Before Rose knew it, it was almost Christmas. She had been so busy with school and chores and family that the days had passed in no time and Christmas was just ten days away.
Rose had followed her Aunt Sarah’s suggestion and used the small red square given to her by Miss Goins to start a quilt. Beauty showed her how to use the treadle machine in the sewing room, and it turned out that Rose was quite good at working it. Beauty drew Rose pictures of a few simple quilt squares from which to choose; she ended up picking one called Log Cabin, a small red center square surrounded by strips of dark and light fabric.
“The center square is the hearth, the strips are the logs,” Beauty explained. “It’s the hearth that makes the heart of a home, you see.”
Rose used fifty cents of the money she earned to buy a piece of dark red cotton for the center squares. Her Aunt Sarah gave her a bag of leftover fabric scraps to cut into strips. Every day when her homework was done she sat for a while and sewed strips to the red squares until the light in the west facing window dimmed and it was time to start the dinner chores. Soon she had a pile of finished squares that Beauty helped her to organize into an arrangement called Barn Raising, where the dark and light halves of the blocks formed a pattern of concentric diamonds. Rose and Beauty layered the top together with backing and batting, tied the quilt and sewed on the binding. Sarah, Queen and Happy joined them in the sewing room to admire Rose’s handiwork.
“You still don’t cook real well but you sure can sew,” Happy told her.
“You’re just full of surprises,” Sarah said as she examined the quilt. “This is beautiful work. All your seams are nice and straight. That dark red square in the middle of each square is real nice. Your first quilt, and it’s a beauty.”
“Granny Goins will love this quilt,” Queen said. “All those stripes and patterns, especially diamonds, confuse the spirits at night. A complicated quilt will keep them too busy looking at all the colors and patterns to bother you. They’ll be busy till dawn, counting your tiny little stitches, she’d say. And look at all those little red mojos, too,” Queen teased.
“Now, now,” Sarah smiled as Happy and Queen laughed. “Your granny is right about one thing. We all want our families to be warm and safe. This quilt will surely keep you girls warm and safe from this cold wet weather. I’m ready for some hot coffee, aren’t you girls? Do you want to bring your quilt upstairs and put it on your bed first, Rose?”
“No Ma’am, it’s a Christmas surprise for someone,” Rose replied. She planned on giving it to Queen on Christmas morning.
“Did you make the quilt on your bed, Auntie?” Rose asked as they passed Sarah’s bedroom on their way back to the kitchen. On the bed in her room another quilt lay. It was made of silk strips that shone in the dim light coming through the lace curtain in the window. The squares were log cabin squares but they were laid out in a different pattern, one that Rose recognized from Beauty’s drawings, that was called Sunshine and Shadows. The dark and light halves were arranged into rows of diamonds across and down the quilt. Short strips were arranged in a row around the quilt as a border and a black satin binding finished the edges.
“I did make it, many years ago,” Sarah told her as they stepped into the room and moved around the bed, touching and admiring the quilt.
“What a beautiful quilt,” Rose sighed. It was lovely, soft and faded, but the fine fabrics glowed in the pale light.
“This was the first quilt I made when I came to Rosewood,” Sarah said. “I made this when I arrived here, first married to Mr. Carrier. I was barely twenty, married and had babies already. I felt so grown up but now I wonder how I did it. Twenty years old seems like such a child to me now.”
Sarah smiled and ran her hand across the strips in one block.
“My Haywood, what a good man he was. We didn’t have hardly anything at all when we arrived, and he worked so hard to build me this house and to buy the land all around us. We needed blankets so I got busy and made this at night, after all day working I put this together as quick as I could, but it’s lasted all these years, fifty years, almost. I kept it for special once I made some wash quilts, but I leave it on all the time now. Reminds me of all those years I’ve slept under it, all those years I wore the clothes it was made from.
“I made this quilt out of my old dresses, the dresses my mistress Miss Vivian gave to me. Her mother left me to her when she died. I was just a little thing and Miss Vivian used to have dresses made for me, buy me fancy shoes and things and dress me up like a doll. I had gold earrings and a bracelet she’d put on me, and all these fancy clothes I wore. Taught me to play the piano, sing with her, dance for her and serve her and her company. Taught me how to run a big house, I was in charge of that whole house by the time I was twelve years old. I used to tell the cook twice my age what to make and when to serve it.
“Miss Vivian used to tell me all the time how much she loved me, that I was like a daughter to her.” Sarah shook her head, staring out the window at the rainy afternoon.
“She never loved me enough to free me though, even when I asked,” she murmured. “Didn’t love me enough to bring my mother out of the fields where she was dying from too much work. Didn’t love me enough to give me food for my brothers and sisters to live well like I did. I used to steal food all the time, I’d sneak out and bring it to them. She’d tell me she loved me but she’d slap me if she caught me, punished me by selling them off to another farm after I stole from her one time too many.”
Sarah pinched up a fold of the quilt, rubbed across the rows with her fingers as she talked.
“I suppose Miss Vivian was a slave in her own way. Her husband owned everything in that house and on that farm, despite it was Miss Vivian’s money that paid for it all. She couldn’t have any money without she asked him for it and many was the time he told her no. Her own money, he’d tell her ‘No you can’t have it, I need it for the farm’ or he’d just tell her no. She’d be so mad and hurt and she’d turn away from him, tears in her eyes, and I’d think ‘Now you know what it’s like’. But I still felt sorry for her too, married to that man who treated her so poorly.
“Miss Vivian never did have a daughter that lived, and I cried with her when she heard that her only son was killed in the war, dead at Gettysburg. I wasn’t too much older than him. We played together as children. But when I heard the war was over and we were free I packed all those fancy clothes and shoes and things and walked off that farm, even when she begged me to stay and not leave her alone with an old, sick, helpless husband, no money and no food left after everyone ran off. I packed up and walked off, never said a word back to her and went down the road to the farm where my two sisters were. I took them with me and ran off with a group of free men and women. Married Mr. Carrier, by my own choice, and came on down here to Florida. Put one of my sisters through college with my own hard work, kept them both fed and clothed until they were married themselves.
“I had no love for those who raised me, not even for Miss Vivian,” Sarah sighed. “I couldn’t love Miss Vivian or hate her and I couldn’t wear those clothes after I left. Couldn’t seem to let go of them either. I sold my earrings and bracelet. That money helped buy this farm. I made my own dresses, bought myself my own shoes. But I kept those clothes for a long time. In a funny way, I was lonesome for Miss Vivian. I was her pet and she spoiled me and I missed that sometimes. But when we needed blankets I cut those clothes all up right across the seams she paid to have sewn by hand for me, and I made this quilt. Sunshine and Shadows, it’s called. Sunshine times are now, here in Florida with my family. Shadows all in the past, some of those dark times were fine but shadows nonetheless, all gone. All gone, all gone.”
“Well,” Sarah said as she smoothed down the quilt and looked up at the silent young women around her. “Let’s have some coffee. It sure is cold today, isn’t it? Bring your quilt, Rose, let’s admire it some more before you wrap it. You are a wonder, girl, full of surprises.”
