NEEDLE AND SPIT

It’s licking the needle that makes the difference. It doesn’t take a hundred stitches a square inch. They don’t have to pretty or straight. A blind woman who has gone mad can do it. So long as she licks the needle first. That’s where the protection comes.

That’s why when I go to visit my daughter, I bring my quilting frames along, and some fabric. She says she doesn’t need me to make quilts for her. She buys hers on-line, to match her décor. She changes them every few months. She doesn’t understand that they don’t pay women in El Salvador to add protection. They only make the quilts warm.

Maybe I protected her too well when she was younger.

She came to get me at the airport herself, I will give her that. But she had to try hard not to roll her eyes when I stepped into the baggage area in my quilted pajama pants and slippers.

“Mother, how many bags do you have?” she asked, when she took off the first one.

“Three,” I said.

She waited impatiently until the other two bags came out on the carousel. They were odd-shaped packages wrapped in black garbage bags.

She knew they were mine even before I point to them. She walked over to them and yanked them off.

“We can get a cart,” I said, because she looked like she was struggling.

“I don’t need a cart,” she said, then took a deep breath.

“It’s a wonder they let you take these on an airplane at all,” she said.

“Oh, I’ve converted everything metal to plastic,” I said. “Much more portable.”

She put the three packages in the trunk of her car, a white European model with beautiful lines.

“Do you want to put that in, too?” she asked, pointing to the bag I had brought as my carry-on. It was a quilted tote, homemade, with two large straps that let it dangle at my waist, do as not to hurt my back if it was really heavy. Inside was the small hanging quilt I was working on for an early birthday present. I didn’t know if there was a room in her house where it fit, but her favorite colors had always been light blue against navy.

The pattern was abstract. I knew she wouldn’t want a design of a cabin, or one of the bonnet girls. It wasn’t even a standard design. It was one of my originals, and the colors of all the patches were subtly different, so that you could look at it upside down, and from either side, and always see something different.

“I’m working on this,” I said. “But thanks for the offer.”

“You can’t want to work on that here, Mother. You’re supposed to be on vacation,” she said.

“A mother doesn’t take a vacation from protecting her child,” I said.

She groaned. “Mother, I’m twenty-nine years old. I’ve been living away from home for nine years. I think I’ve proven I can handle things on my own now.”

“Of course, Joanie. I didn’t mean to imply anything. It’s just a habit of mine. I’m used to using my fingers.”

“Joan, not Joanie,” she said. But I could see her shoulders relax. So long as she thought of my quilting as a hobby, she wasn’t bothered by it so much. It wasn’t a hobby she would choose, but there were high profile women who chose to knit. Why not quilting?

And she could indulge her mother just this once. Who knew how much longer I’d survive?

She closed the trunk and got into the front seat. She leaned over to open the door for me, because of course, I couldn’t do that for myself.

I settled myself in and got out a piece of my work.

She didn’t look at it.

She pulled out of the parking garage and soon we were speeding towards downtown. I could see the skyscrapers ahead. They made my head ache. No one had designed them to be in proportion to each other. And of course, there was no color scheme.

Why would she choose to live here?

I reminded myself as she went through three orange lights that she had always been in a hurry. Even when she was born. She’s learned to read at three and kissed her first boyfriend when she was four. She skipped Kindergarten and graduated from high school early. There had always been a list in her head of the next thing she had to finish.

Sitting down with a quilt around her took too much time. And it never paid well. She asked me once, when she was twelve, if I realized how much I was getting per hour for one of my quilts.

“You spend at least a hundred hours on one of these, and you sell them for a couple hundred dollars. That’s two dollars an hour, tops. And that’s not including the material. You could get paid more working at Walmart, Mother.”

“I don’t think I would like working at Walmart,” I said.

She snorted and muttered something about them not liking my style, either.

Her house was cold. We walked in through the garage, which was cold to begin with. Barren concrete, with no hooks on the walls, not even an oil stain on the floor.

Inside, it was hardly any better.

“Let me take your jacket and get you something to drink. Tea?” she asked.

I held tight to my jacket. “Hot chocolate?” I asked.

She said she would have to see if she had any. “It has tons of sugar and calories, Mother. Not good for my figure.” She glanced over at me, but refrained from making mention of my figure.

I was generously proportioned. My strength was in my fingers and my tongue. I figured the rest of me was made to sit comfortable and that meant having a little meat on my back side.

She found some hot chocolate.

Powdered, in one of those packages made from paper. It looked like it had been sealed in a factory five years ago, maybe left by the pervious owners of her house. Not a bit of flavor in it, let alone.

But it was sweet, and hot.

“Shall I show you to your room?” she asked, before I was done.

It made me feel as if I were staying at a hotel. I put down the mug and nodded.

I followed her up the stairs to a room that was big enough to practice yodeling. The bed was a queen, which I would get lost in. There were six pillows piled on top of each other. I wondered what I was supposed to do with them.

And the quilt—all white, machine made, with no puff in the middle. Not that there was anything wrong with flat quilting, but I could feel the moment I walked in that the room was naked. Any thief could walk in here and walk right out again with whatever he chose.

“You need anything?” Joanie asked. “Before I get your—luggage?”

“No, I’m fine.”

I sat on the bed gingerly.

It was firm, with a pillowtop. Firm and fluff together. For someone who couldn’t decide what she wanted.

I heard her clunk up the stairs, one of my packages dragging.

The door opened, and Joanie pushed the bags on the floor around it, so that when it was open, you couldn’t see them at all.

“So, what do you think?” she asked me.

“It’s lovely. Very impressive,” I said. The words she wanted to hear.

She saw me looking at the safe. “I know how nervous you are about safety,” she said. “So I put one of my guns in the safe here. I’ll give you the combination, but try to memorize it and throw the paper away. No reason to make it easy, eh?”

One of her guns? How many did she have?

She dialed the numbers on the safe as easy as if it were a phone, then it popped open. The gun inside was tiny, hardly bigger than my palm. Joanie held it out to me.

“You want me to give you a lesson on how to use it?” she asked.

“No, thank you,” I said, turning away.

Joanie put the gun back inside the safe. “There’s nothing wrong with having a gun,” she said defensively. “It’s the second amendment. Right to keep and bear arms.”

I said nothing.

“Not that I want you to think it isn’t safe. It is. I’ve lived here for three years, and in the neighborhood for six. Nothing has ever happened to me. I get home late at night sometimes, and go for a jog to calm down and get some sleep. I’ve never seen anything remotely worrisome.”

“But you have a gun.”

She tilted her head to one side, as if she had a sore spot she was trying to stretch. “Mother, I don’t want to hear any nonsense about needles and spit,” she said.

“Did you think I would bother you with that? After all these years?” I asked.

She nodded to my carry on bag. “You haven’t stopped believing,” she pointed out.

“No. Not in the protection of my saliva. Nor in other things,” I said.

She took a deep breath and put on a smile. There was tension in every inch of her, but she spoke smoothly. “Well, you’ve had a long day and so have I. We’ll talk in the morning. I have to go into the office at 5, but I’ll come back at 10 to have breakfast with you.”

You’ll wear yourself out, I wanted to say. I didn’t.

The words we weren’t saying to each other could fill the room.

She went out. I heard her heels clicking to the room half a flight up from mine, no doubt even larger than this one.

There was a recliner in the corner, by the window.

I sat down at it and stared out at the city. I didn’t see anyone outside. No reason to be afraid, really. But I felt something dark with emotion.

It could be nothing more than Joanie’s feelings at me being here.

Or it could be more.

I went to unpack my things.

There was a special knot on the top of each bag, so I could see that airport security hadn’t opened them. They couldn’t have redone my knot, even if they’d bothered to. But my things were never violated. The security personnel simply passed them through without checking anything. I’m sure they told themselves a story in their heads about why. Harmless elderly woman. What could she have inside there?

I had a lot of plastic piping and clamps. And fabric.

I had a half finished quilt that I was working on for some friends, back home. And some squares that I’d brought along just because it seemed right to do so. There are times when colors speak to you, when you see them and know that you have been dreaming of them and feel them in your hands and in your heart. I had a terrible habit of buying fabric that I had no current project for. It just looked good to me and I thought I might one day use it. Usually, I was right, but there were some things I’d had for thirty years, since before Joanie was born.

I set up the quilt frames, popping the plastic into place and then spreading the half-finished quilt on top. I had already done some basting stitches to hold it together, so it laid out nicely. I clamped down on top of the edges, and stepped back.

Now, the room looked less empty.

It was late for Joanie, but for me it wasn’t yet time for bed. And there was nothing like doing a few stitches to make me feel comfortable. So I got out my needles. I kept them pinned into an old cloth, tattered and worn with years of use. It was the first one I’d ever received, when I was learning to quilt at my mother’s side. There was history in it. The needles had all been replaced since then, but the saliva that had touched them was still there.

Joanie hated the sight of that thing. I would have to keep it away from her eyes or it might be thrown into the washing machine while I was sleeping, and then where would I be?

I took out the needle I’d used to make Joanie’s first quilt, the yellow patch baby quilt I’d made before she was born, before I’d even known if she was a boy or a girl. I threaded the needle, then licked it, and began as far out as I could reach, in the center of the quilt. You never start on the edges. It makes for puckers, and ruins the lines of protection.

The friends who were waiting for this quilt were from the city, and had retired. They’d seen one of my quilts in the old bed and breakfast that Marie runs. She has one on each of her beds. Wouldn’t do without them. Says she’s never had any trouble in all the years she’s been in the business.

There was something about it, they said. They had to get one just like it.

I asked them what colors they wanted, what pattern.

But they left it all up to me.

I asked them to let me hold their hands. We sat in a circle for a long while. More than a few minutes. I thought they would get tired of it and give me up for a witch. But they were still, and I got a sense of them. He had worked too long, thinking only of money. He worried about that, if it would catch up with him. She had stopped watching the news years ago, but even the sound of a dog barking would make her afraid.

I could see as I felt their needs around me what the pattern should be. It was a traditional one, a Texas star, but in yellows and oranges and reds. I’d pieced it together by hand, too, licking the needle with each new square.

The yellow smelled like rain.

The red was corn and beans.

The orange desert lizards on cactus.

I lost myself, working on that quilt. The sound of a horn honking out in the dark brought me back to myself, and I realized how my fingers ached.

I’d done a good section. Time for bed.

I looked at my watch and noticed that it was only a couple of hours before Joanie would be awake again.

I crawled into the bed and slept as well as I could, in the circumstances. I put my hand out more than once for the touch of protection from the new quilt I was making.

In the morning, I woke to the sound of the door opening.

I sat up and looked over to see her face dark and curious, looking toward the quilt.

She’d never been curious before.

“Would you like to go out for breakfast?” she asked. “I’m not much of a cook, and I don’t keep food around much. It’s better for my diet.”

“Pancakes?” I asked.

“If you insist. There is a wonderful place that serves blintzes just a few miles away.”

“I-Hop?” I asked.

“There’s one of those, too. I think. I’ll have to look it up in the phone book.”

“I like I-Hop’s pancakes,” I said.

I brought my bag along to the restaurant, but it never seemed a good moment to take Joanie’s quilt out to show it to her. It wasn’t that I worried she wouldn’t like it. I just wanted to talk to her about it, and she didn’t seem in a listening mood.

I ate a big stack of pancakes. Joanie ate one.

“I need to get in a couple hours at the gym. Do you mind if I leave you at home for a while by yourself? You can take a nap and recover from your jet lag.”

I didn’t mind.

When she came back, she looked tired and pinched.

She took me out for dinner, and I still hadn’t brought out the quilt.

Afterwards, she lingered over a glass of water. Not wine.

I stared at her a little more closely. The way her clothes seemed to fit her some places and not others.

“Mom, I have something I want to talk to you about.”

I got out the quilt. “I have something I want to talk to you about, too.”

Her eyes flickered over the quilt, then slid away. “I’m pregnant.”

It was not the moment to criticize.

“I just thought it was a good time. Things are going well at work. The partners are happy with me. I don’t want to wait until I’m too old, and I think I could be a good mother.”

“This will keep you safe,” I said, holding up the quilt. “For now. I’ll work on some others in the next few months. And one for the baby, of course.”

“Mother.” She held up a hand. “That’s not what I want from you.”

“What, then?” I asked. I put the quilt down, crumpled it into the bag. What good was offering a gift if it would be ignored?

“I just wanted you to know.”

“And do nothing?” How could she expect me to hear about my granddaughter and not try to help protect her? Joanie was almost thirty years old. She’d survived on her own. After I’d raised her. But this was different. Now Joanie wanted to put her child in danger. An infant, in that house, with not a quilt anywhere. Not a real one.

“Can’t you just be happy for me?” She was my little Joanie for just a moment, the little seven year-old girl who wanted to win the science fair contest, pitted against sixth graders.

But there was another little girl inside of her.

Which one did I pay attention to?

“You should eat more,” I said.

“Yes, Mother,” she said, shaking her head ruefully.

“And take it easy. Sleep later. Work fewer hours.”

“Anything else?”

And take my quilt, I thought. Let me make enough to carpet your house in them. If I can’t be there to protect your baby myself, I could do that much, at least. How could she ask me to do nothing at all?

“Will you let me come out for the birth?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” she said.

So, this was a test. Be a good little grandmother. Keep your mouth closed. Keep your spit-stained needles to yourself.

“I would appreciate it if you would.”

“I need a coach, but it has to be someone who will be here on a regular basis.”

“I could do that.”

“No, Mother. Definitely not. I’m thinking of one of my friends from work.”

A friend from work instead of me? Stab me in the eye with a needle, why don’t you?

“The father isn’t an option. I told him my situation. I didn’t want him to stay longer. He knows about the baby, but it wouldn’t be fair to ask him to do anymore.”

“I understand,” I said.

We ate the rest of the meal in silence.

I went back to her house and took down the quilt I was working on. Folded it neatly and put it back in the bags. Pulled apart the plastic tubes.

Looked out at the dark street and beyond.

She came in, later. “You didn’t have to do that, you know,” she said.

“I know.”

“Your quilts are beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

“But you put so much into them, they are frightening to me. I don’t know if I ever told you that before. It’s like—sometimes I used to worry if there would be enough of you left for me.”

“Will you let me stay a few extra days? Go shopping with you?” I asked.

“You don’t have money for that, Mother.”

I didn’t. “You can buy. I’ll just be your support. Just a few extra days. I promise I’ll leave after that.”

She took a breath and let it out. “OK. But I can’t take more time off work. I need to get in as many hours as I can, while it’s still early.”

“I can cook,” I said. “That will help you, won’t it?” The saliva in my mouth pooled there. I thought of a little girl on my lap, watching me quilt, taking a needle from me, and moistening it with her own spit. Pressing the needle to cloth, in and out.

Joanie had never been that girl. I did n

ot know if her daughter would be. But I would wait.

My quilts would wait.