and one piece may be pretty and another one ugly, but it all looks right when you see it finished and joined together.’
Did I say that every pattern was represented? No, there was one notable omission. Not a single ‘crazy quilt’ was there in the collection. I called Aunt Jane’s attention to this lack.
‘Child,’ she said, ‘I used to say there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do if I made up my mind to it. But I hadn’t seen a “crazy quilt” then. The first one I ever seen was up at Danville at Mary Frances’, and Henrietta says, “Now, grandma, you’ve got to make a crazy quilt; you’ve made every other sort that ever was heard of.” And she brought me the pieces and showed me how to baste ’em on the square, and said she’d work the fancy stitches around ’em for me. Well, I set there all the mornin’ tryin’ to fix up that square, and the more I tried, the uglier and crookeder the thing looked. And finally I says: “Here, child, take your pieces. If I was to make this the way you want me to, they’d be a crazy quilt and a crazy woman, too.”’
Aunt Jane was laying the folded quilts in neat piles here and there about the room. There was a look of unspeakable satisfaction on her face – the look of the creator who sees his completed work and pronounces it good.
‘I’ve been a hard worker all my life,’ she said, seating herself and folding her hands restfully, ‘but ’most all my work has been the kind that “perishes with the usin’,” as the Bible says. That’s the discouragin’ thing about a woman’s work. Milly Amos used to say that if a woman was to see all the dishes that she had to wash before she died, piled up before her in one pile, she’d lie down and die right then and there. I’ve always had the name o’ bein’ a good housekeeper, but when I’m dead and gone there ain’t anybody goin’ to think o’ the floors I’ve swept, and the tables I’ve scrubbed, and the old clothes I’ve patched, and the stockin’s I’ve darned. Abram might ’a’ remembered it, but he ain’t here. But when one o’ my grandchildren or great-grandchildren sees one o’ these quilts, they’ll think about Aunt Jane, and, wherever I am then, I’ll know I ain’t forgotten.
‘I reckon everybody wants to leave somethin’ behind that’ll last after they’re dead and gone. It don’t look like it’s worth while to live unless you can do that. The Bible says folks “rest from their labors, and their works do follow them,” but that ain’t so. They go, and maybe they do rest, but their works stay right here, unless they’re the sort that don’t outlast the usin’. Now, some folks has money to build monuments with – great, tall, marble pillars, with angels on top of ’em, like you see in Cave Hill and them big city buryin’-grounds. And some folks can build churches and schools and hospitals to keep folks in mind of ’em, but all the work I’ve got to leave behind me is jest these quilts, and sometimes, when I’m settin’ here, workin’ with my caliker and gingham pieces, I’ll finish off a block, and I laugh and say to myself, “Well, here’s another stone for the monument.”’
‘I reckon you think, child, that a caliker or a worsted quilt is a curious sort of a monument – ’bout as perishable as the sweepin’ and scrubbin’ and mendin’. But if folks values things rightly, and knows how to take care of ’em, there ain’t many things that’ll last longer’n a quilt. Why, I’ve got a blue and white counterpane that my mother’s mother spun and wove, and there ain’t a sign o’ givin’ out in it yet. I’m goin’ to will that to my granddaughter that lives in Danville, Mary Frances’ oldest child. She was down here last summer, and I was lookin’ over my things and packin’ ’em away, and she happened to see that counterpane and says she, “Grandma, I want you to will me that.” And says I: “What do you want with that old thing, honey? You know you wouldn’t sleep under such a counterpane as that.” And says she, “No, but I’d hang it up over my parlor door for a – ”’
‘Portière[26]?’ I suggested, as Aunt Jane hesitated for the unaccustomed word.
‘That’s it, child. Somehow I can’t ricollect these new-fangled words, any more’n I can understand these new-fangled ways. Who’d ever ’a’ thought that folks’d go to stringin’ up bed-coverin’s in their doors? And says I to Janie, “You can hang your great-grandmother’s counterpane up in your parlor door if you want to, but,” says I, “don’t you ever make a door-curtain out o’ one o’ my quilts.” But la! the way things turn around, if I was to come back fifty years from now, like as not I’d find ’em usin’ my quilts for window-curtains or door-mats.’
We both laughed, and there rose in my mind a picture of a twentieth-century house decorated with Aunt Jane’s ‘nine-patches’ and ‘rising suns.’ How could the dear old woman know that the same esthetic sense that had drawn from their obscurity the white and blue counterpanes of colonial days would forever protect her loved quilts from such a desecration as she feared? As she lifted a pair of quilts from a chair nearby, I caught sight of a pure white spread in striking contrast with the many-hued patchwork.
‘Where did you get that Marseilles[27] spread, Aunt Jane?’ I asked, pointing to it. Aunt Jane lifted it and laid it on my lap without a word. Evidently she thought that here was something that could speak for itself. It was two layers of snowy cotton cloth thinly lined with cotton, and elaborately quilted into a perfect imitation of a Marseilles counterpane. The pattern was a tracery of roses, buds, and leaves, very much conventionalized, but still recognizable for the things they were. The stitches were fairylike, and altogether it might have covered the bed of a queen.
‘I made every stitch o’ that spread the year before me and Abram was married,’ she said. ‘I put it on my bed when we went to housekeepin’; it was on the bed when Abram died, and when I die I want ’em to cover me with it.’ There was a life-history in the simple words. I thought of Desdemona[28] and her bridal sheets, and I did not offer to help Aunt Jane as she folded this quilt.
‘I reckon you think,’ she resumed presently, ‘that I’m a mean, stingy old creetur not to give Janie the counterpane now, instead o’ hoardin’ it up, and all these quilts too, and keepin’ folks waitin’ for ’em till I die. But, honey, it ain’t all selfishness. I’d give away my best dress or my best bonnet or an acre o’ ground to anybody that needed ’em more’n I did; but these quilts – Why, it looks like my whole life was sewed up in ’em, and I ain’t goin’ to part with ’em while life lasts.’
There was a ring of passionate eagerness in the old voice, and she fell to putting away her treasures as if the suggestion of losing them had made her fearful of their safety.
I looked again at the heap of quilts. An hour ago they had been patchwork, and nothing more. But now! The old woman’s words had wrought a transformation in the homely mass of calico and silk and worsted. Patchwork? Ah, no! It was memory, imagination, history, biography, joy, sorrow, philosophy, religion, romance, realism, life, love, and death; and over all, like a halo, the love of the artist for his work and the soul’s longing for earthly immortality.
No wonder the wrinkled fingers smoothed them as reverently as we handle the garments of the dead.
Kate Chopin
Ma’ame Pelagie
I
When the war began, there stood on an imposing mansion of red brick, shaped like the Pantheon[29]. A grove of majestic live-oaks surrounded it.
Thirty years later, only the thick walls were standing, with the dull red brick showing here and there through a matted growth of clinging vines.
portière – heavy curtains hung in a doorway.
Marseilles – a city and port in southern France on the Mediterranean Sea, founded 2,500 years ago.
Desdemona – a fictional character in Shakespeare’s tragedy ‘Othello’ (1603).
the Pantheon – the 18th century building in Paris, an example of Neoclassical architecture with columns and a high dome.
