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“At one time it was filled with trash. That’s one of the things you’ll have to watch out for if you move in. Helen has a fondness for collecting. It took Nancy and Tessa a whole summer to get the house in shape.”
“They did a good job.” The living room where they stood was tastefully decorated in an uncluttered country style. She had not lived anywhere so inviting in many years.
A woman with short blond hair appeared on the stairs. “Sam?”
“Come down and meet Elisa.”
She came down the steps at a fast clip. She was dressed casually, but Elisa recognized good quality clothing. She was moving through middle age, but she was a woman who clearly took care of herself.
“Nancy Whitlock,” she said, thrusting out her hand in greeting. “Helen’s daughter.” They exchanged the requisite remarks before Nancy turned to Sam and spoke in low tones.
“I’m sorry we weren’t in church yesterday, but you can see what we’re up against here. I hope you explained to Elisa that Mama probably isn’t going to go for this?”
“I did.”
“I’m sorry,” Nancy told Elisa. “They invented ‘stubborn old coot’ to describe my mother.”
Sam defended Helen. “She just wants a say in her life. I think she might consider Elisa. She practically ordered me to hire her at the church.”
“Good thing you did, then, or you’d never hear the end of it.”
Elisa brought them back to the real point. “I like your mother, but if she doesn’t want me here, I don’t want to be here.”
“That’s a good start. As long as she thinks you’re listening to her, she’ll be a lot more cooperative.”
A noise on the stairs announced Helen’s arrival. She was not spry, but she managed the steps with little difficulty. “Nobody told me we had company.”
“I was just coming to get you,” Nancy said. “Did you finish packing the baby’s things?”
“I did, but I can’t say I’m happy about it.”
“They’ll be back.”
“Well, at least it’ll be quiet here for a change.” Helen nodded at Elisa, then at Sam. “You two here for a reason?”
“Do I need one? Couldn’t you use a good minister every now and then?”
“If we had one in the vicinity.”
Nancy poked her mother in the arm. “I can hear the devil stoking up his bonfires, Mama. For heaven’s sake!”
“She doesn’t like a thing I say,” Helen told Elisa.
“Maybe not, but I think she likes you.”
Helen’s lips twitched. “Nancy’ll go back to Richmond soon enough, I guess. We can get along until then if we have to.”
“Helen, I wanted you to know I hired Elisa the way you told me to,” Sam said.
“What are you all standing around for? Sit down and I’ll get coffee. There’s a pot warming in the kitchen.” Helen gestured to Reese, still contented on Elisa’s hip. “You’re spoiling her.”
“I hope so.”
The corners of Helen’s mouth twitched again.
Once she’d gone, Nancy’s shoulders slumped. “Well, she likes you,” she whispered. “I can’t tell you how much better we’d all feel if you were here. Sam says you work at Shadyside, too?”
Elisa nodded.
“Mostly Mama just needs company and somebody to bar the door if she tries to start a recycling center in the living room.”
Helen returned with a tray of mugs, and a pot of coffee with cream and sugar, which she set on the table. “Nobody’s sitting down!”
Taking a seat, Elisa tried to pull Reese up on her lap. The baby decided she’d had enough togetherness and wriggled free, sliding off the sofa and starting toward the stairs. Helen reached her before Elisa could even stand.
“Oh, no you don’t,” she said, scooping the baby into her arms. “Cissy!”
Cissy appeared at the head. “Well, I got a break. It was nice, too. Unusual.”
“Oh, stop complaining. We can keep her down here, but you’ll need to bring the baby gate down.”
“No thanks, I’ll just bring her up with me. Tessa says she’ll hold her while I finish packing my clothes.” By the time the speech was finished, Cissy had arrived to whisk the baby away.
Helen made herself at home in a flowered armchair. “So you just came to tell me you got smart and hired Elisa? Or maybe you have another idea in that holy head of yours?”
“We won’t ask you to spell holy.” Sam poured coffee for Elisa and passed it to her. He held out the pot toward Nancy, who shook her head, as did Helen.
Without fanfare, he moved on to the reason for their visit. “Elisa is looking for a place to live. It’s that simple, Helen. Her roommate’s getting married and needs Elisa’s room. You know how little rental housing there is in the area.”
“I know all about your plan. You people think I’m deaf and don’t know what all this whispering on the phone’s been about?”
One look at Helen’s expression and Elisa dismissed the possibility that she would be moving here. She could see that the family had made too much out of hiring a companion and completely antagonized the old woman in the process. Helen had no choice now but to assert her independence and refuse Sam’s request.
Elisa stood before Helen could deliver the bad news. Setting her mug on the table, she wandered over to a quilt rack in the corner. “I’m sure you don’t want a stranger in your house. I don’t want to trouble you about this. I’ll find another place, but I’m glad I had a chance to visit. Is this one of your quilts?”
Helen was silent a moment, as if she had to reorient herself before she answered. “Just something to take off the chill. I never got cold in the summer before Nancy went and put in an air conditioner.”
The quilt was red and yellow, with bright splashes of blue in some of the symmetrical blocks. Elisa discovered several more quilts underneath.
“Oh, they’re all beautiful. Such fine workmanship.”
“I’ll show you more.” Nancy got up.
“You don’t have to bother the girl none.” Helen sounded flustered. “It was a simple compliment, not a request for one of your quilt shows.”
“Elisa, would you like to see a few more quilts?” Nancy asked.
“I really would.”
Nancy opened a wooden trunk beside a comfortable armchair. “I keep some of my favorites down here. If Mama had her way, she’d pile them in a corner upstairs, where nobody could look at them.”
“I sure didn’t teach you enough about vanity, did I?” Helen demanded.
“There’s vanity,” Sam said, “and then there’s good old-fashioned self-respect.”
Nancy pulled out a quilt and held it in front of her. “This is a new one. Mama calls it ‘Oklahoma Made a Monkey Out of Me.’”
Elisa stepped closer to admire the quilt. Helen had used a number of fabrics, mostly greens and browns, like the colors in a forest.
“This is a Monkey Wrench pattern,” Nancy explained. “And this is the Road to Oklahoma block. See the unique way she combined them? And if you look carefully, you’ll see monkeys in lots of the prints.”
Elisa smiled, delighted. “I do. Look at that.”
“It’s just a silly quilt,” Helen said. “Nothing to fuss over. Reese likes monkeys, that’s all.”
Nancy pulled out several others, each completely different from the last. Obviously Helen enjoyed variety.
Elisa touched the last one Nancy took out and felt as if she had come home.
“This one is...” For a moment English failed her. She thought in English as often and fluently as she thought in Spanish, but sometimes the right word was in the wrong tongue. “You did this by hand? All by hand? And the colors? This is a rainbow.”
“So you like quilts?”
“I know very little about them.” As always, she paused, then decided to go ahead. “In the place where I grew up, there were weavers who made beautiful cloth in every color. This reminds me of that.” She fingered the quilt. Tiny vertical strips in bright colors met horizontal strips in a variety of lengths and widths. “This quilt would keep anybody warm, wouldn’t it? Like sunbeams.”
“I just tried something new, one of those art quilts, only I didn’t see any reason not to make it big enough to use. I take my art on the bed, and that’s the only way I want it.”
“Utility and beauty. That’s what the weavers believe. And each piece is part of who they are and where they come from.” She turned. “The way your quilts are.”
“Nancy told you to say all this, didn’t she?”
Nancy sputtered. “I didn’t tell Elisa to say a blessed thing.”
Elisa laughed. “I’ve been in trouble a time or two for not doing what I’m told, but never the reverse.” She glanced at her watch. “We’re keeping you too long.”
“Did you ever learn to weave?” Helen asked.
“It’s like so many things. I thought the chance would be there forever, and now I’m here and the chance is gone.”
“You could quilt.”
“I have never sewed much,” Elisa said doubtfully. “I don’t have a machine.”
“I have three. You’ll be living right here. You can have your choice, and I’ll teach you.”
Surprised, Elisa heard the offer and everything that came with it. She had a home if she wanted one. She also had a responsibility to this woman if she accepted the offer. This would not be as simple as she had hoped. If she packed and left in the middle of the night, Helen would be alone. And Helen would not take in another companion.
Yet what could she do? She was certain that if she refused, Helen would not offer this invitation to anyone else. And living here would solve Adoncia’s problem, as well as Elisa’s own.
“I would like to try,” she said carefully.
“Just so everybody in the room knows it,” Helen said. “I like Miss Martinez, and that’s the only reason she has been invited to stay here.”
“Mama, there’s not a person in this room dumb enough to think you’d do anything just because we wanted you to,” Nancy said. “You can count on that.”
* * *
Elisa was surprised at the way the remainder of the afternoon developed. Instead of going home, she and Sam stayed at Helen’s house to help. Assuming that his fiancée was still in town, she had expected Sam to make their visit short so he could spend the rest of his day off with her, but he had explained—too casually, she thought—that Christine had driven to Washington on Saturday to spend some time with old friends before she returned to Georgia.
Sam’s personal life was none of her business, but she wondered about his engagement. She knew from the little she had picked up that Sam and Christine rarely saw each other. If Sam were her fiancé, she would not be inclined to spend so much time with other people.
As the others packed, Elisa was pressed into service as Reese’s nanny, while Sam helped Zeke Claiborne pack the old minivan he had bought for the trip. Zeke was a young man still growing into a lanky physique, but Elisa could see how seriously he took his responsibilities.
Manual labor agreed with Sam. He seemed to relish physical activity, running up and down the stairs with boundless energy. For someone who spent so much of his life in spiritual and intellectual pursuits, he had the body of an athlete. Ten minutes into multiple trips outside, he had changed from khakis and a sport shirt into shorts and a T-shirt he kept in a gym bag in his car. He had muscular calves and thighs, and arms strong enough to have lifted George Jenkins off the ground Wednesday night and held him there until he sobered up.
Tessa came downstairs and showed Elisa where to put the baby, who had finally fallen asleep in her arms. Tessa had managed a brief hello earlier, but there hadn’t been time for more.
“Gram tells me you’re moving in?” she said when Reese was safely tucked into a port-a-crib in the back of the house.
“You approve?”
“You’ll be great for her. We’re all so relieved.”
“I’ll enjoy living here.”
“How would you like a tour? Outside, I mean. It’s a little chaotic to show you much about the house, but I need to stretch my legs. Mom and Cissy will keep an eye on Reese, but I can guarantee she’ll sleep at least an hour.”
Evening was on its way, but the temperature was in the high eighties, at least, and Elisa needed to stretch. She followed Tessa outside, taking a quick breath when the wall of heat and humidity hit her on the third step of the porch. “Your family has lived here a long time?”
“For generations. There were Stoneburners and Lichliters all over the area until World War II. Gram lost nearly everybody to the fighting or the aftermath or the economy. Her husband was killed at Pearl Harbor. He was a distant cousin of the Claibornes, so he had roots here, too. Gram raised my mother alone.”
Elisa was never surprised at the sadness people could recount. “It must have been hard to keep the farm.”
“That’s why she’s so stubborn, and why she doesn’t waste time on tact. She never had time for anything but plain speaking and doing what she knew was right. Whether it was or not.”
Elisa laughed softly. “We’ll get along. Most of my life I’ve been surrounded by people who were sure they were right.”
“Were they? Right?”
Elisa sobered. “Too often for their own good.”
Tessa remained silent, as if inviting Elisa to share. But she had already shared more than she was comfortable with. She changed the conversation’s direction. “All this land belongs to Helen?”
“Yes. She leases chunks to local farmers, some for corn, some for cattle.” Tessa pointed out boundaries in the distance and the locations of fields. “There are more farms to the west and south of us, and about fifty acres of woods and fields over toward the river that someone’s bound to build on someday. Let’s go this way and I’ll show you the pond. Last summer we were afraid it would dry up, but all the rain this year has filled it again.”
They passed a fenced-in area with something that looked a little like a gypsy’s wagon. It was surrounded by chickens pecking in the grass, chickens of different colors and sizes.
“The chickens are Gram’s weakness,” Tessa said. “And that’s a portable chicken coop in the center. When they’ve pecked up every weed and bug inside the fence, we hitch it up to the tractor and move it to another spot, stake out the fence again and let them have at it.”
