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Effie’s Quilt Block

On Saturday morning, Lily tossed the end of a rug over the porch railing and shook the dirt off. She flipped it back over to shake the other side. She heard a horse clip-clopping down the road, so she stopped to see if she knew who was passing by. To her delight, the buggy turned into her driveway. Beth waved to her from the front seat, next to her mother.

Lily tossed the rug on the floor and ran down the porch steps to meet them. Alice Raber got off the buggy and reached under the seat to get the tie rope for the horse. Beth hopped off the buggy, a paper bag in her hands. She ran over to Lily while Alice tied the horse to the hitching post. “We’re making a quilt for Teacher Rhoda,” she said.

Lily eyed the little brown paper bag. It didn’t look big enough to hold a quilt.

“Is your mother at home?” Beth’s mother asked.

“Yes,” Lily said. “She’s in the kitchen scrubbing the stove top.” Lily was happy to be outside for that chore. Rubbing the metal made a screechy sound that set Lily’s teeth on edge.

Lily ran ahead of them and held the kitchen door open. “Alice and Beth are here.”

Mama wiped her hands on her apron and hurried to the door. “Come in, come in!”

“We don’t have time to stay long,” Alice said. “We’re stopping at all the families with schoolchildren and dropping off quilt blocks. We want to make a memory quilt for Teacher Rhoda as a thank-you for her years of teaching school.”

Beth handed the little paper bag to Mama.

Mama opened it and drew out two quilt blocks.

“If you could embroider Lily and Joseph’s names on the blocks and get them back to me by the end of the month,” Alice said, “I’ll sew all the blocks together. Then I’ll have a quilting for all the mothers to get it quilted.”

“What a nice idea,” Mama said. “We’ll start on these quilt blocks as soon as we’re finished with the Saturday cleaning.”

Alice and Beth left to deliver the rest of the quilt blocks. Lily picked up a rug to shake it with renewed energy. Shaking rugs was much more fun if there was something to look forward to.

Mama spread the two quilt blocks on the table and handed a pencil to Lily and Joseph. “Write your names as neatly as you can,” she said, “and then I’ll start embroidering them.” Mama held the sides of Joseph’s quilt block to keep it from moving while he labored at trying to write his name as neatly as possible. Lily tried writing the L for her name but the fabric moved so she sat and waited until Mama was finished helping Joseph.

It was hard to write on fabric. Lily worked carefully until she had written Lily Lapp in big neat letters across the middle of the quilt block. “Can I draw a flower in the corners?”

“I think that might look nice,” Mama said. She held the fabric while Lily carefully drew flowers in each of the corners. They looked like little impatiens.

Mama found two embroidery hoops in her sewing closet and fastened the fabric in them. “You can embroider your name with a chain stitch while I do Joseph’s,” Mama said. “And then I’ll show you how to do the flowers.”

Chain stitch was Lily’s favorite way to embroider, and she set to work making neat, small chains. She worked on the quilt block every evening after supper. She was pleased with it and thought her quilt patch would be the prettiest of all the ones in the quilt.

It wasn’t long before both quilt blocks were finished. Mama folded them carefully and put them into a big brown envelope. She let Lily write Alice Raber’s address on it and carry it to the mailbox. Lily hoped Alice would start sewing the blocks together right away. She couldn’t wait until the quilting.

Church was at Effie Kauffman’s house on a Sunday morning in mid-August. Lily didn’t mind going to Effie’s for church nearly as much as she minded having Effie to church at her house. When Effie’s family hosted church, she was in charge, and when she was in charge, she was happy.

After the service, Lily and her friends were visiting in Effie’s bedroom. The girls were looking through Effie’s big collection of books on a shelf above her bed. Lily couldn’t believe how many books Effie had. They all looked interesting.

“Maybe we could read,” Lily suggested. Reading was her favorite thing to do.

“No,” Effie said. “I already read those books.”

But Lily hadn’t! Neither had the other girls.

“Let’s play communion,” Effie said. “I’ll go downstairs and get everything we need.”

As soon as Effie had disappeared, Hannah said, “I wonder why Effie thinks we’re not too big to play communion.”

Beth nodded. “She thinks we’re getting too big to do almost everything we used to after church when we were still little girls.”

Everyone agreed, but no one volunteered to tell Effie they didn’t want to play communion. That was the thing about Effie. Somehow, she always got her way. No one dared to disagree with her—at least, not to her face.

Effie came back upstairs with several slices of bread and a glass of water. There was a strange lump in her dress pocket that showed through her apron. “What do you have in your pocket?” Lily asked. She just knew this was a bad idea.

“Since you need to know everything, it’s my handkerchief,” Effie said, eyes narrowed. She turned to Malinda, who did whatever she said. “You can be the preacher and hand out the bread and water.”

Everyone lined up beside the bed. Malinda broke bits of bread off the slice she held in her hand and gave one to each of the girls.

When each girl sat on the bed, Effie said, “Now it’s my turn to be the preacher, but this time let’s do something different. Everyone stand with your eyes closed and your mouth wide open, and I’ll put the piece of bread right into your mouth.”

Just like always, everyone followed Effie’s orders. Lily wished someone would tell her that her games were dumb. Someone besides Lily.

“Okay, here I come,” Effie said. Lily held her hands behind her back and stood with her eyes closed tightly and her mouth open. Effie started down the line, dropping a piece of bread in each girl’s mouth. Lily was at the end of the line. All of a sudden, Beth and Malinda and Hannah started to cough and spit. Lily’s eyes flew open and she clamped her mouth shut. Effie had sprinkled the bread pieces with cayenne pepper. She laughed and laughed as the girls ran to the bathroom, gagging.

Lily felt sorry for her friends. She ran to see if she could help them. They were trying to rinse their mouths with water. Tears were streaming down their flushed faces.

“It hurts so bad,” Beth said, gasping between gulps of water.

Lily was worried about Beth—her piece of bread had more pepper on it than Hannah’s or Malinda’s. She ran downstairs to get Beth’s mother. Alice Raber hurried up the stairs to the bathroom.

“Make the burning stop, Mama!” Beth cried when she saw her mother.

“What on earth happened?” Alice said.

Everyone looked at Effie. “Effie told us to open our mouth and close our eyes and then she gave us bread sprinkled with cayenne pepper,” Lily said.

Ida Kauffman came upstairs to see what was happening and heard what Lily had said. Effie, now deflated, looked smaller.

“Clearly, these girls need to be watched more closely,” Ida said. “Whenever they’re together, they seem to create mischief.” She gave Lily a look as if she probably started the whole thing.

“Beth, let’s go downstairs and get something to relieve the burning,” Alice said.

Hands on her hips, Ida frowned at Hannah, Malinda, and Lily. “And now the rest of you go down and sit by your mothers for the rest of the afternoon.”

No one dared to speak up to her. Lily wanted to, though. She wanted to point out that Effie was the one who created 99 percent of the mischief. Did Ida realize that? But of course, she didn’t say anything. Being rude to a grown-up was worse than being falsely accused.

Teacher Rhoda would be very pleased, though, to know that Lily had used some arithmetic in real life—a percentage—without it being an assignment.

Lily, Hannah, and Malinda went down to the kitchen and quietly slipped onto benches next to their mothers. All except Effie. She went outside to play with the older girls.

An hour or so later, the families started to head home for evening chores. Lily saw Ida Kauffman take an envelope and hand it to Effie. “Tuck that in Beth or Alice’s bonnet,” she told her. “Don’t let Rhoda see you.”

Lily and Mama helped gather the last of the dishes and put them in the kitchen sink. By the time Papa had brought Jim up to the door, their two bonnets were the only ones left. Lily put her bonnet over her prayer cap and tied the ribbons. A pin poked her head and she loosened the ties. She did not like her big bonnet.

When everyone returned home, Lily took her bonnet off and hung it on the wall peg. Something fluttered out and landed on the floor. Lily picked it up. Why, it wasn’t a pin that had poked her. It was an envelope. Effie had put her quilt square in the wrong bonnet!

“Lily, come help me get supper ready,” Mama called from the kitchen.

Lily opened the envelope and looked at the quilt square: “EFFIE” it said in big, fat letters. Nothing else. Just her giant-sized name. And wasn’t that typical of Effie?

Lily stood there awhile, wondering what to do with the quilt square. The right thing to do would be to tell Mama right away so Effie’s quilt square would get to Alice in time to be included in the quilt. That would be the right thing to do.

But then Lily thought about all the mean things Effie had done to her: the sandwich switch, the taffy pull, even today—putting cayenne pepper on bread.

She crumbled up the envelope, tucked the quilt square into her dress pocket, and went to help Mama with supper.