Harriet's Quilt

	This story is a general work of fiction in 7 parts inspired by a reading of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Although the main characters are fictitious much of this story is based on actual historical figures and events. Reader’s discretion is suggested.
	HARRIET'S QUILT - Part I

I

had just come back from Sunday Service and thought I should visit with her today. My dear sweet friend, I had missed her. I had decided to go to her house down the road at the foot of the knoll right after I slipped out of my Sunday best into something more comfortable.

I saw her at the threshold of her kitchen’s screen door. She was a big, black woman and had her full head of silver hair tucked into a turban. Wearing a giant blue apron, she was craning her neck, looking for something... or someone.

“Awright now, come back in for yer tea ya hear, Louise?” she hollered for her granddaughter in a general direction. In the streaming light of the late afternoon sun, Harriet thought she saw a figure in the distant. She squinted and shielded her eyes from the glare. Her eyes rounded and her lips cracked into a smile.

“Why, Missy Norma! Is that you?” She stepped over the threshold of her screen door to welcome. “Why it really is you! You’ve come down from that big housa’ yours for visit haven’t you?” she beckoned towards me, “And just in time for tea!”

My eyes had not adjusted to the darkness when I stepped into her kitchen, but in the sparsity of the relative darkness, I could make out the usual furniture; a large wooden table with woodturning legs with a crockery cabinet next to a wood fire stove, its stovepipe chimney cutting the space of the asymmetrical room.

“You just sit yo’sel right here,” she commandeered, patting on a stool, “an’ lemme cut up some fast bread for tea”. She began to busy herself in the kitchen, slicing up the loaf, parting up the churned butter and pouring cups of coffee into chipped enamel mugs. Little Louise sat across the table, her eyes round as she gazed over me, observing my milky white skin – a rarity in this house.

I in turn, moved my gaze over to the half completed patchwork quilt on the other side of the table. My eyes ran down the segments of soft ceruleans and azures meandering from the top of the quilt to the bottom, parting other segments of ochres, tans and blacks. My lips parted and gasped, “it’s beautiful...”

“Oh that?” Harriet smiled as she served up the platter for tea, “it’s nuthin, Missy Norma, it ain’t completed yet... I hope you dun be mindin’ these simple morsels for tea.”

I ran my fingers down the winding parts of blue and little Louise had already made off with a few slices of buttered fast bread. There was a commotion in the other room. I could only make out peaks of “it’s mine!” that crescendoed with little Louise screeching, “NA~NA!”.

Harriet rolled her eyes, “You dun be takin’ nuthin’ from ya sister ya hear me, Ruth? Dun make me come there, ya gonna regrit’it...!” And there was a silence. A few moments later, Louise came back to the table her mouth smothered with butter.

“Nana, I’m done wit’ma tea, can you tell me a story now? Tell me the story of this quilt here, nana, please?” little Louise compelled with her childish request, “Tell me the story of you and Pappy Jim...”

“Why, Missy Norma, would you be interested too? Why dun I just tell you the story to you too...?”. She picked up her quilt to start on her stitiching.

Harriet pointed to a little red house in the lower part of the quilt on a reddish-brown patch of the quilt. My eyes trailed the big, winding body of watery blue down to where she was stitching the last threads to fasten a roof on the house.

“See this house here? This here be where nana wuz born. This where I wuz born, Missy Norma. Just a few hours before I be hurtin’ to come outta my mamma’s belly, Jim came and told her, “you should sit down, m’am, yo’ baby’s goin’ bust outta yo’ belly soon...”. My mamma laughed of course, but then she started to feel pain in her belly and she knew Jim wuz right. My Jim wuz always special like that. He always knew things before others did.”

She looked at me dreamily in deliberation and understanding. I nodded and smiled back at her as she continued her tale to me... and her granddaughter.