“We still haven’t figured who we’re giving this quilt to,” Liesel pointed out one particularly chilly day. A fresh snow had fallen through the night, and the morning was silent and shimmery. A fresh pot of coffee brewed for the grown-ups and Liesel’s mom was mixing dough for cinnamon rolls. The boys were working to get a good fire set in the parlor before they did the same next door.
“We still haven’t finished the quilt,” her mother answered, finishing the kneading and leaving the dough to rise before she rejoined Liesel at the table, a fresh mug of coffee in her hands.
They’d been working on the blocks for over a week, and the job was nearing its end. Between baking and household chores, the quilt had become an obsession for Liesel and her mother. They spent the mornings on it. The afternoons. The evenings. One night, each found the other, sleepless and fidgety-cold, wandering to the kitchen at the same hour in the middle of the night, and they took to a block together. When they weren’t working on blocks, they were talking about shoo fly pie and the shoofly plant and how flies, as an insect, were maybe not so bad as people figured them for. Pesky, sure. But a bug that leant itself to such sweet treats couldn’t be all bad. After all, out in the country, in a small town like Hickory Grove, flies were as much the fabric of life as anything else. Then again, persistent to the core and particularly troublesome at summertime, it wasn’t any wonder that they were best shooed off, even if they were likely to return.
“Do people ever give quilts back?” Liesel asked, frowning.
“What do you mean? Like, return them to the quilter? My, I reckon, yes.”
“It’d be a nasty thing to do, to give a quilt back. But maybe there are good reasons, too. Especially if the first rule of quiltin’ is all about charity and so forth. Right, Mom?”
In a region of mamas, Liesel’s mom was more of a Mom. Curt and practical, the woman cut a sharp image about town and in the home, both. Without an ample bosom or a thick waist, like lots of Liesel’s schoolmates’ mothers, Mrs. Hart’s hugs weren’t soft and suffocating. They were urgent and desperate. Like she was starved.
She watched her mother lay out all the blocks they’d made. Her angular features a mirror of the squares. Her thin arms and long fingers framing the small blanket as she studied it.
It was a force, that quilt. And it was just a baby blanket. For a baby they didn’t even know. Maybe even a baby who hadn’t yet been born. Now, that’d be something.
“A quilt finds its way to the person who needs it and to whom the quilters need to give it,” her mother replied. “And if you make someone a quilt and they return it, then that doesn’t say anything about the quilt or how good of a job you’ve done. It’s just what needs to happen.”
It was starting to make sense to Liesel. Like, perhaps they gave this quilt to someone with a baby, then one day, that baby grew up and the quilt was passed back to Liesel’s future granddaughter or something. That’d be a return, to be sure. And a good one, too.
Still, there had to be rotten souls out there the likes of which didn’t deserve a Hart Family Quilt.
“Have you ever given away a quilt and wanted it back?” Liesel pried. Her passion for the artform was so earnest, that Liesel could imagine just how many souls had earned a special quilt from her mother. Folks who didn’t deserve one, probably.
“Never,” her mother answered sharply. “Where’s the charity in that?”
“You spend all this time on something, and then what if the person just says, ‘thanks’ and tosses it into the bed of their truck for a fish fry?” Liesel asked, getting the iron ready.
“Oh, Liesel,” her mother answered, and suddenly, she looked older. Her face drawn, her hair silvery at the temples. “If we get to the end of this thing, and you’ve missed the point, then what?”
“So, you’re saying then that’s what the quilt was always for? A pick-up-truck-fish-fry blanket?”
“Maybe,” her mother said on a breath. “And anyway, we’ve still got a ways until we get to that point.”
“Aren’t we almost done?” Liesel asked.
“Not quite. We’ve just got the blocks finished. Next we piece them together. Then add the batting and backing. Then we bind. Then there’s one last step. At our pace, we’ll finish in a week or two.”
Liesel didn’t mean to be obstinate, but if they finished in a week or two, they’d finish ahead of schedule by a ways. “I thought it would take us clear to Christmas. All your quilts take you forever. And you said one of the rules was time.”
“We’re making a small quilt, and we’re working together. And,” she added, giving Liesel a sharp glance, “you’re good.”
Liesel flushed under the praise. It never grew old, acknowledgment from her mother. Never.
“And anyway,” Liesel said in agreement, “we’ve definitely spent time on it.”
“Now, then,” her mother went on, guiding Liesel to her seat. “Next step is to combine the blocks. We’ll have four blocks to a row. Five rows.”
Liesel followed her mother’s directions, and by the time they finished joining together one row, Liesel’s pancakes had cooled. Still, she gobbled them down. Quilting made her hungry.
After a load of laundry, they returned to the next row, then the next. In a couple of days’ time, they’d had the top all done, and Liesel could see plain as day what the thing would look like.
It was a pretty wonder, that quilt. And still, she couldn’t picture where it would wind up. Who would need it.
It was the Sunday before Christmas by the time they’d finished the batting and backing, and Liesel was due half an hour before mass.
She’d star as Mary in the Nativity play, and rehearsals were in full swing. Her lines were few, but staging and running through the lines and scenes with a hodgepodge of children of varied ages made for a mess for the Sunday school teacher who was in charge of corralling them into something resembling that special night in Bethlehem.
Once there, the teacher took stock of costumes and props. “Just five days!” Marguerite Devereux had trilled. “Five days, and we’re still missing a Baby Jesus.” The poor old woman clicked her tongue and shook her head as one of the Wise Men tripped on his robe and fell into a haystack.
Liesel didn’t know any babies, so she was no help, there.
“What about that weird little girl who comes to Mass and sits in the front with her mama?” one of the older kids suggested—the innkeeper.
Liesel knew the girl. She reminded Liesel of a little angel. White blonde hair and transparent skin and a bizarre mother who, to Liesel’s knowledge, had never once missed a Sunday in all of Little Flock’s history. Liesel’s own mother sometimes sent her quilts over to the mother—Monroe, something or other.
Liesel had even met the child and offered to babysit.
“Fern. Her name is Fern,” Liesel said.
The teacher snapped. “Mrs. Monroe would be thrilled. Fern it is.”
“And what about the Boy Child’s swaddling clothes?” the girl who played the donkey asked. It was as good a question as any.
Something occurred to Liesel just then. She snapped her fingers, happy to be helpful twice in a row. “I have something that would work.”
“What do you mean, Liesel?”
“For swaddling clothes. I have something I can bring.”