Wild Card Quilt. Janisse Ray

the candy. It was delicious, warm, without the bitterness of molasses. If our history had a taste, this would be the good part. I could have eaten mountains. I ate more than anybody else. I made sure the entire rim was clean of dog candy before the men started washing the kettle.

      Meanwhile, another relative was draining the vat into quart jars. Someone else stuck on labels, “Pure Cane Syrup Made by Tommy Davis.” Toward the end, Kenyon handed the valve operator a tall, pretty bottle and the man filled it. Kenyon screwed the lid on and handed it to me.

      The bottle was hot in my hands, filled with dark syrup that by night appeared almost black but that would lighten to the exact amber of a tannic creek when held up to the morning sun. The thick syrup ran slowly toward the neck of the bottle when I upended it. A golden bubble traveled down the bottle’s length and disappeared.

      “It’s beautiful,” I said to Kenyon, and handed the bottle back.

      He kept his arms by his side, a bashful and happy look on his face. He shook his head.

      “I can’t take your syrup,” I said. “You’ve worked too hard for it.” I again held the bottle toward him.

      He shifted sideways. “You’re not taking it,” he said. “I’m giving it to you.”

      “Let me pay for it. I’ll gladly buy it.”

      “Your money’s no good here,” he said.

      “Thank you,” I said, pleased with the gift. “I’ll remember where it came from.”

      I’ve talked about the syrup and not enough about the people. Once I passed Sue and she led me to rabbit, roasting on a grill, from animals she’d raised and butchered. The piece she gave me was delicious. Jeanette brought in a baker of hot biscuits that we proceeded to drown in syrup and eat. Later I went out and shucked oysters with Walter and Uncle Mike. Everybody wanted to talk, to catch up. Linda asked me to send family information and photographs for her genealogy project. She and Walter live in Orlando now.

      Everywhere I turned, people were asking how long I’d been back and where I was staying and how the folks were, and remembering my grandmother, and telling me stories of their own lives, how their son was killed and they were raising their granddaughter, or how they loved the homeplace but their life was too tied to Atlanta or Dallas to leave. Every time I turned around, somebody was hugging me and telling me to come see them when the roll is called up yonder.

      It’s sweetness keeps people together. Sweetness. The sweetness of our tongues, of kind words, of praise, of invitations extended and invitations accepted, and the sweetness, too, of acts of imagination and love. Forgiveness, tolerance, and the courage to reach out. Every morning I pour the syrup on thick. I’ll be there.

       Calico Scraps

      Everything that seems empty is full of the angels of God.

      —ST. HILARY

      In winter of 1998, Mama and I began to piece together a quilt from cloth scraps she had gathered from the cotton gods. Some were bright yellow and red and blue, and shades in between, and shades of those in-between colors, and others were printed with flowers, stripes, polka dots. She and I were butterflies among the cloth scraps spread about us, and we raised one piece next to another, asking how it matched, as if trying on a roomful of gowns and shoes for a ballroom dance. We opened and closed pieces, butterflies fanning their brilliant sparkling wings, to see if there was enough yardage to cut a few squares.

      After awhile, I looked around. The tide of weaves had come in while we were occupied, and we were up to our fannies in stacks of cloth. Often we dipped into the current to find a piece we remembered seeing that should have matched some newly discovered piece.