Lapeer County, November 1964
“Shoot!” Nora winced and sucked at her finger.
“Don’t bleed all over that thing, now you found it,” William said as he walked into the parlor, camera in hand.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m not sure it would be noticeable anyway.”
“Maybe not. What do you call that thing again?”
“A crazy quilt.”
He nodded. “That’s the truth. That thing is crazy ugly.”
“No it isn’t.”
William snapped a picture of her incensed expression. “Yes it is. Nothing matches. The pieces are all jagged. There are little spiders on it. It’s crazy.”
“Exactly.”
He laughed a little. “Whatever. But that isn’t going on our bed, is it? I like the red and white one you made better.”
“No, it isn’t going on our bed. But I thought if I could fix it up I could maybe use it somewhere.”
“You mean somewhere I never go, right? Because that’s going to send me into spasms if I look at it too long.”
“Shut up.” She laughed as she lobbed a spool of thread at him.
“Shut up about that too. And go get it for me.”
He fished the thread out from under a chair. “Listen, I’m going to be downstairs awhile, okay? You call me when dinner’s ready?”
“Sure, such as it is.”
“You make a mean meat loaf, baby. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.”
He planted a long kiss on her lips, looked ready to change his mind about leaving, then waved the desire away and disappeared. Nora heard his footsteps diminish then vanish altogether when he hit the dirt floor of the cellar. A squeak. The muffled sound of a door shutting. Then she was alone.
She tied the thread and snipped off the excess. Then she sat back and assessed her work. The open seam was now shut, her tiny stitches hidden beneath the embroidered bird tracks that some ancestor of hers must have made long ago. She smoothed her hand over the quilt, looking for the next part needing repair. She had been taking in mending for months to earn some extra cash, but she hadn’t found any of those projects as satisfying as this one.
They had discovered the quilt the night before, which was a great surprise indeed. Having been at the farmhouse over a year, Nora was sure that its secrets had all been revealed, even if they could not be explained. She had not counted on the trunk, and in fact had all but forgotten the skeleton key her mother had included in the envelope when she and William moved in. It didn’t seem to open anything, so it went into a kitchen drawer and inched its way to the very back corner beneath the pot holders. When they found the trunk hidden beneath a sheet, back behind the very last mysterious cot in the attic, William had suggested a crowbar. Thankfully, Nora remembered the key.
“What is that?” William had said.
“It’s a quilt,” Nora said reverently. “Oh my.”
They unfolded it gently, each holding two corners. It hung heavy between them like a giant mosaic bowl.
“We need to take this downstairs.”
William craned his neck. “Anything else in there? Pirate gold? Maybe some big ol’ bags of money from a bank robbery or something?”
“Just some old shirts.”
William looked disappointed.
They brought the quilt down to the parlor, moved the furniture to the edges of the large space, and laid it out on the floor.
“Wow,” Nora said. “That’s amazing.”
William had kept his opinion to himself then. The find had made Nora so happy she had barely noticed he was still in the room.
Now as she carefully laid it out on the floor once more to look over her repairs, Nora breathed a little prayer of thanks that it had survived long enough for her to find it. The mantel clock struck the hour and she went into the kitchen to make dinner. After each step in the recipe, as things simmered and sizzled and baked, she wandered back to the front room to stare at the quilt. Where should she put it?
As she pulled the pan out of the oven, she decided to lay the quilt over the bed in the north bedroom, where there was only a plain wool blanket at the moment. She wouldn’t see it unless she purposefully went in there, but at least William wouldn’t have to look at it.
“Dinner’s ready!” she shouted down the cellar stairs.
“Up in a couple!” came the muffled reply.
Nora put the plates on the table and salted William’s vegetables.
“What do you think of these?” he asked as he breezed into the room a moment later. He laid four 5x7 photographs out on the table.
Nora came around to examine them. “They’re nice.”
“Yes,” she said, looking up at him. “They’re nice.”
He furrowed his brow and frowned at the photos.
“They’re beautiful photographs, William.”
He shook his head. “No, they’re just nice. You were right the first time.” He sighed.
She picked up a photograph of a pale leaf upon a large, dark stone. “This one is very good. I like the contrast.”
He was still shaking his head. “I don’t know what the problem is. I don’t like anything I’ve done since we moved out here. This place is hell on photos.”
Nora looked over the four photographs again. “There are no people.”
“No people,” he echoed.
“Those were always your best photos. Portraits, pictures of all different kinds of people.”
William looked thoughtful. He began to nod, slowly at first, then with increasing intensity.
“Let’s sit down and eat,” Nora suggested.
William sat, but he did not eat. “Here’s the problem. There are no people here. Didn’t I say exactly that when you first brought this place up?”
“That’s one of the things I love about it.”
William speared a green bean. “Nothing happens at this house. I doubt anything ever happened here worth photographing. Maybe I should take a day trip somewhere.”
“How about Flint?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Why Flint?”
“It’s close, it’s urban, lots of people. Seems like the right sort of place. Why not?”
“Are you going to get on me again about getting a job on the line?”
Nora played innocent. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, right,” he said with a half smile.
“Though if you took a notion to it, you could fill out some applications while you were there.”
He shook his head. “See? I knew it.”
“Why don’t you want to get a job at GM? That’s good money.”
“What do we need it for? We’re making ends meet.”
“Barely. We’re not getting ahead.”
“Ahead of what? If you have enough to live, what do you need more for?”
“Don’t you want a bit more? We could get another car. We could go on a vacation.”
“But if I don’t work thirty miles away, we don’t need a second car, and if I don’t work fifty hours a week on the line, I don’t need a vacation.”
“What about retirement?”
“Retirement from what? What do I have to retire from?”
Nora let out a frustrated sigh.
“Look, baby, I want time for my photography. That’s where my heart is. And now that I’m not contributing to my mama’s rent, I got a little freedom. I want to take some good photos—meaningful photos—and sell some, maybe put them in a gallery. Make a book someday. If we still lived someplace where anything happened, I guess I’d be taking more pictures for newspapers, like those photos from the march. You’ve got your sewing, I’ve got my camera, we’ve got this house. What more do we need now?”
They ate in silence for several minutes.
“Nora,” William continued finally, “I just don’t want to go back to a life where I’m treated different. Any black man can get a job on the assembly line, sure. But he’s still a black man while he’s there. Still taking orders from self-important white men in suits. Still don’t feel like a man.”
She was quiet a moment. Then she buried her face in her hands.
William was out of his chair in an instant. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s just—I’m pregnant.”
“What?”
“And there’ll be hospital bills and clothes to buy and a crib and all sorts of things and we’re not going to be able to afford it so the baby will have to sleep in a—”
He tipped her face to look at his. “Nora, are you serious? Are you really going to have a baby? Our baby?”
She tried to get control of herself. “Yes.”
Tears started to form in William’s eyes.
“I’m sorry.” She sniffed, wiping at her eyes with her sleeve. “I don’t know what’s come over me.”
William laughed lightly and pulled her close to his chest. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.” He held her for a long time, swaying back and forth. Finally he said, “Okay. I’ll look for a job in Flint.”
“Really?”
“Really. I’ll start looking tomorrow.”
Nora blew her nose in her napkin, and William settled back down into his chair.
The rest of the meal was consumed with talk of what sex the baby might be, which room would be best for a nursery, what color the walls should be, and what names they each liked.
“What about Bernice?” William said.
“Bernice? What? No.”
“Why not?”
“Bernice?”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“Okay then,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “How about Beverly?”
“Maybe.”
William sat back, satisfied.
“But if it’s a boy,” Nora said, “I want to name him Matthew.”