Mrs. Cobb slapped the reins and the wagon began to roll away. The men followed behind her, and soon as they was all past the chinaberry tree, I jumped off the porch to where Daddy was standing at the bottom of the steps.
“I’m sorry, Lu,” Daddy said, holding me in his arms.
I wrapped my arms tight as I could around his waist. It was me who should be sorry, not Daddy.
He stroked my braids. “Ain’t never seen a mule so disagreeable.”
Delilah. She wasn’t braying no more.
I pulled away from Daddy so I could get a look at her. That’s when I knew what Daddy was sorry about.
Delilah was lying flat out on the ground, and Ruben was on his knees beside her. She wasn’t making a single sound, and she wasn’t moving neither.
“Delilah,” I cried, running toward her. I knelt next to Ruben and I could see there was a hole right through the center of her neck.
Oh, Delilah! Why on earth did you have to go and make all that racket? Why couldn’t you ever just keep quiet?
Tears wet my cheeks. What was wrong with Mrs. Cobb that she had to up and kill critters when they was just doing what comes naturally to ’em? Wasn’t no reason for her to shoot Delilah. No reason at all.
When Ruben threw his arm around my shoulder, my whole body began to shake with crying. For as long as I could remember, Delilah had been there waiting for me every morning by the barn. She was always there no matter what.
“It’s all my fault,” I said, burying my face into Ruben’s shoulder.
“Lu,” Ruben said, pulling back to look me in the eye, “you just saved the cabin!” He pressed my head to his chest. “We still got our pots and our quilts and our butcher knife. It’s gonna be okay, Lu. Everything’s gonna be okay.”
“But I couldn’t save Delilah.” Tears kept coming down my cheeks and nose. “And I can’t save Mama.”
“Only God can do that, Lu,” Daddy said. He wrapped his arms around me and Ruben, and he squeezed so hard I thought my ribs would break. “Only God, you hear?”
When I looked up at his face, his eyes was shining. He stroked my cheeks with his big thumbs, tender, like I was a little child. “I won’t have you blaming yourself, Lu.”
Daddy held my face like that till I nodded. “Now, you and Etta Mae go get cleaned up while me and Ruben take care of Delilah. Can’t have your mama seeing you like this.”
Soon as Daddy let me loose, I turned back to Delilah. I gave her one last stroke between the eyes. That’s when I knew it could’ve been me lying there on the ground. If Delilah hadn’t been braying like crazy and if Mrs. Cobb hadn’t swung her shotgun, it could’ve been me. In a way Delilah had saved my life.
I wanted to go in the cabin right that minute and tell Mama there was some things that no matter how fine the cloth, no matter how straight the stitches, there was some things that was never gonna go in a quilt. Like how loud the quiet was now that I knew Delilah was never gonna bray again. Some stories you just got to hold in your heart.
I looked around the yard for the bucket, but it wasn’t noplace in sight. I reckon it was in the back of Mrs. Cobb’s wagon.
Me and Etta Mae walked down to the spring together, but we didn’t say nothing till we was there. So much had happened it was hard to know what to say first.
Etta Mae pulled her dress over her head and set it on the ground. “Soon as Aunt Doshie told us what Willie Joe said about the ferry busting loose, I knew you was in trouble, Lu.” Etta Mae smiled. “Me and Ruben went all up and down the river looking for you. Even had to spend the night in the woods. Wasn’t till this morning that we decided to check Camden.”
I picked at the bits of cotton and feathers on my arms. Wasn’t nothing more Etta Mae and Ruben could have done. “If you’d come too soon, then I might not have gotten to taste a genuine Coca-Cola.”
“A Coke? Did it fizz all the way down your throat?”
“That’s right.” I grinned. “Sure do wish you could have been there to play Mrs. Cobb’s piano. It was so big it nearly took up the whole room.”
Etta Mae splashed water onto her arms. “Was it maple, like the one I played in Mobile?”
“No, black. The shiniest most beautiful black you ever did see.”
“Listen to you,” she said, a grin coming across her face. “You done been out in the world, Ludelphia. All on your own.” The smile disappeared. “You don’t need me no more. Not like you used to.”
“Sure I do,” I said, my teeth chattering. “Ain’t nobody else in Gee’s Bend that can suck the poison out of a bee sting good as you.”
Etta Mae smiled, then her face got all serious. “Lu, you know I loved that baby, Sarah, more than anything. Broke my heart when she died.”
I grabbed her hand. “I know, Etta Mae. The doctor’s wife told me what happened. She said it wasn’t no fault of yours.”
Etta Mae’s fingers squeezed mine. “Wasn’t your fault about Mrs. Cobb neither. You hear me, Lu?”
I knew what she was saying was true. But tears came into my eyes again anyhow. In just three days, my whole life had changed. Wasn’t nothing I needed that wasn’t right here in Gee’s Bend. And wasn’t a thing that could happen that I wasn’t strong enough to get through.
“Mercy, it’s cold,” Etta Mae said, rubbing the goose bumps first from my arms, then from hers. “Reckon we best get on back.”
Real quick we dunked our dresses till the water ran clear. Once we was dressed again, I grabbed a handful of that bloody cotton. It would dry out, and nobody but me would ever know about it. But when it came time to set my quilt top up in the frame, I was gonna stuff them bits right between the seams. So I wouldn’t never forget that part of my story.
Etta Mae went to her cabin, and I went to mine. Ruben met me just inside the door where he was sweeping the glass pieces off the floor. The room still smelled sour, but somebody had thrown open the window shutter, so it didn’t seem bad as before.
“What about Delilah?” I said as I walked across to where Daddy was sitting on the edge of Mama’s bed.
“Wish we could’ve buried her, but ain’t a shovel left in Gee’s Bend,” Daddy said. “So we dragged her up near the swamp.”
I swallowed back tears. Poor Delilah. Just wasn’t fair what happened to her.
Daddy patted the bed beside him as Mama slept. “I know it’s hard,” he said. “But I reckon the old girl’s in a better place now. Don’t know what we would have fed her nohow. Mrs. Cobb done took every scrap of corn and grain in that barn. Gonna be hard enough feeding ourselves.”
“What about Mama?” I wrapped a quilt around my wet shoulders and sat next to Daddy.
“Lu, you was the one that went to see the doctor. What did he say?”
I hung my head. Might as well go on and tell him. “Doc Nelson said wasn’t nothing to be done.” I remembered the little brown bottles. “He said wasn’t no medicine yet for pneumonia. And that morphine Mrs. Nelson gave me . . . ain’t a drop of it left.”
Daddy sighed and rubbed his eyes. Then he put his hand on my knee. “We just got to keep on doing what we been doing. I ain’t seen no more blood since you left. She ain’t no better, but I don’t reckon she’s no worse neither.”
Ruben stopped his sweeping and leaned against the broom. “Seems like she’s breathing easier since you got back, Lu. I think she knew you was gone before.”
I leaned over so I could get a good look at Mama. Was it possible? Was it really possible that Mama might make it? That she might hold and nurse her new baby girl?
“Daddy,” I said, “I want Rose back. Now that I’m here, ain’t no reason for her to be up at the Irvins’. She belongs here. With her family.”
Daddy pressed his lips together and nodded. “Don’t reckon you need me to tell you it’s all right to go get her. Not when you big enough to go all the way to Camden on your own.”
My heart started beating real fast. Was Daddy mad at me? With everything else that had happened, I sure couldn’t take him being mad at me.
“Daddy,” I said, my voice shaking.
He grinned then. Wasn’t a big grin, but I knew what it meant. “I’m just glad you made it home safe and sound, Lu. That’s all that matters.”
I threw my arms around him and buried my face in his neck. “Thank you, Daddy.” His skin was sticky with sweat and he smelled of dirt. I don’t reckon there’s a smell in the world better than that.
“Go on, then,” he said after a minute. “Best go before it gets dark. I’ll sit here with your mama while you and Ruben go fetch Rose.”
I turned to give Mama one last look. “Be right back, Mama. I won’t be gone so long this time. And when I come back, I’m gonna bring you your baby girl.” Mama didn’t say a word, just lay there sleeping.
“You want these?” Ruben said as I walked away from the bed. He held my quilt top, the soggy paper sack and a scrap of yellow cloth in his hands.
I looked him in the eye. “Thank you, Ruben. Not just for this, but for coming after me.”
“When you didn’t make it home for supper, I knew wasn’t no choice but for me and Etta Mae to go find you.”
I rolled down the top of the bag. “It wasn’t anything like I thought it’d be.”
Ruben thumped my eye patch. “Now you know.”
The evening air was cool as me and Ruben set out on the footpath to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church. As we walked past the Pettways, I saw Etta Mae sitting with her mama and daddy on the front porch.
“Ain’t got nothing left,” Mrs. Pettway said as she rocked herself back and forth. And I reckon it was true. Even that chicken Mrs. Pettway had held so tight to was gone. Wasn’t no animal sounds coming from under the cabin or in the barn.
“Well, we got them hogs up there in the woods,” Mr. Pettway said. “They’ll come back when it’s feeding time.”
“But we ain’t got no knife to butcher ’em with or a skillet or a single potato.” Mrs. Pettway’s voice was more like a whine. “And it’s getting colder by the day. How are we gonna live? You tell me that. How are we gonna eat and keep ourselves warm?”
“Shhh, Mama,” Etta Mae said. “Shhh.”
But it didn’t do no good. Mrs. Pettway kept right on rocking and crying. And I reckon she had every reason to carry on. Wasn’t nothing none of us could say that would change the way things was. So me and Ruben just kept on walking.
Sure enough, the windows of Pleasant Grove Baptist Church was lit with candles and inside we could see the place was packed full of folks. And it wasn’t even a Sunday.
Inside the room was too loud to talk, and it made me think of all them ladies at the Red Cross drive. Folks was crying, and over and over again I heard the words “Mrs. Cobb.” It was like a hurricane had blown through and now everybody had to talk about every little thing that happened. Where they was. What was said. What they lost.
Aunt Doshie was there, sitting in her usual spot. For once she wasn’t saying a single thing to anybody. Just sitting there listening.
As we made our way toward the front of the church where Mrs. Irvin always sat, Reverend Irvin stood to address the crowd. “Children of the Lord,” he began, his tall, thin body swaying.
“Mrs. Irvin,” I said as folks quieted and began to take their seats, “thank you for helping with the baby.”
Ruben smiled at her. “Don’t know what we would have done without you.”
She pulled the quilt away from Rose’s face. “Your mama’s doing better, then?”
I sucked in my breath and didn’t hear a word of Ruben’s answer to the question.
“Rose!” I said. “Baby Rose!” Her eyes was closed and I could see her tiny black eyelashes. I reached out my arms and next thing I knew, Rose’s warm body was right up next to my heart. Her cheeks looked fuller to me, her face more round. She was already growing.
I stroked Rose’s hair. “Can you believe it, Ruben?”
“Let’s get her home,” Ruben said. “So she can be with her mama.”
Mrs. Irvin’s lap looked empty. “Keep her bundled up,” she said, clasping her hands like she didn’t know what to do with ’em. “Babies sleep best when they’re nice and warm.”
As Mrs. Irvin turned her attention to Reverend Irvin, me and Ruben made our way to the back of the church and out the door.
The voices from inside the church followed us back down the footpath. First it was just Reverend Irvin all by himself. Then it was everybody together.
“Swing low, sweet chariot,” they sang, “coming for to carry me home. Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home.”
Me and Ruben’s eyes met, then we was singing too. “I looked over Jordan, and what did I see, coming for to carry me home? A band of angels coming after me, coming for to carry me home.”
All the way home we sang for all that had been lost that day, and for all that had been saved. Wasn’t no better words than the ones in that song.
Back at the cabin, Ruben held open the door for me as I carried Rose straight to the bed and placed her next to Mama.
“Look at that,” Daddy said. I knew just what he was talking about. Mama and Rose fit together snug as puzzle pieces.
I watched ’em for a while, then I watched the flames stretch and curl as Ruben stoked the fire. Then I picked up my quilting things. It was time for me to start over.
I set right to work pulling the stitches out of the part I’d already done. Then I laid out all the pieces, same as I’d seen Mama do. The calico ones from Mama’s apron went in one pile, the rough burlap ones from the pocket of my sack dress in another, the fancy white napkin Mrs. Cobb gave me in another.
From the lunch sack I pulled Doc Nelson’s blue handkerchief and the scrap I tore from Etta Mae’s dress. The handkerchief I ripped into four skinny strips. The yellow piece from Etta Mae’s dress I tore into squares. Then I took off my eye patch. This time for good.
With the needle and spool of thread Mrs. Nelson gave me, I tied a knot and started stitching. It was gonna take a while to finish, but I wanted to get the most important part done right away.
I dusted off the little triangle of denim that had been my eye patch and took off the string. Then I set one of the calico pieces next to it and pushed my needle in and out. Now that I was back home in the cabin with my whole family beside me, wasn’t nothing to stop me from telling my story just the way it happened.