Leaving Gee's Bend Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  One Eye That Works

  Scraps

  Girl in the Yellow Dress

  Something Ain’t Right

  Baby Rose

  All My Fault

  Wait and See

  The Storm

  Crossing the River

  Alone

  Mrs. Cobb

  The Big House

  Welcome to Camden

  The Angel

  Blue Handkerchief

  A Needle and a Spool of Thread

  A Lonely Sound

  The Letter

  The Long Road Home

  Falling

  The Witches of Gee’s Bend

  Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

  Winter

  Piece by Piece

  Acknowledgements

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  A division of Penguin Young Readers Group.

  Published by The Penguin Group.

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc. , 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.).

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd).

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  New Delhi—110 017, India.

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd).

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank,

  Johannesburg 2196, South Africa.

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.

  Copyright © 2010 by Irene Latham.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-17152-3

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  in memory of

  Bobbie Nell Holcomb Latham

  who loved quilts

  and

  Allie Ludelphia Threadgill Holcomb

  who created them

  One Eye That Works

  MAMA PULLED A CHICKEN EGG FROM BEHIND THE azalea bush in our front yard and narrowed her eyes. “Ludelphia Bennett! You go back in there and get your eye patch.”

  I jumped off the edge of the porch. Mama always noticed right away when that old triangle of denim wasn’t strapped to my right eye. Didn’t matter that she hadn’t hardly slept a wink on account of the awful cough that seemed to come from someplace deep inside her. She knew my eye was bare.

  I walked two steps toward the woodpile. “I’m only going out to feed Delilah.” Now that I was closer to Mama, I could see her cheeks was missing the brown glow that always reminded me of the smooth bottom of an acorn. The brown glow that made us look so much alike. Instead her whole face had a tired gray look to it, and her long, thin fingers shook as she slid the egg into the deep pockets of her apron.

  Mama moved on to the next bush without giving me another glance. “Don’t matter,” she said. “Ain’t polite to be showing that eye.”

  “But, Mama!” I stomped my feet in the dirt. I didn’t like that old eye patch. It itched so bad sometimes I couldn’t think of nothing else.

  Besides, Delilah was waiting for her breakfast. She stood at the corner of the barn same as she did every morning, her big ears standing up tall and her eyes bright, not doing nothing at all except waiting for me to get past the woodpile so she could start braying to the whole wide world that she was about to get her belly full.

  Daddy said he ain’t never seen a mule disagreeable as Delilah. Seemed like if the sun was shining too bright she’d up and decide not to work. But me and Delilah, we got on just fine—I reckon because Delilah never once complained about whether or not I was wearing my eye patch.

  Suddenly a fit of coughing took hold of Mama’s body. She bent over and grabbed on to her knees till it passed. As she straightened herself up, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then reached around and pressed the palm against her hip. A sharp breeze caught the tail of her apron and made it fly up like a kite. Beneath the apron, Mama’s belly bulged with baby.

  “Delilah can wait just a minute,” Mama said, her voice coming out jagged as a saw blade. “She won’t starve in the time it takes you to go back in there and get your eye patch.”

  I crossed my arms against my chest. Ain’t my fault I only got one eye that works. Just because the other one’s stuck in my head like an old marble that nobody can play with. Ain’t no need to cover it up, like the whole thing never did happen. Folks in Gee’s Bend got better things to think about than what’s polite and what ain’t. Like them fields. Don’t matter what season it is, there’s always picking or planting or pulling to be done.

  I mean to tell you, there ain’t noplace in the world like Gee’s Bend. For one thing, you can’t hardly find it. It’s like a little island sitting just about in the middle of the state of Alabama. Only instead of ocean water, it’s caught up on three sides by a curve in the Alabama River. Ain’t noplace in Gee’s Bend you can’t get to by setting one foot after another into that orange dirt that likes to settle right between your toes. I reckon the hard part is how once you’re in Gee’s Bend, it ain’t all that easy to get out.

  But that didn’t matter much to me, not on that November morning in 1932 when I was just ten years old. And wasn’t no point in arguing with Mama, neither. She’d take a switch to me if I sassed her. Didn’t make no difference that she had a baby on the way and a barking cough that was keeping her up nights. Wasn’t much of nothing that would keep her from doing all the chores a mama’s got to do.

  I turned back to the cabin and climbed the steps two at a time. I knew I’d best get on back in there and get my eye patch from under the pillow. But I stopped on the top step when I saw the way Mama hunched over the last azalea bush, the baby in her belly pulling her whole body low to the ground. Three times in my life I’d seen her look like this. But them babies didn’t make it, on account they was born too soon.

  What if this one didn’t make it neither?

  Mama always got real quiet after Daddy shoveled the last bit of dirt over the grave and Reverend Irvin stuck in one of them little white crosses. Last time that quiet lasted from planting time to harvest.

  I slipped my fingers into the front pocket of my sack dress and felt for the needle and scraps of cloth that was tucked inside. I sure didn’t want Mama to fade away again. Wasn’t but one thing I could think of that made Mama smile no matter what bad things was happening. And that was stitching quilts.

  Mama always said every quilt tells a story. Every piece of cloth, every stitch and every bit of cotton stuffed between the seams tells a secret about the one who made the quilt. And same as me, Mama sure does love a story.

  Which is why I decided this next quilt—the one that so far was just pieces in my pocket—I was making that one for Mama. So no matter what happened with the baby, Mama would have my story to give her something to smile about. It’d be just big enough to wrap around Mama’s shoulders when she sat in her rocking chair telling us stories before bed. And since I was making this quilt all about me, I was gonna make it my way.

  I grinned. Wasn’t a single thing Mama would be able to say about that.

  Scraps

  BY THE TIME I GOT MY EYE PATCH IN PLACE, MAMA was done collecting the eggs and had started to sweep the dirt yard with a broom she’d made out of s
orghum stalks. Usually she would hum church hymns while she worked, but wasn’t no humming today. Seemed like she was doing good just to get air flowing in and out.

  I rubbed the goose bumps off my bare arms, then felt again in my pocket for my needle and cloth. Best I get started on that quilt right away. I crossed the yard on my tiptoes, careful not to make a mess of the clean lines Mama had just made in the dirt with the broom. Just as soon I got Delilah fed, I could pull out my needle and start stitching.

  It was Mama that first taught me how to stitch. Just like her mama taught her. I still remember the first time she let me hold a needle with my own fingers. It was a few weeks after the accident that made my eye cloud over and stop seeing things. Wasn’t nobody’s fault about my eye. It was just a sliver of hickory that went flying from Daddy’s ax, then had to go and land square in my eye.

  I was a little bitty girl, not even in school yet. But I still remember the way my eye burned like it happened just this morning. And I remember how soon as I wasn’t in pain no more Mama started teaching me all sorts of things. She’d rush through the washing, then sit down beside me.

  “Them fields ain’t the place for you, Ludelphia,” Mama said. “Not with that eye.” Mama pulled some scraps of cloth from her quilting basket. Most of ’em was ripped into squares. “You got to learn to do quiet things. Ladylike things.”

  Mama laid out a few pieces, then handed me the rest. “First thing you got to do is sort the colors. You puts the reds in one stack, the blues in another.” She watched while I sorted. I didn’t say nothing because it wouldn’t have been ladylike, but I didn’t see no point in sorting. Seemed to me some of the best things just happened with no order to ’em at all. But Mama, she believed in having a plan.

  “That’s good, Ludelphia. Real good. Now comes the hard part. You see this needle? It’s real sharp, and I ain’t got no thimble to fit your little finger. So you got to be careful.” Mama held the needle between her finger and thumb as she licked the end of the thread. Then she handed ’em both to me. I’d watched her enough times to know the next thing I needed to do was push that thread right through the eye of the needle.

  I may have only one eye that works, but I got to tell you, it works real good.

  “It’s like you was born to stitch,” Mama said when she looked over my work. And I reckon I was. Ain’t hardly a day passed since then that hasn’t found me with a needle in my hand.

  Trouble was, we didn’t have no cloth except scraps. Wasn’t no money for buying nothing new, so we made do with patched-up clothes until they was too small or too worn. It was like Christmas morning when Daddy’s work britches finally gave out and Mama tore the faded denim into long strips.

  But that was months ago. Which is why I wasn’t in too big a hurry when I went out to feed Delilah. I searched the ground as I walked, hoping to find a stray piece of burlap or feed sack to put in my quilt.

  Soon as she saw me pass the woodpile in the middle of our yard, Delilah started braying like there was no tomorrow.

  “Hush up, Delilah! Don’t want to make Mama mad. Not today!” It didn’t make no difference to Delilah that Mama was feeling bad. She kept up her racket until I got to the fence. Once I was there, she turned her ears forward and back, then stuck her nose through the fence for me to scratch. As I scooped grain from the feed sack, she nibbled my arms with her lips, her warm breath chasing away the cool autumn air. Soon as the feed was in her bucket, she buried her head and didn’t pay me no more mind. I scratched her neck for a minute more as the sky began to lighten.

  In the yard the hens squawked as Mama raised the broom and banged it against the side of the house to let all the dirt out of the sorghum stalks. Then she started beating it against the One Patch quilt she had strung up on the clothesline. Mama always said banging a quilt with the broom was just about the only way to keep the cloth clean in between washings. You knew you was done when those little clouds of dust stopped puffing up. But this time those little clouds sent Mama into another fit of coughing that forced her to stop and grab her knees again.

  “You okay, Mama?” I hollered. She just nodded and waved me away. So I sank down to my spot on top of the feed sack and pulled out my needle. As Delilah crunched the grain between her teeth, I held my needle up in the air till it caught the light and started to shine. Not that I needed light to put in a good stitch. I could touch the knot with the tip of my tongue and know it was tight. I could trace them stitches with my fingers and know if they was straight or not. I didn’t even have to think about what I was doing. When I was stitching, I could just let my mind go.

  Once I got the needle started, I looked out at the little bit of the world you can see from my spot beside the barn. Wasn’t much to it besides the half dozen cabins just like mine lined up side by side, so close to each other you could just about hear your neighbor’s salt pork sizzling in the skillet.

  In front of the cabins was a dirt footpath that led past Pleasant Grove Baptist Church and on to the cotton fields that took up most of Gee’s Bend. Past the cotton fields was cornfields. And in the far-off distance was a row of pine trees that marked the edge of the swamp. Beyond the swamp, the dark waters of the Alabama River snaked through the trees, keeping me on one side and the rest of the world on the other.

  What was it like across the river? Wasn’t no way for me to know since I ain’t never set foot outside of Gee’s Bend. What I knew about was right here: this barn, this yard, this cabin. So when I heard banging sounds coming from inside, I knew my stitching time was just about up.

  I tied a quick knot and had just got my needle put away when Daddy stomped down the wooden steps and into the yard. One look at the empty water bucket that was sitting on the ground next to the woodpile and I knew I had forgotten to draw the water. I real quick hopped off the feed sack and grabbed the handle. Daddy wouldn’t like me stitching before I’d finished my chores.

  “Reckon today we’ll pull in what’s left of the cotton. Then all we got left to do is haul it to the gin,” Daddy said as he two-stepped across the yard. “Hallelujah!” Daddy’s whole face sparkled. We was all looking forward to being done with the harvest. Then we could take it easy till planting time came around again.

  Mama’s lips curved into a half smile as she ran her hand across her big belly. “Make sure that boy does his share,” she said as my brother, Ruben, eased out of the house. As if Ruben was still a little boy instead of an inch past Daddy. As if he’d ever been a lick of trouble in all his sixteen years.

  “He knows I’ll take the switch to him if I have to,” Daddy said, giving Ruben a wink. Ruben grinned as he came down the steps without making a single one of them squeak. He was the only person I knew who could get into and out of our cabin without making a sound. Mama always said when Ruben wasn’t being careful, he was being patient.

  Mama never said those things about me. And it wasn’t no secret that, unlike me, Ruben hadn’t been switched in near about his whole life. He didn’t say a whole lot, but you could count on him to do whatever you asked. He was born that way, I reckon. But there was things about Ruben Mama and Daddy didn’t know. Things I found out by being neither patient nor careful.

  Like how Ruben went fishing on Sunday afternoons, even when he knew as well as anybody Reverend Irvin said Sundays was for resting. The first time I followed Ruben out to the swamp, I gasped when I saw him pull a cane pole from behind a thick pine tree. Then, when he reached around another pine and pulled out a little tin bucket, I couldn’t stop myself from talking.

  “This is your big secret?” I said, coming out from my hiding spot behind a hydrangea bush. “Fishing?”

  Ruben didn’t jump or jerk, just turned to me like he knew I was there the whole time. “I reckon now it’s our secret.”

  Wasn’t but one other person that knew about me and Ruben’s secret, and that was Etta Mae Pettway from next door. She’d come out if it wasn’t too hot. But that was before she went and moved off to Mobile. I reckon it’d been ne
arly a year since she fished with us.

  Sometimes it seemed like them fish followed Etta Mae right out of Gee’s Bend. I got tired of holding on to that pole when nothing was biting. So Ruben let me be in charge of digging worms out of the rich dirt under the pines. Then, when I was ready to try again, he’d bait my hook for me so I didn’t have to be the one to kill those worms.

  I swung the bucket by its handle as Ruben rocked back on his heels and Daddy gave Mama’s shoulders a squeeze.

  “You take it easy, you hear?” Daddy said as he rubbed Mama’s arm. “Reverend Irvin said yesterday Mrs. Irvin will be by today with some onion broth. And won’t be but a day or two till we finish up with the cotton. Then I’ll be here to help, and the Pettways will too.” Daddy glanced toward the Pettways’ cabin next door. The Pettways was just like family, same as everybody else that lived in Gee’s Bend. I reckon that’s what happens when you work the same fields and go to the same church and live in cabins just about built on top of one another. “Looks like they beat us out this morning. Guess we better be getting on. Working in the far field today—good two-mile walk each way.”

  “I’m just so tired,” Mama said, balling her hands into fists. “Cough won’t let up and my back’s been aching all morning.”

  “Don’t you worry.” Daddy kissed the top of Mama’s head. “Everything’s gonna be okay.” Then he kissed the top of my head while Ruben kissed Mama’s cheek. When he got to me, Ruben didn’t kiss my cheek. He thumped my eye patch instead. Same as he always did. I don’t reckon there was a better brother in the world than Ruben.

  When they got to the chinaberry tree that marked the edge of the yard, Daddy turned back and hollered, “Lu, you mind your mama,” Then he grinned that grin of his. Even when I didn’t want to, I couldn’t help but grin back.

  Once they was gone, it got quiet in the yard again. I lifted the bucket onto my head and walked toward the spring that was tucked away in a little patch of poplar trees past the outhouse.