The Colored Car: Gender, Trauma, and Uncanny Films in the Weimar Republic

13. The Quilt

13 193 The Quilt The summer kitchen did not burn, but the building had what Douglas Ford told his children was called smoke damage. In the week after the fire, Douglas and May Ford washed down everything in the front and back rooms of the summer kitchen. Douglas washed the walls and scrubbed the floors. May cleaned the soot off of all of her canning pots and utensils and wiped down her worktable. She mixed vinegar in with the laundry soap and washed the curtains, the sheets from the bed in the back room, and even Patsy’s unfinished quilt. The vinegar—plus drying those things out in the hot sun on the clothesline—helped get out much of the smell. But sitting on the bench by the door as she completed the final step, putting the binding around the edge of her quilt, Patsy could still smell the ash and the soot in the wall 194 Jean Alicia Elster behind her. A few times, when she leaned back and rested her head against the wall, the odor seemed almost as strong as on the night of the fire or, even more so, as strong as the smell of soot in the colored car. Also in the week after the fire, one by one, the neighbor women returned to the summer kitchen. “And you, Cleota, of all people!” Patsy heard her mother say as she chopped up the last of a bushel of firm bright-red tomatoes. Patsy sat on the edge of the bed in the back room putting the last stitches on her quilt while her sisters napped. She could see the two women as they talked. Mrs. Chambers answered, fanning herself with her apron, “I didn’t think anything would come of it. I just signed my name to a piece of paper. And you know how sometimes late in the evening that saw—” She sounded out of breath as she talked. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” May said, pointing a finger at her that was dripping with tomato juice and cutting her off before she could finish the sentence. Nothing more was said about it. And 195 The Colored Car Mrs. Chambers filled the buckets under the worktable with water before she left. Later that evening, after dinner, Patsy asked her mother if Mrs. Chambers and Mrs. Carson and the other women who signed the petition were still her friends. May paused before she answered, “They’re our neighbors. We have to live with them.” , The women—Mrs. Yablonski, Mrs. Chambers, and Mrs. Carson—stood by the worktable in the summer kitchen, held the finished quilt open between them, and admired Patsy’s work. “My, my,” Mrs. Chambers said. “Patsy, you do have a way with the needle.” She looked over at May Ford. “She’s gonna be sewing better than you if you don’t watch out!” she said with a chuckle. Her mother and the other women laughed along with Mrs. Chambers. Patsy stood off a little to the side. “It would look better without that dirt from the train ride over on the side there,” she said softly. “Don’t you worry about some little smudge like that,” said Mrs. Yablonski. 196 Jean Alicia Elster “That’s right, child,” said Mrs. Carson. “And you covered most of it up with that nice binding you put around the edge. It hardly shows.” Mrs. Carson took the quilt edges from the other women, folded it up, and handed it to Patsy. “That’ll look real nice on your bed,” she said as Patsy laid it on the bench. May looked over at Patsy. “Go in the house and get Laura,” she said. “I want you girls to take some food over to Lena Williams.” May then said to the women, “She’s still having a really rough time of it, trying to feed that family . . .” “What a shame it is,” Mrs. Yablonski said, shaking her head. Patsy stood there listening. “Go on, now, and get your sister,” her mother said. When the two girls returned, May Ford had a row of jars lined up on the worktable filled with tomatoes, okra, string beans, peaches, grape jelly. “This might be too much for you girls to carry,” she said as she handed two jars to Laura. 197 The Colored Car “I...