The Persian Pickle Club (17 page)

“I’m just saying we went to a whole lot of work, and for all we know, it’s for a bunch of tarts. That’s who stays in those homes, you know. Girls with no moral sense!” She pressed her skinny lips together.

Nettie drew in her breath so sharply that we all looked up at her.

“Well, maybe not every one, but I’ll bet you most of them are. You can like it or lump it. I’m just saying what I think, which is girls who get in the family way when they’re not married are no more than trash.” Agnes T. Ritter sure was in a bad mood that day.

Mrs. Ritter reached across the quilt and touched her arm. “Agnes, that’s enough. We’re not here to pass judgment.”

Agnes T. Ritter put her pointy nose in the air, but she shut up.

Nettie turned her face away, but not before we saw the tears running down it. She tried to get up, but her chair was wedged in between Ella’s and Opalina’s, and she couldn’t move. So she put her hands over her face and began to sob, the tears running down her nose and dripping on the autograph of Bebe Daniels.

Forest Ann got up and stood behind Nettie, her arms around her. “It’s all right, honey. Everything’s going to be all right.” Forest Ann sniffed back a few tears of her own. “Nettie’s just concerned about Tyrone,” she told us.

But we knew Tyrone wasn’t the cause of Nettie’s tears. One by one, as we remembered what had set Nettie off, we put our needles down and looked at Nettie with sympathy. No, it wasn’t Tyrone. Except for Ella, who never did understand what was going on, Agnes T. Ritter was the last one to get it, and when she did, she sucked in her breath and said, “Velma’s … Velma’s ... Oh, I didn’t... Oh my God!”

“Be still,” Mrs. Judd told her quietly. “Ella, sweetheart, do you have my scissors?”

“Oh,” Ella said, looking around her chair.

All of us searched about our places for the scissors until Mrs. Judd held them up in the air and said, “Good heavens, they were right here in my workbasket all the time.” Of course, she’d known they were. She wanted to give Nettie a chance to blow her nose and dry her eyes with a piece of toilet paper from her pocket. By the time we turned to Nettie again, she’d stopped crying, but her eyes were red and her face was blotchy. The scarf had slipped off her neck, and her goiter quivered like a piglet. Forest Ann, who was still standing in back of Nettie’s chair, tucked the scarf into Nettie’s collar.

“I guess you could say Velma’s one of the less fortunates,” Nettie said at last, giving a short, bitter laugh.

“It’s her business,” Mrs. Ritter said, taking three or four stitches in the quilt and pulling the thread through. “It’s not ours.”

“It’ll be everybody’s business before long,” Forest Ann said.

Mrs. Judd picked up her needle and took a stitch, and the rest of us followed. Then Rita piped up. “We used to say in college that the first baby can come anytime. After that, it takes nine months.” Rita failed to notice that the rest of us didn’t think it was funny. “When’s Velma getting married?”

Nettie sent her a quick look. “She’s not.”

“Oh!” Agnes T. Ritter said. “Oh, heavens!”

“He’s a married man, if you must know,” Nettie said, and began crying again.

We all made little murmurs of sympathy until Mrs. Judd cleared her throat. “What does Tyrone say?”

“He doesn’t know. Velma’s afraid to tell him. I’m afraid to tell him, too, if you want to know the truth,” Nettie said. “You know how much he sets store by how a person keeps the commandments.” She looked around the circle at each one of us— as if under these circumstances we’d point out that Tyrone Burgett’s standards were always for the other fellow! As far as I knew, Tyrone didn’t personally keep any of the commandments, apart from not working on the Sabbath.

“Nettie and Velma don’t want to disappoint Tyrone. He’d be so hurt,” Forest Ann put in. We all knew that wasn’t it. They were afraid Tyrone would throw Velma out of the house, and maybe Nettie with her.

“Sometimes these young girls have accidents,” Opalina said. We all knew exactly what Opalina meant, and I shuddered.

“No,” Forest Ann said quietly. “I asked Doc Sipes. Velma’s too far along. It would likely kill her.”

I looked down at the quilt and saw how crooked my last few stitches were, and I pulled them out.

“I guess it’s up to us to figure out what’s to become of Velma,” Mrs. Judd said. She was right. The others knew it and stopped talking to concentrate on sewing. We were women who turned to our needles when there were problems to be dealt with.

“If she needs a place to stay, she can always live with Cheed and me,” Ceres said. “We’d welcome a young person—and a baby.”

Nettie shook her head. “That wouldn’t work because Tyrone would find out about it, and he’d give you ‘Hail, Columbia’ along with Velma and me. But thank you just the same, Ceres.” Nettie put her needle aside and said in a voice filled with shame, “Besides, Velma doesn’t want to keep the baby.”

“Oh,” I said, wondering why women like Velma and Rita, who didn’t want children, got pregnant, while God denied me a baby even though I wanted one more than anything in the world. He even gave five at one time to that Dionne family in Canada. Was that fair? Maybe things like that happened because God was a man and didn’t understand. I wanted to ask the others what they thought, but I was afraid Nettie would call me blasphemous.

Nettie glanced at me and continued. “I’m not saying Velma’s wrong about that, but it would break my heart knowing there’s a tiny baby out there someplace who’s Velma’s flesh and blood, and mine, too, and it’s living in an orphan home with nobody to love it. The baby will end up in one of those places, just like corn in a crib, if Velma doesn’t keep it, since nobody in times like these can afford to take in an extra mouth to feed. It’s not right to leave a baby to be brought up an orphan.” Nettie poked her needle into the quilt and took a single stitch. “Velma’ll have to stay here in Harveyville to have the baby. We don’t even have the money to send her to a home. They charge something, you know.”

“We could all help out,” Opalina said. “We could raise the money ourselves.”

“We’re women. All we have is egg money. If we ask our husbands, well, we’ll have to tell them why, and then everybody will know,” Ada June said.

That was true. Agnes T. Ritter began to say something but stopped before Mrs. Ritter could interrupt her. The rest of us thought hard but couldn’t come up with any suggestions. Finally, when it seemed like there was no answer at all, Mrs. Judd spoke up, and it occurred to me that she’d had a plan all along. “I know one person who could pay, that is if he doesn’t spend all his money trying to corner the market on this quilt,” Mrs. Judd said.

I looked up quickly because it sounded like she meant Grover. He and’ I were better off than most. That was true. But we didn’t have money to throw away, and if we had, Grover wouldn’t give it to Tyrone Burgett’s daughter. Mrs. Judd was staring at me, and I stared right back while the others looked from her to me. Then I had a terrible thought, and before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “Are you saying Graver’s the father? Are you accusing Grover of committing adultery?” I heard one of the Pickles suck in her breath, but I didn’t look because I wouldn’t take my eyes off Mrs. Judd.

“Oh, no such thing!” Mrs. Judd said quickly. “Don’t get your dander up, Queenie. I know well enough who Velma took up with, and so do you, I expect. What I’m saying is this: Velma’s going to have a baby she doesn’t want, and you want a baby you don’t have. Now we can use one problem to solve the other. If Grover’s willing to pay for Velma’s keep in Kansas City, I’d guess she’d let you keep the baby. Isn’t that about right, Net-tie?”

“Well, I…”

“Oh course she would. It’s a fact,” Mrs. Judd told her.

My hand holding the needle began to shake. I’d been doing a lot of shaking lately, but this time it wasn’t from fear. I tried to stop it with my other hand, but I jammed myself so hard with the needle that a drop of blood ran out onto the autograph of Mae West. I didn’t feel the prick because what Mrs. Judd had said was running around inside my mind like a chicken without its head, and there wasn’t room in there to think of anything else. I knew the club members had stopped talking and were staring at me, but I couldn’t make their faces come into focus.

“What if Velma wanted it back?” I asked at last.

“She doesn’t. I already asked her,” Mrs. Judd said. “You and Grover’d have to adopt it legal, of course. If Velma ever did want it back, she’d have no way to prove it was hers. Still, she won’t. She’s got no way to support it, and the father won’t have anything to do with it—or her, either, after she told him about the baby. Why, he said it wasn’t even his. Besides, you know Velma. She’s wanted to get out of Harveyville since the day she was born. She says after the baby comes, she’ll stay on in Kansas City or move to Chicago or Omaha, anywhere that isn’t Harveyville, Kansas.”

“Harveyville’s not so bad,” Opalina said.

“That’s beside the point,” Mrs. Judd told her, glancing at Opalina just long enough to let her know she thought Opalina was crazy. Opalina ducked her head and returned to her stitching. Everyone else turned to me.

“I don’t know if Grover would raise a foundling,” I said.

“Velma’s baby’s not a foundling!” Forest Ann spoke up. “It’s not a pig in a poke, where you don’t know if it’s got an inherited disease or foreign blood. Grover’ll know it came from an American, Christian family.”

Grover would also know that it came from Tyrone Burgett’s family, because I wouldn’t deceive him. Grover had no use at all for Tyrone, and he didn’t approve of Velma, either, not after she’d gone to town. Still, he knew she’d been a nice girl once. Would Grover blame a baby for its mother? I didn’t know.

The baby’s parents weren’t the only problem. There was another question, and that was, Would Grover want to raise anybody else’s baby at all? We’d never talked about adopting. After Dr. Sipes told me I’d never get pregnant again, babies were a subject neither one of us ever brought up.

“Well?” Mrs. Judd asked me. All the Pickles were waiting for a reply.

I looked at her, then at Nettie, and back at Mrs. Judd. “I could ask him,” I said slowly. “I’d have to tell him the truth. It wouldn’t be right not to.”

“Grover Bean’ll do anything you say. If you ask him, it’s as good as done,” Mrs. Judd said. “I guess this settles it.”

Nettie quivered a little and reached up to pat Forest Ann’s hand, which was on her shoulder. “I won’t interfere, Queenie. I promise you that. It would be your baby. But could I come visit sometimes? Would that be all right?”

“Well, of course you could! All of you can,” I said. “Even Velma could come and visit.”

“Oh, she wouldn’t,” Nettie said quickly.

The others went back to quilting, but I was too excited to continue my sewing, even if I was stitching Mae West’s name. I stuck my needle into the quilt top and leaned back in my chair, shutting my eyes to recall everything that had been said. The conversation had happened so quickly that it made me dizzy. In hardly more time than it took to sew a thread length, I’d gone from a barren woman to a mother—that is, if Grover approved. But Mrs. Judd was right about that. Grover wouldn’t say no. When I opened my eyes, I saw my friends glancing up at me as they quilted, and smiling. I was going to have a baby!

“When it’s time for her to show, Velma’ll just say she got a job in Kansas City,” Mrs. Judd said, and we all nodded. “It’ll be our secret, of course. Except for Grover, we won’t tell a soul.”

“That’s crazy!” Rita blurted out. “I never heard of anything so dumb. Nobody can keep a secret like that. Someone will let it slip, and in five minutes, the whole town will know.”

“No,” I said.

“I’m sorry, Queenie, but somebody’s going to tell.”

Mrs. Judd held her needle still and peered at Rita over her glasses. She looked down at the square in front of her and ran her hand over it before she said in a flat, even voice, “The rest of us can keep a secret. Were you planning on telling?”

“No, of course not.” Rita looked uncomfortable.

Mrs. Judd shrugged. “Then that’s that. There’s nothing to worry about.” She looked over the quilt and asked, “Ready to roll?”

We stood up and stretched, except for Rita, who stayed in her chair, shaking her head.

Persian Pickle lasted late because we stayed to finish the Celebrity Quilt, just as Mrs. Judd had predicted, even though I was in the worst hurry to get home and talk to Grover. But I’d come with Mrs. Judd, so I had to wait while we took the quilt out of the frame and held it up for everyone to admire, then turned it over to look for places we’d missed. At last, Opalina got out her Kodak and took views of all of us standing on the porch, holding the quilt.

After that, I hopped from one foot to the other, waiting for Mrs. Judd to leave, and even walked over to the Packard, hoping that would hurry her up.

The club members carried the quilt back into the house, but Rita remained outside, leaning against Forest Ann’s cistern, watching the women. She ought to have felt comfortable at Persian Pickle by now. We’d all made such an effort with her. But she still seemed to be apart from us, and I wondered if she’d ever really be a member. Rita motioned for me to come over to her.

“Queenie, you’re nuts if you go along with this. I know the female sex,” Rita said.

“Maybe you do, but I know these women, and they won’t say anything. I trust them.” I watched Mrs. Judd come down the steps with Nettie, whose legs were lumpy under her flesh-colored cotton stockings, and wondered if Velma’s baby would have sawdust legs like that. The idea made me grin.

Rita thought I’d smiled because of what she’d said. “I don’t know why you think that’s funny. If you knew what I know, you wouldn’t trust Mrs. Judd any farther than you could throw her.” Now Rita smiled. “Farther than you can throw her. That’s pretty funny, huh? I bet even Grover couldn’t throw her more than a foot.” I didn’t answer. After all Mrs. Judd had just done for me, I wasn’t about to make fun of her.

Rita pushed out her lower lip when I didn’t reply, then tossed her head back, sending her buttery curls bouncing. “I’ve found out some pretty interesting things, and like I said, I don’t trust the Judds at all. You won’t either when you know what I do. It makes me mad just to think about it. I’ll come around and tell you.”