Chapter 15
On the following Friday, Leah felt as nervous as a newborn colt. Neighbor ladies and their daughters were arriving to begin quilting her mother’s newest quilt top—and it would soon become obvious that Leah didn’t quilt, nor was she much good at the chitchat most women engaged in so effortlessly. Still, she felt happy. Mama was beaming, welcoming their guests, while Alice and Adeline took pans of cinnamon rolls from the oven to go with the cupcakes and brownies they’d already made.
“Oh, but it smells yummy in here!” Delores Flaud declared as she entered the kitchen with her two teenage daughters. “And look at this little angel you’re holding, Leah. Why, I think she’s grown since we saw her at church last Sunday.”
Leah smiled, realizing that this frolic would be as much about Betsy as it was about Mama’s quilt—and that made the day seem easier, because she wouldn’t have to rack her brain for topics of conversation. “She’s doing well,” Leah agreed, bouncing Betsy against her shoulder. “And she’s not a fussy baby, either.”
“Such an angelic face!” Frannie Flaud exclaimed as she gently touched Betsy’s cheek.
“And dressed all in pink, like a little doll,” her sister Kate said with a big smile.
“Mama made this dress—and stacks of new diapers and other clothes,” Leah said with a nod at her mother. “She’s kept the sewing machine busy ever since she got here.”
“I can’t wait to work on your quilt, Lenore.” Delores set a covered casserole on the counter, and she and her girls removed their coats. “It’s a real pleasure to see the patterns and colors other gals use. My quilts for around home all seem to look the same, because I’m using up remnants of fabric from our clothes—and I’m not inclined to go looking for a new pattern every time I make one.”
Mama smiled as she hung up their wraps. “Truth be told, this quilt top is made from scrap triangles left over from a lot of my previous quilts,” she said. “If I didn’t make a scrap quilt every now and again, I’d have to build an annex onto the house to hold my fabric pieces!”
The two ladies laughed as they poured steaming cups of coffee from the big urn Mama had brewed earlier. Leah enjoyed the easy way the Flaud sisters joined Alice and Adeline as they stirred a big bowl of frosting for the hot cinnamon rolls. Within the next few minutes, Cora Miller and her three daughters arrived—and when Emma, Lucy, and Linda joined the other girls, the chatter level rose immediately. It was so good to hear happy voices filling the kitchen after the intense, unpleasant confrontations with the twins these past weeks—and nice that the ladies always brought casseroles to these frolics for an easy lunch so the hostess didn’t have to do all the cooking.
Soon Anne Hartzler and her mother-in-law, Martha Maude, arrived along with Rose Wagler and her little girl, Gracie. When the maidel Slabaugh sisters stepped into the kitchen, Leah forced herself to smile brightly as she welcomed them. Jude had suggested that she should invite them to the frolic to dispel their notion that she was a poor housekeeper—and bless them, Mama and the twins had spent a lot of time this past week helping her clean thoroughly. Leah couldn’t miss the way Naomi peered around the kitchen while Esther set the pan of corn bread they’d brought on the counter.
“Mighty nice of you to invite us today, Leah. Supposed to get some snow later—even if we thought it was supposed to be spring—so we might as well be quilting,” Naomi remarked stiffly. She sniffed the air and squinted through her rimless glasses at Betsy, as though she thought the baby’s diaper needed changing.
“Been ever so long since we had a quilting frolic,” Esther said, observing the girls across the kitchen as they spread frosting on the fresh rolls. “My word, Lenore, if all of us are working on this quilt, I hope you’ve got it on an especially long quilt frame.”
Adeline and Alice turned toward them before Mama could respond, their frosting-coated knives suspended over the pan of rolls. “Not to worry, Esther, you’ll have plenty of room,” one of them said.
“Jah, we girls will be having our own little party,” the other twin chimed in. “We wouldn’t dream of crowding you ladies who truly enjoy quilting.”
Leah bit back a smile at the way Alice and Adeline had responded just within the bounds of proper courtesy. Esther was heavyset, and her protruding backside was often the subject of quiet jokes folks made when she passed by.
“Matter of fact, we’re all here except for Margaret,” Lenore said graciously. “We might as well head into the front room so you can choose the side of the frame you’d prefer to sit on, in case anyone else is a leftie, like I am.”
“That would be me,” Martha Maude remarked with a chuckle. “I’m ready for some coffee and to get to work on your quilt!”
Jude’s mother bustled inside at last, appearing flummoxed as she handed Lenore a covered bowl. “This was supposed to be a coconut cream pie in a shortbread crust, but the filling didn’t set,” she said woefully. “It was such a mess, I poured it into a bowl and chopped the crust into the pudding. We’ll just have to call it a trifle.”
“If there’s coconut in it, it has to be tasty!” Lenore assured Margaret as she carried the bowl to the refrigerator.
“You can be sure I’ll eat my share of it,” Esther remarked jovially as she held her coffee cup under the urn’s spigot.
Leah was relieved that everyone migrated into the front room without needing any prompting from her. Gatherings like these reminded her how socially inept she was compared to most women who’d attended and hosted frolics all their lives. She plucked a bottle of goat’s milk from the pan of hot water on the stove and followed her guests with Betsy cradled against her shoulder, determined to make the best of this event for Mama’s sake.
The ladies made a beeline for the quilting frame, and their compliments made Mama glow modestly.
“Lenore, what a beautiful color combination!” Cora exclaimed.
“And what a wonderful way to use scraps, instead of just piecing a nine-square pattern,” Anne said as she ran her finger over the design. “Where each of the four joined squares form a pinwheel, the design seems to move when you look at it.”
“I hope you’ll let us copy your pattern,” Martha Maude said, leaning closer to the frame so she could study the quilt top more closely. “I’ve never seen this one, and we have bins and boxes of scraps at home we could use.”
Esther wasted no time settling herself into the largest chair while her sister studied the quilt with a critical eye. “Mighty showy, with all those bright colors and prints,” Naomi remarked. “Surely can’t be for a Plain home.”
Mama appeared unfazed by this comment. “The English lady who ordered it provided the print pieces and asked me to make her quilt very colorful,” she explained as she took the spot beside Martha Maude. “She says it’s a gift for a niece who’ll go off to college next fall.”
As the other ladies took seats around the quilting frame, Jude passed through the front room with Stevie beside him. He flashed a thumbs-up sign at Leah before stopping to look at the quilt the women would be working on. “Very cheerful,” he commented before greeting each of the ladies. “I recognize fabric from some of the new clothes Lenore has made us.”
“Jah, there’s my new green shirt—and my new purple shirt!” Stevie chimed in as he pointed excitedly to pieces near the edge. “This would make a real nice blanket for the new goats, ain’t so, Mammi Lenore?” he teased.
Mama laughed as she threaded her quilting needle. “It would,” she agreed, “but don’t go telling the goats about it, or they’ll feel bad when I take it to the lady who ordered it.”
“No auction today, Jude?” Margaret asked as she clipped thread. “Friday’s usually a big day for sales.”
“Nope, so we men are going to make a few repairs in the barns and outbuildings,” Jude replied. “I can tell there’ll be a whole lot of clucking going on here in the house.”
“Jah! Bwahk-bwahk-bwahhhk!” Stevie crowed, flapping his bent arms like wings.
“That’s what hen parties and frolics are all about,” Lenore said as she rumpled the boy’s hair. “You’ll probably want to stop through the kitchen for a few goodies before you head outside. Might not be any left when you come in for lunch.”
Leah sat down in the wooden rocking chair and gave Betsy her bottle, delighting in the way the baby ate with such gusto. Maybe it was her imagination, but lately Betsy seemed to recognize her—to reach excitedly with her dimpled arms. Or maybe she’s just hungry and ready for her bottle, Leah reasoned as she smiled at the baby and rocked. It’s nice to have someone who’s so happy to be with me . . . who needs me.
Across the front room, the girls were seated around a rectangular folding table to play a game of Yahtzee. Leah was pleased to see that Emma and Lucy Miller were helping five-year-old Gracie, who sat between them.
The women at the quilting frame talked quietly, focused on making their tiny white stitches along the swirling lines Mama had stenciled on the quilt top. As Leah burped the baby and sang softly to her, she had to agree with the girls: quilting seemed like such a tedious way to pass a day, even though the end result was always beautiful. As little Betsy drifted off, Leah smoothed her silky brown curls. Like most Plain babies, she was able to ignore the noise around her—even the repeated rattling of the Yahtzee dice in the cardboard cup, as well as the occasional cry of “Yahtzee!” when one of the girls rolled all five dice alike.
Leah glanced at the clock, sighing inwardly. The ladies had been quilting less than an hour, yet already she felt unsettled and somewhat bored. On a normal day, she would be putting Betsy in her basket and heading outside with it to clear the winter’s dead leaves from the fencerows or to help Stevie tend the new lambs and kids. The girls were avidly engaged in their game, and the women were engrossed in their stitching. . . and even though Rose and Cora occasionally smiled at her and Betsy, Leah felt more than ever like a fish out of water.
She lasted an hour and a half before she had to get busy at something. Carefully she slipped Betsy into her padded basket on the kitchen table and set about filling a carafe with hot coffee from the urn. She cut the frosted cinnamon rolls and arranged some of them on two trays along with brownies and cupcakes, figuring she could at least be a considerate hostess.
Leah stepped out of the kitchen with the carafe just in time to catch Naomi running her finger along the bottom of a windowpane—and then raising her eyebrow as though she’d found a frightful amount of dust. Leah’s throat got tight, and she hurriedly set the carafe on the sideboard near the quilting frame. As she returned to the kitchen, she tried to recall Jude’s long-ago reassurances that he wasn’t the least bit concerned about a little dust—or about the neighbors’ opinions of it—but it still took her a few minutes to settle her nerves.
When Leah figured Naomi would’ve returned her attention to Mama’s quilt, she carried one of the trays to the girls’ table and was met with an enthusiastic response.
“I just got a Yahtzee!” little Gracie crowed as she smiled at Leah. “I rolled five whole sixes!”
“Gut for you,” Leah said as she set the tray on the table. “I’m glad you girls are having fun together.”
When Leah returned to the front room with the other tray of treats, however, the Slabaugh sisters looked up at her as though she’d committed the ultimate sin. “Food is never served near a quilting frame,” Naomi informed her stiffly. “How do you think your mother’s quilt would look if we had frosting on our fingers as we stitched?”
Esther’s expression softened as she eyed the cinnamon rolls. “This would be a gut time for a goodie break in the kitchen, however,” she said quickly. “You can only sit and stitch for so long before you need to get up and stretch.”
Leah set the tray on the sideboard beside the coffee carafe, her eyes growing hot with unshed tears. Ordinarily she didn’t let criticism bother her—she’d grown accustomed to folks thinking she was an odd duck—yet Naomi’s brusque remark had only underscored her feelings of being different from other women.
“It was nice of you to think of us, Leah,” Mama put in consolingly.
Cora rose from her chair to stretch. “My word, we’ve been stitching for more than an hour and a half,” she said as she glanced at the wall clock. “The time just flies when I’ve got a needle in my hand—but my back will be telling me I sat in one position too long if I don’t move around a bit.”
As if they wanted to soften Naomi’s remark, the other ladies stood up, too, but Leah had lost all interest in the tray of treats she’d brought them. Anne Hartzler smiled at her, her freckled face alight with kindness. “Little Betsy’s asleep? She’s such a quiet, sweet little baby, and you seem as comfortable with her as if she were your own, Leah.”
“We—we’re blessed to have her,” Leah stammered, deeply pleased about Anne’s compliment. “I give thanks to God every day for guiding her desperate mother to bring Betsy to our home.”
A short, humorless laugh on the other side of the room made everyone turn toward the table where the girls were playing. “The more I see you and Betsy together, the more I believe that you are her mother, Leah,” Alice asserted loudly. “I mean, she looks just like you. I think you kept her hidden away while Dat courted you, and then had Lenore leave her on the porch with that fake note, to make it look like Betsy had been abandoned.”
“Maybe that explains why you’re always warning us to beware of guys who come on to girls and then get them pregnant,” Adeline chimed in as she and her twin gazed accusingly at Leah. “Could be you’re speaking from experience, ain’t so? Keeping your secrets and sins from Dat until after he’d married you!”
The bottom dropped out of Leah’s stomach. The front room rang with absolute silence as her guests stood wide-eyed, too flabbergasted to speak—while wondering if the twins had exposed the truth. As the blood rushed from her head, Leah fumbled for words to refute the twins’ incriminating remarks, yet she sensed that her crestfallen expression—her tongue-tied inability to defend herself—confirmed her guilt to the women standing around Mama’s quilting frame. The gleeful gleam in Naomi’s eyes made Leah pivot and rush to the kitchen.
By the time she reached the door, she heard Mama reprimanding the twins, but it was too late—Leah was too mortified to remain in the same room with those hateful teenagers. As she ran across the lawn toward the barn, all she could think about was getting away from this place where she’d never felt welcome, never felt accepted by Jude’s brazen daughters.
By sundown it’ll be all over Morning Star that I deceived Jude, because Naomi’s just waiting to spread the news! Alice and Adeline will never stop harassing me—and those ladies will believe their lies over anything an outsider like me can tell them, she fretted as she ran through the open barn door. Nearly blinded by tears, she headed straight for Mose’s stall, where her gelding looked up from the hay he was munching. His big brown eyes took in Leah’s agitation with an air of wise understanding that horses displayed so much more often than people
“Let’s go, Mose,” Leah blurted as she grabbed his bridle from its peg. “We’re getting out of here.”
Always eager to stretch his legs, the gelding whickered and stood still as Leah quickly fastened the bridle around his head. As she’d done in her younger days, she hiked up her dress and leapt onto the horse’s back stomach-first before swinging her leg over him. Leah was vaguely aware that Jude was calling to her as she raced out of the barn, but the pounding of Mose’s hoofbeats drove her on. Gripping the horse with her legs and leaning low over his neck, she gave the gelding his head and ran full-tilt toward the road.