The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose

“It must have been very hard for you,” she said quietly, thinking that this short conversation had already shed a great deal of light on why Miss Rogers had turned from a frightened little girl with banana curls into the stiff, unyielding woman she was now. Bessie hated to admit it, but maybe she ought to be grateful to Lucky Lindy, whose nasty claws had made this intimate exchange possible.

“It was difficult to leave my friends at the orphanage,” Miss Rogers said, almost as if she were talking to herself. “But I knew I couldn’t stay there forever. I had to be responsible for myself. I had to earn my way in the world.” She pulled in her breath. “And as it turned out, I was lucky. The Rogers were good to me, and kind. They allowed me to go to grammar school, and when I did well, they let me go to high school, too.” She turned away from the window, smiling a little. “That’s where I learned Latin, you know. And learned to love books. It was my dream to work in a library. My passion. And now I do.” Her smile faded and her eyes became bleak. “Although perhaps not for long.”

Bessie hardly knew what to say. For the first time since she had known Miss Rogers, she understood her—at least a little. If Miss Rogers could say that the people who took her were kind to her, and especially that they allowed her to get an education, she was indeed lucky. Bessie had read of instances where orphaned children were sent out to work as farmhands and mill hands and domestics and never got any sort of education.

“So you began to use their name,” Bessie said at last. “Rogers.”

Miss Rogers nodded. “I knew my first name—Dorothy—but there was some confusion about my surname. The documents I brought with me to the orphanage were unfortunately lost by the time Mr. and Mrs. Rogers took me. When I went to school, it was easier to use their name. And since I grew up with it, I’ve kept it, all these years.” Her eyes went to the spill of bloodred yarn on the floor. “Like Grandmother Rose’s pillow.”

“Yes,” Bessie said. “I see.”

She did, too. As an amateur historian, she knew how important it was to be able to trace your family tree, to know where you came from and where and to whom you belonged. Poor Miss Rogers knew none of that. She had a borrowed name, a lost mother, an unknown father. No wonder she was so distressed about the damage Lucky Lindy had done. The pillow wasn’t just a pillow, or even just her grandmother’s pillow. It was her only link to a faraway past in which she had been loved and cared for, a time when she had been somebody’s daughter, somebody’s granddaughter.

Miss Rogers replaced her hanky in her sleeve, took a deep breath, and squared her shoulders. Her voice became brisk.

“Well, then. That’s all there is to say, Miss Bloodworth. You have seen the damage. You must tell Mrs. Sedalius that she has to get rid of that cat. The creature simply can’t be trusted.”

“You’re certainly right about that,” Bessie said repentantly. If she had said no to that cat in the first place, this wouldn’t have happened. She bent over and picked up the pillow with its trailing strings of ripped and frayed yarn. She turned it over in her hands.

“I wonder,” she said, “whether we could unravel the yarn and wash it. Then perhaps we could ask Mrs. Sedalius to knit a new cover for you, using your grandmother’s yarn.”

“It wouldn’t be the same,” Miss Rogers said, shaking her head. “That’s the cover my grandmother knitted, with her very own hands.”

“But it would be the same yarn,” Bessie persisted gently. “And don’t you think it might be better to have a repaired cover than no cover at all?”

Miss Rogers’ glance went back to the shredded mass of yarn. “Do you really think it can be reknitted?” she asked doubtfully.

“I’m sure it can,” Bessie said, taking charge. “But first, we’ll need to finish what that awful cat started. We’ll unravel the yarn and wash it. Surely we’ll be able to salvage enough to knit a new cover.”

Miss Rogers still looked reluctant, but she nodded. “I suppose we can try,” she said slowly.

So for the next ten minutes, Bessie and Miss Rogers sat side by side on the edge of the narrow bed, Bessie unraveling the yarn onto Miss Rogers’ extended hands, making a skein. The yarn, which appeared to be a two-ply handspun wool, was strong for its age, Bessie thought. It must be sixty or seventy years old, perhaps older. But it had frayed in several places (or been torn by the frenzied Lucky Lindy), and when Bessie came to a break, she twisted the ends together, splicing them. Soon, she had unraveled the last row of stitches and Miss Rogers was holding a fat red skein. Bessie pulled it off her hands and tied bits of yarn around it in several places so the skein wouldn’t tangle when it was washed and hung up to dry.