Rachel's Blue. Zakes Mda
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on your didj,” a boy makes his request.
“It don’t play good with a beard,” says Jason without stopping.
“Then what good is it carrying it around?” asks the boy’s pal.
The two boys are close on his heels.
“Yeah, and what good is your beard if you can’t play the didj with it?” asks the boy, rolling his eyes.
Jason stops to glare at them.
“It ain’t none of nobody’s business,” he says, and then walks away.
The boys just stand there looking at the man and his didgeridoo disappear among the cars in the parking lot.
A good woman does not resist temptation; she succumbs. That’s Nana Moira’s philosophy. She is really talking of candy, not of anything that would warrant the blushes of the women around the table. It is the way she says it that is suggestive. And the fact that she is a grand mature lady of eighty who is not expected to dish out double entendres so freely and unflinchingly is the source of suppressed giggles. It is because most of these young women are new to the Jensen Township Quilting Circle – their first day, in fact – and are therefore not yet used to her robust humour which is always accompanied by cackling laughter that comes even before the punchline.
Nana Moira never fails to crack herself up.
Rachel can hear her raspy voice even as she gets out of her green Ford Escort and walks into the Jensen Community Centre. Nana Moira is telling the women how she has always liked Star Mints and Hershey’s Kisses and she is not about to stop satisfying her sweet tooth now just because some quack tells her to take it easy on the sugar on account of her weight. But she suddenly stops when she sees Rachel walking into the room. Her hand, which was reaching for another piece of candy from a glass jar on the table, withdraws ashamedly.
“You ain’t even that big, Nana Moira,” says one of the women.
“She’s big enough to have diabetes,” says Rachel sternly. “She knows that she’s gotta deal with her weight if she wanna have diabetes under control.”
She is not “that big” only if you compare her weight with that of some of her neighbours who are morbidly obese. In these parts obesity is a malady of poverty. The last time Nana Moira was taken to the ER at O’Bleness the doctor said she was no longer overweight, she was obese. Now she walks with the aid of a stick, which is something new. It worries Rachel no end.
“Sweet grief, child, you ain’t my Officer Rick,” says Nana Moira. “You ain’t my nanny neither.”
Officer Rick is a popular Athens policeman, famous for his programmes that help teenagers to steer clear of drugs.
“I’m nobody’s cop, but you know you got high blood pressure and arthritis too. You got everything that kills and you don’t give a damn.”
Nana Moira chuckles dismissively.
“Well, I’m bound to go one day. Rather go happy than sad and blue.”
Rachel hates Nana Moira when she jokes about going. She resents her already as it is for getting sick. She wants her Nana back, the one who was hale and lusty, foraging for morels with her deep in the Wayne Forest. And this joke about going; it’s no joke at all to Rachel. It’s a threat. It’s blackmail. This adds to the resentment that is building up in her. The resentment is so apparent that an old lady from the neighbourhood once asked Nana Moira: “That ungrateful Rachel, I wonder why she’s not so nice to her grandma who brought her up all by herself with nobody’s help but good ol’ Uncle Sam’s food stamps?” But Nana Moira was not about to gossip about her granddaughter with any blabbermouth.
Rachel grabs the candy jar and pours all its contents into her handbag.
“Some kids will appreciate this,” she says. “You guys, don’t you bring this poison to the Centre again.”
The five women sitting at the table – some cutting fabric with scissors and Rotary Cutters, and others fiddling with uncooperative bobbins – may be new to the Circle, but they already know they don’t like Rachel. She is so full of herself, they whisper among themselves when she and Nana Moira have gone to the kitchen. One makes the observation that arthritis never killed anybody, and she knows this from personal experience because her own grandma lived to be ninety-five though she practically spent a number of her later years in a wheelchair because of arthritis. What finally took her to God’s own house which has many mansions was old age and not arthritis.
It would seem today is Nana Moira’s day to impart skills. First there were the young women who have recently joined the Quilting Circle and were learning how to cut and sew the Irish Chain, the Ohio Star and the Bowtie from her all morning, and now it is Rachel’s turn for edification. Her grandma promised to teach her how to make the pawpaw bread that she learned from her own grandma. It never fails to get gushing compliments from the visitors at the Centre every time she bakes it and puts it on the table for everyone to have a slice or two. Even those folks who profess not to care for the fruit love her bread. She was persuaded to display and sell it at the Ohio Pawpaw Festival, which is an annual event in mid-September by the shores of Lake Snowden. And there, among such pawpaw delicacies as sorbet, jams, pies, beer and sauces, her bread won the hearts of the lovers of this native fruit. Rachel hopes that if she can make pawpaw bread that is half as good as Nana Moira’s she will be able to sell it at the farmers’ market and supplement the money she makes from her busking. People will come for the bread, listen to her music and drop a few bills into her guitar case. Or they may stop to listen to her songs and notice the bread and buy a loaf or two.
“You just do it like any other bread,” says Nana Moira as she sifts the all-purpose flour and mixes it with salt and baking soda. “It ain’t no big sweat.”
She asks Rachel to put butter in the mixer and cream it. Under her direction Rachel adds sugar, and then eggs, and continues beating the mixture until it is fluffy. She adds the flour, mashed pawpaw pulp and hickory nuts. She then places the dough in the oven. As it slowly bakes Rachel and Nana Moira go back to the sewing room to join the quilters. But the women are already calling it a day and packing the fabric and sewing machines away.
“Don’t leave before you taste my bread,” says Rachel. “I need your expert opinion.”
“We got things to do,” says one of the women abruptly.
They say goodbye to Nana Moira and leave.
“Did I say something?”
“They think you’re a party pooper, that’s all,” says Nana Moira. “They don’t know my sweet little girl, that’s why.”
“Am not a little girl any more, Nana Moira.”
“Sweet Jesus! It don’t make no never mind how big you think you are, Rachel. You’ll always be my little girl.”
“Party pooper! What party did I poop on?”
Nana Moira bursts out cackling and says, “They don’t like nobody who confisicate my Hershey’s Kisses.”
“Confiscate, Nana Moira.”
“That’s what I said.”
Rachel does not respond. Instead she busies herself with paging through Monday’s issue of the Athens News while Nana Moira spreads cut pieces of cloth on a long white table for the next quilt she will be stitching together.
The loaf is rosy-brown when Rachel takes it out of the oven an hour later. She covers it with a cloth and asks Nana Moira to share it with her Centre regulars and visitors tomorrow. She will return on Friday to bake a number of loaves for the Saturday market. And she will do that every week for the rest of the pawpaw season.
“I’ve a surprise for you in your room,” says Nana Moira as Rachel gets into her car.
Their home is only half a mile from the Centre. It is a double-wide, much bigger than the other five trailers that form a row. Unlike the rest, which are in bad