The Persian Pickle Club (8 page)

Ceres put a hamper on the table and took out a bottle of peaches and another of rose-hip jam. “Does Ella know?” she asked. Ella was the only one of us who didn’t have a phone.

Mrs. Judd swatted the side of her head with the palm of her hand so hard that she must have felt like she’d been hit with a shovel. She hefted herself out of the rocker. “I must have left my brains on the car seat with my hat. I never thought to get her. I’ll go now. Ella’d never forgive me if she missed out.” Mrs. Judd went outside and fired up the Packard. Ella loved babies every bit as much as I did, and it was odd that the two of us who didn’t have them were the ones who wanted them the most.

Since there wasn’t anything left to do but wait, we unpacked baby clothes from a box Mrs. Ritter had set out, and Ceres got the Ritter family cradle from the parlor and began scrubbing it. “Lookit there,” she said, turning it over. “It must have been made from an oats box. There’s that Quaker man with his hair as long as Jesus’.”

“That’s a good sign, him looking like Jesus on the box,” Net-tie said.

We all found something to do, except for Velma, and were working away when Dr. Sipes came down from Rita’s room on his way to the privy. “Afternoon, Forest Ann. Ladies,” he said. Forest Ann gave him a silly smile, until Nettie cleared her throat, and Forest Ann turned back to the sink.

“The baby won’t be here just yet. You can take that flour off the stove, Queenie,” Dr. Sipes said. Outside, he stopped to exchange a few words with Tom and Grover, and when he came back, Forest Ann handed him a glass of lemonade. He took a swallow and said, “You womenfolks do all the work, and I get the credit.”

“And send the bill,” Nettie said. We heard a cry from above, and Dr. Sipes handed Forest Ann the glass, then took the stairs two at a time.

“I always liked that man,” Ada June said.

“You always liked any man,” Nettie told her. Before Buck Zinn showed up in Kansas, Ada June had so many boyfriends that she’d had to beat them off with a stick.

“That’s not true,” Ada June retorted. “There’s one man I could name that I hated from the first time I ever saw him.”

Before any of us could reply, Mrs. Judd’s big Packard pulled up outside, and Ella jumped out, holding a box almost as big as she was and a bouquet of summer roses. I held the screen door open for her, and she rushed through and asked, “Is the baby here yet?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Rita could be in for a difficult time, but don’t you worry. Doc Sipes is real good,” Ceres told Ella.

Ella filled a canning jar with water from the kitchen pump and arranged the roses in it. “She’ll be fine. She’s got us.”

“She’s got too many of us,” Mrs. Judd said, coming through the door and letting the screen bang shut behind her. She looked at her father’s old pocket watch that hung from a ribbon around her neck. “Now I’m going home, and Nettie, you better take Velma back. Forest Ann, you go on, too, even though I guess you won’t be having any visitors this evening.” She looked up in the direction of the sickroom, where Dr. Sipes was with Rita, just in case Forest Ann didn’t get her meaning. Then she looked over at the rest of us, deciding who else should go home. “Opalina—”

But Opalina wasn’t going to let Mrs. Judd order her around, and she said quickly, “If nobody minds, I’ll just run along and fix supper for Anson.”

I wouldn’t let Mrs. Judd send me home, either, but she didn’t try. Instead, she told me, “If Lizzy Olive shows up with that slimy chocolate pudding of hers, you feed it to the pigs. Don’t let Reverend Olive pray over Rita. He’ll tell her that hog-wash about childbirth pain being her natural punishment on account of she’s a daughter of Eve.” Mrs. Judd shoved her big handbag under her arm and pushed at the screen door, letting it hit her behind so it wouldn’t bang.

Before Mrs. Judd reached the porch stairs, Mrs. Ritter came into the kitchen and looked around like she didn’t know who we were. “It’s Queenie … and the Persian Pickle,” I said.

“Yes, of course, dearie,” Mrs. Ritter replied. Then her eyes came into focus and she smiled a little. “I came for … My stars, my mind’s gone.” She looked around the room until she spotted the teakettle. “That’s it. The water. And a basin.”

“Mrs. Ritter, the hired man’s wife said if you put a knife under the bed, it cuts the pain. I told Agnes T. Ritter, but she said it was stupid. You could try it. I don’t think it would hurt, anyway.”

Mrs. Judd, who had stopped on the porch when Mrs. Ritter came into the kitchen, opened the screen and stuck her head in. I expected her to tell me I was a fool for holding with old wives’ tales. “It helped with Wilson.” I turned to stare, and she added, “If you keep leaving your mouth open, Queenie Bean, you’ll swallow a fly. Now, get out a knife and go on upstairs with Rita. You being closer to her than the rest of us, you ought to be there with Sabra and Agnes.”

I did as she ordered, pausing to snatch up a sharp knife, and followed Mrs. Ritter up to the sickroom, standing next to the doctor at the foot of the bed. He was telling Agnes T. Ritter what to do, and for the first time in her life, Agnes T. Ritter was doing a thing without talking back. I wanted to tell that to Rita so she’d laugh, but I didn’t. When Agnes T. Ritter wasn’t looking, I slid the knife under the bed. Then I moved around so I could stand beside Rita. I squeezed her hand and brushed back her hair, which was frizzy and damp. Little prickles of sweat stood out all over her face, so I dipped a cloth in a basin and sponged her off.

“The baby’s coming faster than I thought. It won’t be more than a few minutes,” Dr. Sipes said as Rita stiffened. I clutched her hand and made little clucking noises until the pain passed. “That’s good. That’s real good, Rita. You just grab on to Queen-ie when you need to,” Dr. Sipes said, as calm as if he was telling her how to spread chicken feed.

A car drove up, and through the window, I saw Lizzy and Foster Olive get out and go to the front door, just like they were company. I guessed Lizzy Olive had been listening in on the party line when Agnes T. Ritter called the Persian Pickle. Nobody answered the front door, so the two of them went around to the kitchen, which is where friends go when they call. We heard Reverend Olive’s voice come up the stairs, although we couldn’t make out the words. Then Ella said, “No! You stay away from her. We’ll take care of her.” Ella never talked above a whisper, and her voice was so loud, I jumped.

“Well, I’m glad for that,” the doctor said. “I can’t abide that man prattling around a sickroom.” The car started, and Dr. Sipes winked at me. He was a real nice man, and I wished for Forest Ann’s sake that he wasn’t married to that ill-tempered woman. Dr. Sipes and Forest Ann deserved to be together, but he was too good a man to leave his wife, so the two of them carried on, thinking nobody knew.

Just then, Rita cried out, and Dr. Sipes told her to push hard. In our minds, all of us pushed right along with her, working up as much of a sweat as Rita did to get that baby born. I never knew how long it took, maybe five minutes, maybe thirty. All the time ran together. When it was over, the doctor was holding the tinest baby I’d ever seen, scrawny, like a new duck, and he said, “Why, Rita, you’ve got a little baby girl.” Now that her job was over, Rita closed her eyes. At first, the tension went out of her. Then her knees shook, and the shivering moved all over her body, although the room was as hot as the kitchen. Agnes T. Ritter put a blanket over her.

“Oh, the flour,” I said. “I’ll get the flour,” and I hurried down the stairs.

“It’s a girl, a fine baby girl,” I told the women in the kitchen. They’d known the baby was coming when I went upstairs, so they’d stayed right there instead of going home.

“Is Rita all right?” Ella asked.

“Why, she’s fine.” I told them. “I think.” But I wasn’t so sure of that. I grabbed the flour and rushed back to the sickroom.

Rita was asleep, and the doctor was working over the baby, who lay on a clean towel on the dresser. “How is Rita?” I asked.

Dr. Sipes didn’t look up from the baby. “Rita’ll be fine, but I don’t know about the baby.”

“She’s a mewly little thing. She doesn’t have a chance—” Agnes T. Ritter began, but her mother interrupted her.

“Somebody better tell Tom. He’ll want to be here. Go get him, will you, Queenie?” Her face was damp from tears or perspiration, probably both.

Before I went downstairs again, I reached under the bed for the knife I’d put there, and discovered two of them lying on the floor. I never knew who left the second one, but I know it wasn’t Mrs. Ritter, because she hadn’t brought one upstairs with her. I slipped both of them into my pocket and set them on the kitchen table on my way outside. I told Tom he had a daughter and sent him up to see Rita, but I stayed outside and put my head on Grover’s shoulder. “It’s too little. It doesn’t have a chance,” I cried.

Little Wanda, which is the pretty name Tom and Rita picked for their baby, lived only two days, and I grieved as if that child had been my own. Rita kept her sorrow to herself, and I told Grover I thought she was a fine person not to trouble others. Grover replied he didn’t think Rita was as upset as I was about losing the baby.

“That’s the awfullest thing you ever said, Grover.” He was sitting at the table eating brownies, and I picked up the plate and set it on the counter where he couldn’t reach it.

“Honey, I know you like Rita, but you see her the way you want her to be, not the way she is. She’s not a country girl any more than Tom’s a farmer. He as much as told us that. Rita’s looking over a different hill than you are, and I have an idea she’s not going to be a friend to you the way you want.”

“Grover, that’s just not true.”

“I know how much you still miss Ruby, but you can’t expect Rita to take her place.”

“She’ll be as good a friend as I ever had, Grover Bean, and I won’t hear a word against her!” But since he wasn’t such a good judge of character, I forgave him and kissed the top of his big, fat head, the spot where the hair’s the thinnest, and put the brownie plate back on the table.

Rita and Tom had a service for little Wanda. Reverend Olive preached, and Mrs. Ritter told him before the service that if he said a word about that baby being born in sin, the Persian Pickle would never sew a stitch for the church again.

Tom and Grover made a little coffin, and the members of the Persian Pickle lined it with pink satin. Then we dressed Wanda in a gown that Ella had made. The dress was three feet long, embroidered all over with roses. We put a matching cap on Wanda’s head and tied it under her chin with a silk ribbon.

When we talked about Wanda later, Rita said she always pictured her wearing that dress and cap. “I can’t believe Ella would give me an heirloom like that for burying,” she said.

“It wasn’t an heirloom. Ella has trunks of baby clothes just as pretty as that one. She made them all herself. She still makes them,” I replied.

“I didn’t think she ever had any kids.”

“She didn’t.”

“Why, isn’t that the oddest thing?”

Sorrow wasn’t finished with the Persian Pickle Club. We were still mourning Wanda’s passing when the death angel, which was how Nettie put it, came calling again, right at club meeting.

We had Persian Pickle at Opalina Dux’s that day, and it looked like it would be a real nice quilting, even though Opalina’s parlor was the most uncomfortable room in Wabaunsee County—and you always had to look where you sat because of Opalina letting the chickens inside the house. Of course, she cleaned up after them, but Opalina’s eyesight being poor, it was a good idea to be careful.

Opalina had that old-fashioned horsehair furniture, and if you didn’t slide off it, then those sharp little hairs that stuck out poked the backs of your legs. Opalina’s house looked fifty years behind the times with all the embroidered mottoes hanging on the walls and the wax flowers that had melted a little under their glass dome so that they looked like tobacco chaws.

On the library table in the middle of the parlor, Opalina kept a candy Easter egg with a little scene inside it, but the candy flowers looked as if somebody had tried to lick them. There was a stereopticon lying next to it, and when I looked inside, I saw an Indian lady who wasn’t wearing her blouse. I bet Opalina put in that picture just to shock Nettie, who could be every bit as righteous as Tyrone sometimes. Nettie was too smart for Opalina, however, and never once looked into the stereopti-con.

Opalina had shut all the windows to keep the dirt from blowing in, and I thought we might suffocate. The room was cold in winter and hot in summer, and today, it felt like midsummer even though it was harvesttime. No wonder we always had the most absences on the days when Persian Pickle was held at Opalina’s. This time, it looked as if Mrs. Judd and Ella weren’t going to make it, the first time I could remember that Mrs. Judd had missed Persian Pickle. She hadn’t called to let anyone know she wouldn’t be coming, however, so there was a good chance the two of them were only tardy.

“It’s that machine of hers. I fear to drive on the same road with her. I bet it’s broken down out by Ella’s, and her with no telephone,” Nettie said. “Forest Ann and I will swing by on our way home and make sure they’re all right.”