The Funeral Dress Read online

  Emmalee eased off the sofa and moved next to Wilma. “That cotton there’s from one of Curtis’s work shirts. I thought the touch of blue would remind Miss Leona of the sky up here on Old Lick. And I thought she should have some of Curtis close to her.”

  Wilma squinted and drew the collar closer. “I ain’t got my glasses. Tell me what’s this here?”

  “Hang on there a minute,” Easter said. She straightened her arms and pushed the palms of her hands into the sofa cushion. She rocked back and forth and lifted herself onto her feet. “Let me see that, Wilma. What are you talking about?”

  “Look a here, at this detail work the girl’s done?”

  Easter pulled the damask from Wilma’s hands. “Oh my heavens, those are needles and thread woven like a vine. I’ve never seen anything so delicate, so beautiful. Where’d you learn to sew like this, hon? I sure didn’t teach you this in Home Economics.”

  “That’s not so,” Emmalee giggled. “I did learn some of the basic stitching from you and a little bit my mama showed me when I was real small. But mostly Leona. She was teaching me things here and there. Said I needed to know more than stitching collars together.”

  Emmalee explained how Leona would lean over her shoulder and correct her hand as she learned a new stitch. They had sat side by side in the sewing room at Tennewa while the other women settled on the picnic tables outside. Emmalee remembered holding a wooden hoop in her left hand, a square of thick cotton cloth stretched taut between its frames. With the needle in her right, she’d prick the fabric and pull it up from behind.

  “Run the thread over here and push the needle through,” Leona would say, “and then bring it back up one more time but without taking your hand to the back of the hoop. See here,” Leona had said as she guided Emmalee’s hand. “That’s a stem stitch. Seems real simple, don’t it. Go on and take this home with you and practice. Remember, every stitch needs to be of equal length and spaced even. You can use this stitch to outline. And it’s perfect for making the stems of flowers. That’s how it got its name.”

  Emmalee smiled big as she thought of Leona sitting next to her in the sewing room. “But I ain’t done with the detail work. I got a few more things to add.”

  Wilma studied the sleeve some more. “What’s this here underneath the blue?”

  “Oh, I found that in the other bedroom there.” Emmalee pointed down the hall. No one knew of her coming to live with Leona and Curtis. It had been a secret, but she knew that was about to change. She had been afraid of Nolan finding out about her leaving. She still worried when she thought of it, even with the Lanes lying stiff and cold over at Fulton’s.

  “That’s a bit of lace from an old pillow sitting on the bed in there. Hope it was okay to take it apart.” Emmalee explained her work, moving her hands in the air as if she was sewing with a needle and thread. “I took it from the bottom and stitched the pillow back together, can’t really tell it’s missing.”

  Wilma walked to the bedroom, and Easter followed right behind her. Standing in the open doorway, Wilma pulled on a tissue tucked underneath her sleeve and wiped a tear spilling from her eye. “This room. All of this was for you, Emmalee. For you and the baby?”

  Emmalee nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Lord, Easter, do you see all this Leona has done?”

  Easter sidled past Wilma and into the room. She stood in front of the crib as if she were admiring a sleeping baby. “Look at this crib all made up so pretty. And the curtains. And the rocking chair. Oh sweet Jesus. It’s all so beautiful. Leona waited a lifetime for this nursery.”

  Wilma turned around and faced the framed photograph of Leona, Curtis, and Curtis, Jr., hanging on the other side of the hall.

  “Oh, Easter, look at this.” Wilma reached for Emmalee’s hand. “Leona never did get over losing that boy. Don’t think I would have done much better if I’d lost one of mine.”

  “How’d it happen?” Emmalee asked.

  “Lord, I thought everybody in town knew about this,” Easter said. “But I guess you was only a little thing when it happened.” With the tip of her finger, Easter reached out and touched the baby behind the glass. “Curtis, Jr.’s dying was awful. Just awful. Leona birthed him all by herself, right back there.” She nodded toward the bedroom at the end of the hall. “He was a tiny thing. Didn’t live long. Died in her arms.”

  Easter sniffled, and Wilma handed her another clean tissue drawn from inside the sweater’s sleeve. “After years of trying, Dr. Greer told her she couldn’t have another. Leona only grew worse after that. Sadder. Meaner,” Wilma said, twisting the tissue between her fingers. “I remember the baby’s funeral like it was yesterday. Curtis carrying Leona in his arms. He was so brokenhearted, but I’m not sure Leona ever saw that. She was hurting too bad to see much of anything but her own pain.”

  “We’d all been pretty close up to then,” Easter said, “but after Curtis, Jr., died like he did, everything changed.”

  “Can you imagine, Emmalee, how heartbroken you’d be if that sweet baby of yours was taken from you like that? In an instant?” Wilma asked.

  Emmalee remembered the look in Leona’s eyes when she held Kelly Faye in the hospital only hours after she was born. Leona had seemed drawn to the baby in a way Emmalee did not share or understand. She had felt jealous, guilty even, for not knowing how to imitate Leona’s expression. Now she stared at the baby in the picture, his face perfect, and thought of Kelly Faye’s.

  Wilma took Emmalee’s hand in hers. “I do know if it hadn’t been for her factory job, Leona might never have gotten out of that bed. She came back to work three days after Curtis’s funeral.”

  “Three days,” Emmalee said.

  “Three days,” Wilma repeated. “Mr. Clayton told her to take as much time as she needed. But there she was, sewing collars. She did it, I guess, because it was what she needed to do. I think a lot of women judged her for that though.”

  Easter nodded. “I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t think it was odd at the time. I ain’t got no kids of my own like Wilma, but after the accident Leona worked harder and longer than anybody else at Tennewa. When she wasn’t working at the factory, she kept herself locked up here in this trailer sewing night and day, making them slipcovers.”

  She stepped to Leona’s sewing table, piled with fabric. “I heard she took in so much work she never had a day to rest, not even Sundays. Some around here thought that was a sin, too. Probably some would still hold that up against her. Why she did it? For what? I really don’t know. It was like she couldn’t stop herself, like a drunk with his liquor.”

  “Too afraid of the quiet,” Wilma said.

  Easter picked up a piece of damask and draped it over her arms. She stroked it over and over again. “I understand that now. Only wish I had let Leona know.”

  Wilma turned to Emmalee. “Kelly Faye is a real pretty name, hon, real pretty.”

  Clutching the damask, Easter returned to Wilma and Emmalee. “Yes, it is. A real pretty name.”

  The three of them huddled together in the narrow hallway, their heads bobbing one against the other.

  Emmalee’s milk suddenly dropped through her breasts, and she wished Kelly Faye was there so she could fill her tummy. She wanted to kiss her cheeks and press her nose to Kelly’s tender neck, drawing in the sweet smell of her newborn baby. Instead, the binding grew wet, and Emmalee pictured Mettie tickling Kelly Faye’s lips with the tip of a bottle.

  “You done good here,” Wilma said, breaking the silence. “And I’m going to tell you exactly what Leona would tell you. Hold your head high. Way up high.” Wilma took Emmalee’s chin in her hand. “ ’Cause you can’t find your way clear, hon, if your eyes are glued to the ground.”

  Easter worked in the kitchen, humming an old hymn while she spooned her casserole into one of Leona’s Pyrex dishes. She placed the dish on the top shelf of the refrigerator and set about washing the dirty plates and glasses left soaking in the soapy water. “Looks like the we
ather’s changing,” she said as she looked out the wide-set window above the kitchen sink. “Storm heading over the plateau.”

  “If that’s so, I want you both off this mountain before the rain comes,” Emmalee said. “I ain’t going to lose anybody else.”

  Easter and Wilma hesitated to leave Emmalee alone. They offered to stay and help finish the dress. But Emmalee wanted to do it on her own. Besides, it felt good to offer a caring note to the women who had mothered her so well there at Leona’s trailer.

  They scribbled their phone number on a piece of paper and encouraged Emmalee to call if she needed help with her sewing or the baby in the weeks to come. “Anytime,” Easter said. “We mean it.” Emmalee promised she would, not bothering to tell them there was no phone at her father’s house.

  As they walked across the gravel drive to their car, Easter turned around and reminded Emmalee that three-fourths of a chicken casserole sat in the refrigerator. “Don’t let it go to waste,” Wilma added. “You got to keep your strength up what with nursing a little one. You’re a mama now, remember.”

  “Mama,” Emmalee said. She let the word simmer on her tongue as she waved good-bye. She liked being called that, at least the way Easter and Wilma said it. She blew a kiss to a redbird darting about the trailer and rushed inside, eager to return to her dressmaking.

  The sewing machine sat quiet in front of her, and Emmalee wondered if it was missing Leona, too, waiting for her to come and guide another piece of fabric underneath its stainless foot. Emmalee believed the trailer and everything in it was aware of Leona’s passing, and the redbird still darting about the window only punctuated her belief. She blew another kiss. “Go on. Bring me some good luck,” she said and picked up a piece of damask.

  Emmalee rolled the balance wheel and dropped the needle below the throat plate, then pulled it up, lassoing the bobbin’s crimson thread. She held the thread and a similar length from the spool mounted on top between her fingers and pulled them both to the back, away from the machine. She placed the dress panels underneath the presser foot, allowing only a half-inch seam, and pumped the floor pedal. The motor moaned and Emmalee pressed harder until the machine surged forward. She remembered what Leona had taught her and steadied her foot against the pedal.

  “This ain’t a race, Emmalee, keep it steady,” Leona once told her.

  The motor fell into a steady purr, and stitches dropped in rapid succession, the needle bobbing up and down. With the tips of her fingers, Emmalee navigated a straight seam through the thick fabric, only slowing her pace as she neared the point where she would fit the sleeve. She turned the balance wheel with her hand and finished the last three stitches before breaking the threads free.

  She raised the presser foot and quickly turned the dress but not before running a short seam along the left and right shoulders’ edges. She worked the other side of the garment as she had the first, and the machine hummed along amid the early-evening calm.

  She took to Curtis’s chair and basted the collar and sleeves in place with long loose stitches. Pleased with her work, she decided to set them by hand instead of returning to the machine. Besides, Emmalee loved sitting snug in Curtis’s chair with the yellow crocheted blanket spread across her waist. She made small, tight stitches, pulling and tugging the thread at the seam’s edge. She grew giddy as she knotted the final threads, again not stopping to notice the late hour.

  At last, Emmalee held the finished dress out in front of her and admired her work. She pressed it against her body and ran into Leona’s room to look at herself in the mirror. She turned to the left and then to the right, studying the crimson dress from every position. Emmalee rubbed her hand across the collar. She pressed it between her fingers as she stared at the photograph of the sleeping baby boy left on Leona’s dresser. Emmalee ran back into the living room with the dress draped over her arm and the photograph in her hand. She plopped down on the carpeted floor in front of Curtis’s reclining chair and opened the frame, careful not to tear the paper or cut her fingers on the glass. Emmalee removed the photo; and with Leona’s sewing scissors in her hand, she cut away all but the baby looking back at her.

  Emmalee placed what was left of the photograph inside the dress, over the darting on the left side. She pushed a needle into the damask, careful not to pierce the needle through to the other side. Working slowly, she whipstitched the picture onto the dress. For all eternity, Leona’s baby boy would rest on top of her heart.

  “There. Now it’s done.” She placed the dress on the carpeted floor and smoothed it flat with her hand. “Now it’s perfect.”

  Emmalee had not noticed that the rain had stopped or that night had settled about the trailer. It was dark, too dark for Runt to come up the mountain for her tonight. She would call first thing in the morning and then finish the hem and press the dress under a hot iron.

  Emmalee woke again on Leona’s sofa with the sun warming her face. She snuggled under the afghan. Although her breasts were full, they did not ache as they had yesterday. But she was eager to see her baby.

  She raised her arms above her head and arched her back. Her spine, stiff and sore from the hours spent hunched over her sewing, popped as she stretched her body backward. She had pinned the hem in place before going to bed, and it wouldn’t take long to finish it. Mr. Fulton said this kind of detail was not necessary, but she knew Leona would never leave a dress undone, especially one as important as this one.

  She was certain Leona had intended to finish that woman’s fancy slipcovers. She would have folded them and left them ready in a box by the trailer door, just as she had promised to do. Emmalee knew that about her friend. Only then would Leona and Curtis have come down the mountain for her and Kelly Faye. She liked to think of Leona perched on the edge of the truck’s seat, waiting for her first glimpse of Emmalee and the baby walking out of the holler. She smiled at the thought of it.

  Emmalee went straight to the phone. She dialed her uncle’s number, and he answered after the first ring. She had finished the dress, Emmalee told him, and she needed a ride to town. “How’s Kelly doing?” she asked.

  Emmalee wrapped the yellow afghan around her shoulders and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She stumbled into the bathroom, her bare feet sliding across the cold linoleum floor. Emmalee squatted on the toilet and dropped her forehead in her hands. Her toes scraped the side of the tub.

  Two faded blue towels, trimmed with an eyelet lace, hung across a bar set above the back of the tub. The towel’s cotton trim was another frilly detail Emmalee never expected of Leona. She wondered what all she did not know about the woman who had invited her to come and live on top of this mountain. Emmalee knelt by the tub’s edge and held her hand under the water running hot from the faucet. She watched the water spill into the tub until it was nearly overflowing.

  Back in the first grade, Emmalee had come home with notes pinned to her dress reminding Mr. Bullard his daughter needed to arrive at school clean, in clean clothes, with clean underpants. Even before she could read, Emmalee understood what the notes said. She imagined the other kids did, too, although Mrs. Tate said it was grown-up business. Her teacher folded the paper twice and pinned it to the thin cotton dress Emmalee wore most days. Emmalee kept her hand to her chest as she took her place in line by the classroom door, waiting her turn to board the bus for home.

  Once a week, while the rest of her class walked on to the library, Mrs. Tate led Emmalee into the janitor’s closet instead where she hurriedly washed Emmalee with a wet cloth and a bar of Ivory soap. Emmalee shivered in her teacher’s care as the cool air touched her damp skin. “Sorry, honey, I can’t get your hair washed. Maybe someday I can take you home with me and give you a good scrub in the bathtub,” Mrs. Tate said, holding Emmalee’s elbow firmly in her hand as she wiped underneath her arm. Emmalee looked away.

  Emmalee thought of Mrs. Tate as she slipped out of her clothes, unwrapped the binding, and dipped her toes into the water, steam rising off its surface. Her skin t
ingled and burned as she touched the hot water, but she slowly lowered her body into the tub. A bit of milk leaked from her breasts but quickly dissipated into the bathwater. Emmalee relaxed and kneaded her breasts some more as Wilma had taught her to do. Milk spilled into the water.

  The fullness in her breasts eased, but her back ached, a dull throbbing pain. She hurt for Kelly Faye from someplace deep inside, and the pain seemed to settle in the pit of her stomach. Emmalee pulled her knees to her chest. She wanted a better life for her little girl, but all she saw was Mrs. Tate leading her into the janitor’s closet, her classmates staring as she followed her teacher down the hall. She could still smell the Ivory soap on her skin.

  Emmalee held the terry cloth in her hand and scrubbed her body, washing away what she could and could not see. She soaped her hair and dipped below the water’s surface. Holding her breath, Emmalee lingered there, rocking her head back and forth, rinsing her long hair clean.

  Stepping from the tub, she wrapped her body in an eyelet-trimmed towel and then rolled the binding and tucked it under her arm. She would nurse her baby soon and no longer need this cloth. She felt exhausted from the bath, the hot water leaving her body limp. But Emmalee hurried to dress and brush her hair and take her place at Leona’s sewing table.

  She slipped a tip of crimson thread through the needle’s eye and pulled the thread tight, knotting one end. Emmalee held the dress with its pinned hem in her left hand and pushed the needle into the fabric with her right, pricking a single thread from one layer of damask and then the other. Twice more she threaded the needle as she worked the circumference of the dress, each stitch setting the hem in place.

  She stopped often to admire her work, not wanting to rush, even if no one would see it. Emmalee placed five tight little stitches, one on top of the other, careful not to push the needle through to the front. She cut the remaining thread close to the fabric. She would take the iron to it later and press the hem down.