Around that time, my mother officially went off the rails and plowed headlong into HeartLand. The sisters began coming to our house, bringing gigantic bags of old clothes that Mom washed, then cut up into squares of fabric for the church’s quilting operation. Her hair had grown long and she was wearing it in a bun that skinned all the hair back off her face, then rested like a dowager’s hump on her neck. She switched from the long denim skirt to pioneer dresses. She wore kneesocks to cover the little bit of calf that showed and bought special shoes that looked like they’d been cobbled a hundred years ago. Actually, they had just been manufactured at HomeTown, HeartLand’s headquarters, and cost a fortune.
The literal cap came when Mom was awarded a “prayer covering,” a kind of bonnet that all the HeartLand females wore. There was a special ceremony, a “consecration,” when she was awarded her “covering.” It usually took place at the church but my mother got a special dispensation so they could hold it in Daddy’s room. I watched my father’s face as they placed the white lace hat on her head. He looked over at me and did what he used to do when we hid out at the Dairy Queen: he winked. But the sparkle in his eyes now was from tears. I knew he was thinking about what was going to happen to me when he was gone, and that, combined with the fear that Didi might not come back, made me start crying, too. The sisters hugged me and said not to worry, my mother had told them that I had chosen to walk God’s path, and, if I stayed on it, I too might be consecrated in less than a year.
The HeartLanders really started swarming over us after my mother was consecrated. They promoted her to making quilt tops. While I waited for Didi to come back, I started quilting with my mother so I could spend as much time as possible with Daddy. That’s what I told myself anyway. Actually, it scared me not only how good I was at quilting but how much pecking out stitches as small as a sprinkling of salt soothed me. Even the sisters noticed how fine my handiwork was. When they came over to pick up the finished work and made a fuss about it, my mother pouted like a little kid. I didn’t care. I tried to make my stitches microscopic just to hear someone tell me I was doing a good job.
Who knows? Maybe I would have gotten completely hooked if Didi hadn’t reappeared. But she did. One morning when I was gathering up the report I’d written for her about McKinley and the Tariff of 1890 so she wouldn’t flunk American history and I already had the long denim skirt on over my jeans, she honked. My mother and I both identified the honk immediately. We stared at each other as we worked through a long series of lightning calculations that yielded the same answer: my mother was not big enough to stop me. I walked through the door and out to Didi.
All she said as I jumped in the front seat was, “Nice skirt.”
I ripped the denim skirt off and stuffed it under the front seat.
“You have that history report?” she asked, backing out of the driveway.
I plucked the neatly typed paper out of my backpack and held it up for her to see. She smiled and nodded, her eyelids drooping like a cat’s in the sun, then held her fist up. I tapped it with mine. Didi put the Skank in first, revved the engine, and we peeled out in a spray of gravel.
I knew I would pay, but I didn’t care. Didi was back.