The Quilt in the Dog Crate
Then I got out my scrap bag. I had saved every leftover from that quilt, the way you do. I cut away the chewed binding, basted nine new hexagons where the corner was torn, quilted them down, and bound that corner fresh. It took four evenings. When I was done I could find the mend, but only because I knew where to look.
I am not proud of how long I sat on it after that. The quilt lay folded on my cedar chest for a week and I walked past it.
It was a flyer at the credit union that decided me. I am a teller there, have been for nineteen years. Somebody had taped it by the coffee pot.
Hospital Auxiliary Quilt Auction and Chili Supper. Saturday, October 24. Proceeds to the NICU.
Under that, in smaller letters: Quilt donations welcome through October 10. See Mrs. Lindahl.
I stood there with my cup until the coffee went cold.
It could not go to the State Fair, though the fairgrounds are two miles from my front door. A quilt that has been used and washed and slept on by a dog is not something you can enter, and I would not have tried. But an auction does not ask where a quilt has been. An auction only asks what somebody will give for it. And that money was going to the same room that had kept my niece warm for nine days.
I still thought Courtney ought to have the say. It had been a gift. Given is given, even when it is given back.
So I called her that evening. I called her, I did not text, because I wanted her to hear my voice and know I was not being ugly.
“I got Hattie’s quilt clean,” I said. “The corner’s mended. You’d never know.”
“Okay,” she said. I could hear a television.
“If you want it for her, say the word and I’ll bring it over tonight. No hard feelings. I mean that.”
“Denise.” She sighed. “I don’t have anywhere to put it. It doesn’t go with anything.”
“Then I’d like to give it to the Auxiliary for their auction. It’s for the NICU.”
She did not even stop to think.
“Donate it,” she said. “Honestly. But don’t get your hopes up, they’ll be lucky to get forty dollars for it.”
“All right,” I said.
“I’ll be there, actually. Mrs. Lindahl asked me to sit at the board table. They’re looking at me for membership.” She sounded pleased. “It’s good for the listings. Those women know everybody.”
Courtney had gotten her real estate license the year before. Her picture was on a bus bench at 30th and Main.
“That’s nice, Courtney,” I said, and I meant that too.
“Is Jeff there?” I asked.
“He’s asleep in the chair. Do you need him?”
I looked at the quilt on the cedar chest.
“No,” I said. “Let him sleep.”
That was her chance. I want it written down that she had one, and that I would have driven it over in my house shoes.
The next afternoon on my lunch I carried the quilt to Mrs. Lindahl in a clean pillowcase.
Mrs. Lindahl is seventy-four and has been president of the Auxiliary longer than some of the nurses have been alive. Her people are Swedes from up around Lindsborg, and she stands very straight. She was sorting donations on two banquet tables in the fellowship hall at the Methodist church.
“Denise,” she said. “I didn’t know you quilted.”
“I don’t much, anymore.”