Fervent Charity by Paulette Callen Read Free Book Online

did,” answered Alvinia, pleased with Lena’s reaction.
    “Nyla did the curtains,” Mary was eager to point out.
    Nyla stood by in a green print dress that looked like it might have been new for the occasion but still did nothing to improve her lumpish figure or her sallow complexion. Oscar had probably let her buy only what was on sale at O’Grady’s. Lena thought, Too bad they didn’t have a sale on shoes.
    “Took me three days to do those curtains.” Nyla seemed more pleased than put out. It was hard to tell with Nyla.
    Lena had known that they would do their best. She had had no idea just how fine their best would turn out to be. She swallowed and blinked back a tear or two. Then she said, “The curtains look swell, Nyla. The whole place looks just swell! Oh, my, look at the floors! I’ve never seen a shine on these floors. What did you do? And the rugs. They actually have colors…” The carpets had been beaten to within an inch of their threadbare lives by the Torgerson children and aired for several days. Alvinia thought it a blessing there had been no rain. They’d have disintegrated had they gotten wet.
    People were already starting to arrive. Lena put Gracia down in her cradle and took a seat in the big overstuffed chair they had moved to the center of the living room: Lena’s place of honor.
    Betty, Alice, and Alvinia kept the kitchen flowing with refills to the coffee urn, the milk jug, and the cake and pie plates. Mary and Gustie welcomed guests and made sure Lena’s plate was full and her coffee cup refreshed. The more that was eaten, the more the table was laden with fried chicken, cold beef tongue, potato salad, lefse, more donuts, cookies, pies and cakes, krumkake and rosettes, for nobody came empty handed. The people of Charity also had good appetites. Ma Kaiser stayed at the sink, washing dishes in the hot water kept in abundant supply by Malvern and Lavonne Torgerson. Both Lena and Mary tried to get her to come out of the kitchen and let someone else take over, but she just grumbled in German and kept on washing. They finally gave up.
    Besides food, people brought gifts. Mary and Walter presented Lena with a silver baby cup engraved with Gracia’s name and birth date. From Alvinia and Carl, she got the matching silver spoon. Gustie’s gift was a hand-tooled leather bound book of fairy tales and children’s poems illustrated with intricate woodcuts. Lena, never having owned any book except her mother’s Norwegian Bible, was moved to tears, a frequent happening during the day as she unwrapped hand-made baby blankets, bonnets and dresses, removed the bow on a highchair that Morgan O’Grady carried in on his shoulder, and opened a plain white envelope containing the paperwork for a savings account in Gracia’s name with a balance of five dollars from Lester Evenson, president of the Farmers and Merchants Bank.
    The most spectacular gift of the day was a quilt. Lena’s friends, the women from her church, and many others had each contributed a quilt square; the ladies of the Ruth and Esther Circle had put the quilt together.
    Each piece was unique, reflecting the skill and interests of its maker. Charity’s women had plied their needles rendering every kind of flower and leaf in every color and stitch. There were sheaves of wheat, shocks of corn, trees and flying geese; red birds, blue birds, robins and a swan; the silhouette of Gethsemane Church done in appliqué; and one square that looked like rich brocade but was many tiny pieces of fabric from her husband’s old silk ties, stitched together in a miniature patchwork design by Edwina Moody. The center piece, embroidered by Solveig Erickson, the minister’s wife, was the Twenty-Third Psalm, in its entirety, in the tiniest, most perfect chain stitch Lena had ever seen. The quilt was a wonder, designed beautifully and made well, to carry Gracia through childhood and go with her to her own house to swaddle her own children. Gustie and Mary