The Quilt in the Bank Window

Shawna

My brother is Elroy. He is three years younger than me and drives a grain truck for a farmer co-op, which means from late July through fall he is gone more than he is home.

He married Shawna eleven years ago. She is 47 now. She grew up over by Wadena and came to Fergus Falls for a job at the hospital, and she met my brother at a wedding dance in a church hall.

I want to be fair to her, because I have had a long time to think about it. Shawna is not a cold woman. She laughs loud and she hugs hard and she remembers every birthday in the family with a card.

But she has always wanted something she could not quite get. She wanted to belong to things. Clubs and committees and circles. She would join and then feel like she was on the outside of them, and it ate at her.

A few years ago she left the hospital and started selling candles she pours in her own kitchen. She sells them online and at craft fairs. Lavender, apple pie, pine. They are good candles. I burn them.

And about six years ago, she took up quilting.

She joined a Tuesday quilt club downtown, eight or nine women who meet in the back room of a fabric store, sew all morning, and walk down the block for lunch. Most of them also belong to the county guild, which is a bigger thing with a show every other year.

Shawna wanted into that guild more than she wanted anything. You have to be voted in. Every year she put her name forward. Every year it didn’t happen, and every year she came to Sunday dinner quieter than usual.

She told me once, standing at Mom’s sink with her hands in the dishwater, that the women in the club were polite to her but never really let her in. “They look at my quilts like they’re grading a test,” she said. “And I keep failing it.”

I felt sorry for her that day. I still do, a little. Wanting to belong is not a sin.

The borrowing

It happened in June, on a Sunday. We were all at Mom’s for dinner after church. Roast beef, mashed potatoes, the green beans Mom cans every August, and a rhubarb crisp from the plant by the back step.

Elroy was home that weekend. Shawna asked about the quilt over coffee. She had seen it before, of course. Everyone in the family had. But that day she asked to see it again, and Mom took her upstairs to the cedar chest.

I followed them up. I remember Shawna running her palm over the center ring. “Gretchen, this is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” she said. “Would you let me take it to show my club? Just for a week?”

Mom glowed. You have to understand. My mother is not proud, but she had spent 1,400 hours on that quilt and nobody outside the family had ever seen it.

“Of course you can, honey,” Mom said. She folded it herself, the way she folds all her quilts, in thirds and then in thirds again, and slid it into a clean white pillowcase so it wouldn’t snag.

Shawna carried it down the stairs in both arms like a baby. I remember thinking that was sweet. I remember thinking it was nice that she wanted to show Mom off.

A week went by. Then two. Then the fair entry deadline came and went, and none of us thought a thing about it, because none of us were thinking about the fair at all.

I believed her. Why wouldn’t I?