The beautiful faraway look continues as she relates how her great-great-grandfather crossed a frozen Mississippi River, escaping from slavery. I think it is more romantic to make him come from the deepest South and cross a greater river than the mere Ohio. And, of course, she shares with me memories of her childhood: how as a little girl she and her friends went to bathe at the Federal Creek.
“The last thing you did at night was to take a dive in that creek,” she says. “Right in the middle of a cold winter!”
Those were beautiful carefree days.
“We was poor,” she says. “But we was never hungry. My mama would make something out of nothing.”
I think she has taken after her mother. She is the sole breadwinner and her quilts don’t sell that well. And yet she is able to conjure up food from her garden and from the food pantry at the Center, and prepare real tasty and wholesome meals. And have something left to preserve for leaner times.
Life was not complicated in those days, she continues.
“We raised our own meat…our cellar was full. Our tradition was to go to town every Saturday. Even if you had nothing to buy you went to town for the gossip.”
This was where they met racism. Because of their dark skin they were refused seats at restaurants and no barbershop would touch their hair. They were not even allowed to attend the same schools as children of the neighboring villages. The neighboring village of Chesterhill even outlawed people of color altogether. Some of the kids were yellow enough to pass for white and therefore were sent to a white school in Stewart. But soon the people there discovered that they were from Kilvert and all hell broke loose. Others, however, melted into white society and just became white.
“Ain’t it surprising now we see people who’re obviously Caucasian claiming minority status to benefit from them programs?” she asks. “After kicking us out of their schools too?”
Kilvert had its own one-roomed school, which the darker kids who couldn’t go to Stewart because of their complexion attended. Both she and Mahlon attended that school.
“So, that’s where you met?” I ask.
No, they knew each other from the time they were toddlers. He is only a year or two older. They were like brother and sister. In fact, they are cousins. They are both descendants of the first Quigley and of Abednego and of Harry Corbett. And of the generations of African Americans, Native Americans and Caucasian Americans who intermarried after that. They are all part of the inbreeding that has happened over the decades in Kilvert.
From what Ruth tells me, it becomes clear that Kilvert’s poverty is no accident. It is the legacy of the past isolation. Kilvert was denied services such as electricity until the 1950s and natural gas lines were only made available as late as 1967. Ruth tells me this with pride because it shows how tough her people are, and how they did not need any of these modern amenities that have made everyone lazy. That is why she still keeps her coal stove despite the fact that she has a gas one.
“Oh, man, those were them days,” says Ruth with some nostalgia that I fail to understand since from what she is saying “them days” didn’t seem like pleasant days at all. “I remember them cross burnings of the 1950s. I was a kid but I remember them like it was yesterday. People from Stewart hated us. Stewart was all white. Even today there’s only one black family in Stewart — Barbara Parsons’ boy.”
You do remember Barbara Parsons: the food bank manager and fund-raiser at the Kilvert Community Center.
“Talking of Barbara Parsons, I was at the quilt auction at the Center the other day,” I say. “I saw none of your quilts.”
The quilt auction is an occasional event organized by Irene Flowers and Barbara Parsons. I was fortunate to catch one a few weeks after my arrival. Most of the quilts on sale were made by the two women. Obed was the auctioneer. That’s where I saw that he could be useful sometimes. He was a very charming auctioneer too, making jokes about the bidders and the inspiring things they could do on those lovely quilts. He had the ladies eating out of his hand. I had expected to see some of Ruth’s quilts.
“I don’t take my quilts there no more,” she says. She does not want to talk about it. Instead she leans over and in her conspiratorial tone asks me to follow her to her bedroom, where she will show me something very important.
Right at the bottom of her quilt box she takes out an old almost threadbare quilt folded neatly in a pillow case. She spreads it on her bed. I do not tell her that I know something about this quilt. I have actually seen it a few times when she airs it. There has been a lot of derisive gossip from Obed about it. It is an Irish Wheel. Ruth points out a faint image on the quilt; rust in color. She says that is the image of the first Quigley — Lord have mercy on him. He died on this quilt. Although she does not make the comparison, it is obvious that to her this quilt is like the shroud of Turin. She does not let it be washed and it is always kept under lock and key in her oak chest. I chuckle to myself at the memory of Obed telling me that he and Orpah often laugh at the quilt behind Ruth’s back. They say that the outline on the quilt is that of dry urine rather than an image of a person. But, you know, you can see a person in that image if you look hard enough.
Later I hear from the women at the Center that Ruth does not send her quilts to the auction because she does not talk to them anymore. When she banned Orpah from ever touching her sewing machine Orpah went to learn quilting at the Center. Ruth heard about it and quarreled with the women there. But they continued to teach Orpah even after her mother threatened never to send her quilts to the auction again. It was Orpah who gave up the lessons on her own because she felt her tutors were just as traditionalist as her mother in their approach to quilts, although they were not rabidly opposed to anyone who wanted to dabble in the newfangled art quilts.
If I thought I had regained Ruth’s trust I was wrong. She gradually gets disillusioned with me because of the negative influence she claims I have on her children: approving Orpah’s wayward behavior; encouraging Obed to follow his heart into Native American shamanistic practices; going to the local church, which I didn’t know she was boycotting; arranging to take quiltmaking lessons with the women at the Center; and inventing silly names such as “Ayatollah Ruth” and “A Taliban in the House,” which both Obed and Orpah are calling her behind her back. I am ashamed of this last one. I never thought it would reach her ears. But it did, thanks to Obed’s loose tongue.
What crowned her disillusionment with me more than anything else was her discovery of Obed’s misadventure at the sorority house and his arrest. You see, Beth called to remind me of the painting job that Obed was supposed to do as soon as the winter was over, and to find out about the kind of paint that was needed and the cost since she was working on the budget. I was at the Center at the time, so Ruth received the call and started to probe, excited that Obed had finally got around to doing something useful with his life. She was shocked to discover that in fact he would not be painting the house for a fee, but to pay for his crime.