched so sloppy over my lap, and just one old shoe pokin’ out from underneath.

What in the world might she have come for?
I thought.
Albert
up in Chicago, maybe? He knew lots of folks. Had something happened
to him?
That kinda thinkin’ give me an awful tight feeling in my throat, and I coughed to clear it away.

“You care for anythin’, miss?”

“Uh, no, thank you.”

She sounded so nervous. A whole lot more than I was, for sure, and I felt sorried for her. I pointed her to the wicker chair in the corner, the only other thing to sit on in the whole room, except for the bed.

“Set with me awhile,” I told her. “Pull the chair up here, if you don’t mind. An’ tell me your name, why don’t you, and what brings you here.”

She said she was Julia Wortham. She had a pleasant voice. But she had an awful time fumblin’ that awkward old chair closer. I kept trying to poke thread through my needle while she moved it, hopin’ to sew while we was talking. I like keepin’ m’ hands busy that way. Keeps the mind from borrowin’ worry.

But that old thread wasn’t about to do. I wet it good with m’ tongue, twirled it to a point, and thought I had it through that time. But when I gave it a pull, it weren’t in.

“Can I help you?” the young lady asked.

“Can’t see to find the eye no more, that’s all! One of the worser things ’bout gettin’ old.” I gave over my needle and thread. It wouldn’t hurt to let her help. I thought it might set her to ease some.

“I’d appreciate it,” I told her. “Relax now. Nothin’ ’bout me to be scared of. You know Albert?”

“Uh, no, ma’am. I was hoping you wouldn’t mind me asking about your farm.”

I watched her slide my thread through the needle on the first try, but I couldn’t say nothing for a minute. The farm? I shoulda known to expect something like that. What else would anybody want with an old lady?

I took back the needle, knotted the thread, and swallowed down the tightness in m’ throat. I didn’t much care to talk about this. I weren’t even ready to be thinking on somebody else wantin’ the farm. It was my home, and there was too much of my life wrapped up in it. I didn’t near want to turn it loose.

I could just see the old place come summer, prospering under the golden sun. And I could see m’self back there too, working in the strawberry patch or weavin’ a little purple and yeller chain of violas to lay across Willard’s gravestone. I had to take me a deep breath and think on the quiltin’. I wasn’t ready to talk about the farm. Not yet.

“You sew, do ya, Mrs. Wortham?”

“Y—yes. A little. But I’ve never done a quilt. This is beautiful.”

“Well, you ain’t examined m’ stitchin’ to speak of, that’s all. I can’t see to put two together like I used to! Be a shame to hang it ’longside one a’ Trudy Welty’s!” I tried smoothin’ the cloth a little. “Don’t be lookin’ too close at the underside, now! There prob’ly ain’t a row a’ stitches the same size.”

Right away, she done the opposite of what I told her, turnin’ up the edge of m’ quilt and runnin’ her fingers over all m’ lines.

“Mrs. Graham,” she said, “I think it’s wonderful. I wish I could do something so well.”

I stretched the quilt out a little more. “This un’s a double weddin’ ring pattern. First time I ever used so much paisley.”

She kept on looking at the quilt, tracing over the interlocking circles. She sure was a nice young lady to be takin’ such an interest when she plainly had something else on her mind. I knew I should let her get back to that, but I wasn’t anxious to be no disappointment. I couldn’t sell that farm no more than I could sell my grandmother. Or my own right elbow.

I took a deep breath. “It’s a good enough quilt, I s’pose, but I’d be embarrassed for some a’ m’ friends to see it,” I told her. “They’d be wantin’ to rip stitches an’ do it right.”

Mrs. Wortham smiled. “I’d be proud of it, if I were you. It’s one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen.”

I looked her in the eye for just a minute, but she dropped her gaze. “Mrs. Graham, about your farm . . .”

I swallowed. “Rita said you come all the way from Pennsylvaney. New married, is ya? Lookin’ to buy ’round here?”

Mrs. Wortham dropped the quilt out of her hands and looked up like she was hurtin’ over something. Then she spoke all in a rush. “Mrs. Graham, we’ve got no money to buy! My husband lost his job. We came to Illinois on the promise of another one, but the plant’s closing. We have two children, and we were stranded along the road with a storm coming. We had nowhere else to go. If it weren’t for your house, I don’t know what we’d have done! Forgive us for staying, but we’ve got nothing right now, and I was hoping, I was just hoping—”

The stream of words come to a sudden stop.

“You been stayin’ at m’ farm?” My heart was pounding. “For how long?”

“Two nights.” Mrs. Wortham looked down at her lap again, huggin’ at the quilt edge with her skinny fingers. “I’m so sorry. But we covered the broken windows and got the door to close again as it should. I—I cleaned up a little for you while it was raining.”

I started at a stitch again but could scarcely look at it. How was I s’posed to feel about this? It was likely true, just like she said. There
had
been some weather. But I couldn’t be thinkin’ on their trespass long, for wonderin’ on the shape of the place. Nobody’d told me of it in such awhile.

“The house ain’t gone down too bad, has it?”

“No, ma’am. Nothing that can’t be fixed.”

“What about the barn? And the chicken house?”

She was lookin’ at me, pretty surprised by now. “Well, I guess everything needs work, but they’re still usable, I think.”

“They weren’t none too good when I was out there last,” I told her. “Been awhile since we could keep the place up, even before Willard died.”

“I’m sorry.”

I just gave her a nod. “How old is your children?”

“Ten and five.”

“I had a boy once. He died in the war, some years ago now. That’s his picture over there.” I pointed over to Warren’s handsome picture on m’ bureau top.

She looked at it and then brung her eyes back to m’ quilt. “George Hammond said to tell you hello.”

“I was wonderin’ how you knowed to look me up.” I stared down at her tremblin’ fingers, considerin’ what it’d be like to have no home, like this woman claimed. For me, there’d always been the farm, since marryin’ Willard with m’ mama’s consent at the age of fourteen. It made me feel bad, knowin’ this woman was desperate and I was just keeping her waitin’.

“You say your husband’s outa work?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mrs. Wortham answered real soft. “But he’s a good worker when he gets the chance. We could fix for you, do whatever you want on the place—”

“You come askin’ permission to stay?” I leaned back in m’ rocker and eyed her good.

“Yes, uh . . . yes, ma’am. If it would be all right . . . at least until—”

“Till I sell it, you mean. Or till I die and it gets sold out from under ya.”

“No, ma’am,” Mrs. Wortham protested with a stricken look. “Just so long as you still felt all right about it, I mean, if it’s all right at all. I was thinking you might want to go back there yourself.”

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry on that. So I shook out the quilt an’ reached for her hand. “Let me tell you somethin’, child! I can’t go home, much as I’d like to! I get spells with m’ heart that put me to bed, and m’ old leg won’t hardly hold me no more, ’specially for stairs, even when I got m’ two canes. I ain’t no good without the other one.”

She looked at me, all surprised. She didn’t know the half of what I was talkin’ about.

And without thinking no more on it, I lifted the quilt off my lap and showed her the cherry-colored afghan that was underneath. I seen her eyes notice my left shoe and that there weren’t another one on the right side.

“That’s the main thing that keeps me away,” I told her. “If it weren’t for that, I mighta been all right out to home awhile longer.” Always such a pitiful sight to see, my one old leg stickin’ out from my dress like that. In five years, there still weren’t nobody could get used to it, least of all m’self.

“Had fever in it,” I explained. “Got so sore infected, they thought I’d die. Had to take it off, right below the knee there. I ain’t been good since, far as the farm goes, though I tried for awhile.”

Mrs. Wortham was quiet, just looking at me.

“Oh, I know,” I told her. “There ain’t nothin’ to be done nor said. But you can see why I can’t manage the place. Can’t hardly do nothin’ no more.”

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Graham.”

“Well, it ain’t your fault, child. The good Lord, he has these things decided, you know. He’ll tell me about it, one of these days.”

“You’re a very brave woman.”

“Oh, now that ain’t nothing more than just livin’. We all do ’bout the same as far as that goes. If I coulda kep’ m’ good leg up, I mighta been all right, but I fell in ’27, and my hip’s not been so good since then.” I reached for the quilt and pulled it back to m’ lap. “Be glad you’re young. Be glad your kids is young too. They can take the hard times better’n us older folks sometimes.”

Julia gave a little smile. “It’s not been too easy for them. But they don’t complain much.”

“They’re good youngsters, then. You musta taught ’em right.” I looked at her a long time, and she turned her eyes away without saying nothin’ more.

I took a look out to the old willow tree and thought of Willard’s grave on the rise north of the pond. I’d been wantin’ to go back there ever since comin’ here, even though Rita was one of m’ dearest friends. People had told me to sell, plenty of times, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t even think on it for wantin’ to go home again. But it wasn’t gonna happen. And the good Lord well knew it was time I faced up to that. No matter what Willard mighta thought.

Looking at the quiet young mother sittin’ in front of me, I knew I was gonna have to tell her something. They needed a home more’n I did. And I had no right under God’s blue sky to be selfish. But a knot rose up in my stomach anyhow, so tight I could hardly breathe. It weren’t easy to let go.

Mrs. Wortham was lookin’ at me funny. “Are you all right, Mrs. Graham?”

“You got any family can help you?” I asked.

“I was an only child. My parents and grandparents are dead. Sam has his mother and brother in New York, but we can’t go there. They can’t help.”

“Why’s that?”

She bowed her head. “Edgar’s in the penitentiary, Mrs. Graham. And Samuel’s mother married a man who wouldn’t have us coming around.”

“Why not? What’s wrong with ya?”

“Well, nothing as far as I can see,” she answered without hesitation. “But it’s been this way since we got married. I think because Sam’s different now. He’s—he’s a Christian, like me.”

“Well, there’s hardly harm in that! But they won’t help ya?”

“I don’t think they could, even if they wanted to. They’re not much better off than we are. We were on our way to Sam’s cousin, but he lost his job too.”

I lifted up m’ needle, but set it right down again. I’d wanted to die still owning the farm, having that hope of going home again. I could feel m’ tears tryin’ to come, but I wasn’t gonna let ’em, not in front of Julia Wortham’s notice.

You don’t need that farm no more,
I told myself.
I’m fine
where I’m at, and they got nothin’. What’s a Christian to do?

It took me one deep breath to decide. “I’ll tell you what,” I said to her. “A family’s gotta have a home. You stay there and fix on it, like you said. I’ll have some friends check about you now and then. We’ll give it a year or so. An’ if you do right by the place, you can have it.”

Mrs. Wortham’s mouth opened up slow, and then closed again. But then the tears come like somebody opened a gate for ’em.

“Mrs. Graham . . . oh, Mrs. Graham, are you sure?”

“Don’t go tryin’ to change m’ mind, now!” I told her real stern. I had to be stern, or I’d start bawlin’ m’self, and I sure didn’t want that to happen.

“Mrs. Graham, I–I don’t know what to say! I expected to tenant and pay you something when we could—”

“I’d like some apples off the tree, come fall.”

She looked at me and then come bustin’ forward with a hug. “Yes. Oh yes! But isn’t there anything else?”

I couldn’t hold it together no longer, even for the trying. “You can’t have all the land,” I said, struggling somethin’ fierce with the words. “I’ll need ’bout six feet of it. You have t’ put me in the groun’ next to m’ husband.” And then my tears come out too, and Mrs. Wortham hugged me tighter, tellin’ me I didn’t have to be so kind.

I had to push her away, had to get my sternness back. “I’ve made up m’ mind, now! You do right by the place! I’ll make sure and check! You let that George Hammond keep farmin’ the field, if you ain’t got the means. You do right by him too, you hear? He needs all he can gain from it to feed that family a’ his.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mrs. Wortham said, looking like she was in some kinda shock.

“Where’s that husband a’ yours? You’re gonna hafta bring him so’s I can meet him an’ the kids if they’re gonna be out to m’ place.”

Mrs. Wortham nodded, her tears still falling. “They’re outside, Mrs. Graham. We were going to move on if you said no.”

“Well, go get ’em, girl!” I scolded, tryin’ m’ best not to cry no more. “Get them youngsters in here!”

ELEVEN

Julia

I would never have expected the reaction I got from Sam. He sat right down by the side of the road and cried.