Really, a good soap opera could carry the weight of the worst day in the trenches of class warfare. A bad soap opera could lighten the mood of the heaviest drug user in Baltimore. Dennis Maycomb, being well-acquainted with both, was once a loyal daily viewer of everything from Days of Our Lives to Our Own Private World.

Like many bad habits, it didn’t occur as some dramatic choice to stray from center. It simply… grew in. Here’s how: days turned to weeks turned to months after Dennis had resigned from his first “real job” and given up on his dreams of making it in the corporate world. During those days, weeks, and months, he slept on the couch in his clothes, surrounded by buckets of ice cream residue and cans of Chef Boyardee remnants, each holding a single silver spoon. During this time, he did most of his sleeping in the day and played his sad, cold sax through the night. His neighbors didn’t have the heart to complain; besides, in Baltimore throughout the 80s one would find it odd not to have a lonely saxophone droning through the night, soundtracking their dreams. It was comforting, in a sense, to call a spade a spade.

More often than not, as he snored through the flicker of daytime TV, Dennis would catch himself listening to the plots of other people’s dramatic turmoil and supposedly fantastic sex. As the world turned, he began to listen with his eyes open. The stories tended the wounds of his psyche like a hospital, generally balming his sore, loving heart and spoiled passions. After a while, he considered them all his children. His search for tomorrow began to revolve around the guiding light of the young, the restless. The days of his one life to live were fed by another world from morning to the edge of night.

By the time he was able to admit to himself he was watching them on purpose, he was already hooked. Line & sinker. The man was slowly being trained to be an all-consuming, perpetually-dissatisfied, self-obsessed-but-inexorably-critical, tragically beautiful spouse of learned helplessness. But he loved it. He was married to it, and being married was a Good Thing. It felt fantastic.[1] The only things that got him out of the house were trips to the store for sustenance and visits to his mother’s house for quilting day.

Quilting day with his mother was still happening every Sunday despite her terribly erratic drug habit and his adamantly consistent soap habit. Quilting day was the time the two of them had to just be, to be in the world together like always, to remember who they once were and who they dreamed to be.

Dennis had grown up with quilting Sundays as a sane fixture amid all the worldly tumult. And there he was, barreling on through what was left of his twenties with only this cornerstone of tradition to keep him tethered. He loved his mother dearly, but he had lost the argument about drugs to a killer combination of “I’m a grown-ass woman who raised five kids by my damn self and I think I’ve earned the right to do what I want” and his own guilt for being the only one of those five who would still come to see her.

Minnie Maycomb was an incredible woman: strong and stubborn, caring and creative, daring and dedicated. She was a widow and a working woman and a Baptist. She had indeed raised those five children on her own and come out with just enough money to put them into college before collapsing into a pool of pain. The byproduct of perpetual overwhelm. Besides the good creole coffee and cigarettes that got her through most of the havoc of pushing her kids to grow in a harsh environment where she herself often questioned the toxicity of soil and inadequacy of sunlight, her first drugs were prescribed for chronic arthritis. Then rheumatoid arthritis: stronger painkillers. Then a string of racist doctors who couldn’t diagnose her problems and wouldn’t prescribe her a damn thing. And, well, you know what they say: one opiate can lead to another, and down the line you go.

Dennis didn’t fault her for this, but he did require her to lay off it when he was around. Likewise, she did not understand nor condone his “filthy, pompous, privileged, delusional trash TV” habit and had asked him to avoid bringing it up in her presence. They made a deal, and quilting Sundays continued amicably like always.

As her youngest son, Dennis had the great benefit of hearing all the stories and instructions and motivational speeches times five. All his life, the things his mother had said were repeated by each of his older siblings, until they could be worn on the inside of the skin. His eye would trace their patterns at night while he fell asleep, moving from one piece of perfectly-placed information to the next.

Quilting was a natural source of connection for the two of them, and the pieces they worked on together resulted in mammoth spreads of storytelling and warmth.

“Every square is a story,” she’d say, “and every story fits neatly into the arms of another.”

This woman was chronically misunderstood and historically undervalued, as far as Dennis was concerned. As he’d grown older and had begun to conceive of the vast rows of spiky cultural odds thoroughly stacked up against her, he found himself in awe of her unbowed strength and her undauntable will to continue through every obstacle. In truth, had you inquired at the grave after her life was complete, what had kept her going was a determination to give her children the life she’d wanted for herself. Determination has its impacts, its gifts as well as its costs. Dennis alone was certain she was an unsung superhero. So he hung on to every word, cherished every lesson, carefully cut every square. Even in the wake of her deteriorating health and dangerous wanders off the deep end, he knew she was a rare and precious jewel of humanity. His biggest fear was that she might die one day without anyone else really appreciating the genius her life shined into the world.

So Dennis had helped her make quilts for years, from the time that he could cut a straight line. They gave away every one they made. The woman was steadfast on this point: she would not sell her art, she would not attach a price to the prayers they made into form, and she declared so from the beginning: “I certainly do not need the almighty dollar, the White Man’s Divinity, the warmaker and dreamkiller, to assign any particular value to the creations that pour from my heart, thank you very much.”

The quilts they made together held simple truths, spontaneous secret-telling, and intricate harmonies of loving attention. When they gave them away to churches and AIDS clinics, nursing homes and schools, they liked to imagine the thousands of sweeps of the eye that each story would greet. “This is what they’re for, wrapping little dreamers up to grow in the warm cocoon of stories and safety. That’s the only way through the day, it seems. Gotta rest well through the night and make sense of the life that’s inside.”

Like most people, she was very good at giving the advice that she herself had needed to hear.

And Dennis lapped up every bit, even when the woman turned up pregnant without memory of the circumstances. Even when she declared herself to be the Mother Mary, finally being gifted an unexpected reward for all her years of selfless service.

Shortly after he found out that his 50-year-old mother was pregnant, believing herself to be the next bearer of immaculate conception, refusing the advice of her only companions in the world and several “blind, racist, no-good, non-believing doctors,” Dennis received his own aftershock of said epicenter. In comparison to the earthquake of his mother’s situation, it was such a quiet bit of information he uncovered, but it rocked the structures of his life so thoroughly the only stone left standing was the promise to be at his mother’s house with his supplies Sunday morning at 11am sharp.

“Mama,” he said when they had gotten settled inside of their billowing nests of cut fabric, “how is it you always say there’s something big behind the little things?”

“Well, now. You see, it’s like everything we see, Denny. It’s how the sun, that huge star all those millions of miles away, it grew the—what did you eat for breakfast? Well, nevermind, you’re eating those cakes now—it grew the grains that made the flour that I squished with my two hands to make that scrumptious cake you’re nibbling on.” She passed him a paper towel out of nowhere. “Don’t get it on the upholstery, young man.”

“Yeah. I know. But sometimes you say it’s something bad, something gone wrong, something Evil secretly controlling every last little thing. Don’t you say that sometimes?” he prodded gently, knowing full well she entered that territory quite often. He didn’t want to push her into a manic, tormented frenzy, especially not in her condition(s), but he felt he needed some sort of ground for his trembling realization.

She peered at him over the reading glasses she had fought tooth-and-nail against. “Would you pin those circle pieces down while you chatter? Thanks.” She took up a pile of red stars in one hand and a needle in the other, musing as lightly as she worked. “Well, now, you know I have lots of thoughts on that, quite often. And I do declare, I’ve seen the work of the Devil himself here in this life, I’ve told you more than twice. But I’m thinking now in a new way, a different way, since I’ve been blessed with the Immaculate. I can feel new life growing, a Miracle coming from within. And sometimes I get this message clear as a bell: nothing is wrong here, there is something Big at work, something Divine in play, and it encompasses every last little ripple in the whole stinking Universe.” She grabbed another handful of smaller stars, these ones purple with polka-dots. “Including your control freaks and dreamkillers.”

Dennis was pensive, preoccupied by the multitudinous, screamingly loud reactions to her sentiments, all firing off inside of him. Immaculate. Blessed. Stinking.[2] When he finally spoke, it was to ask about the direction of the circles. “Which way do you want these leading, Mama?”

“Oh, Dennis. Not like that! Well… Well, now, that’s just fine, you know what? It will be like that after all, let’s change it on the spot. Keep them leading over this way, it will be like ten thousand suns in one long line to the center.” She took a sip of her soda and licked another thread. “Ooh! I’m getting so poetic now that I’m With Child. I’m liable to find myself in tongues soon. Bless us this day.”

Dennis nibbled a bit more of his delicious cake. Good God, he loved that woman. Good God, she was going nuts. Good God, she made a delicious cake though. He took a long, deep, adult breath and allowed himself to allow her the space to be Mother Mary, even as he knew the strength of his own conviction that the Evil of the world was destroying her life one delusion at a time.

“Mama, what about when things look like they are all linked together in a bad way?”

“Now, honey, you’re gonna have to just be more specific than that, Mama can’t hardly hear you inside of all those little veils you’re wearing. Just spit it out, boy.”

“Okay, okay,” Dennis blushed his shame down toward the ten thousand suns. “You won’t like it, though. I’ll have to talk about what I said I wouldn’t.”

“That’s okay, Denny,” his mother gave him a calm nod and patted her belly under the quilt. “I’m not doing what I’m not talking about anymore anyway, so we’re home free.”

“Well, I guess I’m not doing what I’m not talking about anymore either,” he sighed. “Not after this. Mama, I saw the production label that comes up after every single soap opera.” Her eyes flicked up at his words, watching them issue from his sad mouth. “And wouldn’t you know: Proctor and Gamble. Proctor. And Gamble. Proctor and corrupt-assed-no-good-shithouse Gamble!” Minnie frowned her smile toward the quilt. “Sorry, Mama. I just… I can’t tell you how mad, how furious… how terrible…. They own every last show! Every last episode!”

“I know it comes as a surprise to you, dear. But I could tell you, in my day, they were named soap operas for a reason. Everything seems to lose its lineage around all these wires and bright lights and clangity-bang.” She caught him with a look on his face no mother wants to perpetuate, so she stopped talking. “I’m sorry. Please, go on.”

“It’s just… Look, all I wanted was a little comfort, a little place to rest my mind, you know? And I didn’t even know I wanted it until I had it—then it’s all I wanted, just to let my brain be swept along by the storytime, the wild extremes of emotion, and most of all—and you’ll hate this, I know—how real it felt! I’ve just been some guy on a couch; these people were corrupting bank officials, saving dying babies, having affairs and then cheating on their paramours with their spouse’s secret lover, evading the death sentence because it turns out they’re a ghost from the eighteenth century and can’t die anyway!”

“Dennis. Good Lord.” she couldn’t help herself. “You know that’s not real. What’s real is you have grown accustomed to letting them tell you what’s real. What is real is you spend more money on electricity than on food.”

Dennis let the fight go by. She was right anyway. “Not anymore! Never again. I saw it. I saw it at last, the little clue they’ve hidden under my nose the whole time. Proctor and Gamble! They’re still stealing from me! Stealing my nice ideas and then corrupting them into something ugly and feeding them back to me like I should be so lucky! And the worst part is, it’s not just me! They’re feeding glamorous lies and awful role models and useless dreams into millions of people’s heads, and you wanna know why?”

She looked on with a high-mileage sympathetic frown and simply nodded.

“So they can sell more soap. And more razors. And more stuff. And more lies, stuff, razors and soap. They have a corner on the whole homemaking market, filling heads and emptying pockets! It’s a sham! It’s not entertainment! It’s not even real marketing! It’s hypnosis! It’s a sham!” He got so worked up, he stuck his little finger with his big needle. She handed him another paper towel, on cue.

“Oh, my dear boy. Oh, my dear, honest, hardworking boy.” As the Virgin Mother now, she was beyond any shade of “I told you so,” merely full of loving compassion for her sad, grown-up, disappointed little boy. “It does look awful, doesn’t it? That company of yours, it has its greedy little hands in everyone’s pockets, I know. And it seems like it’s beyond redemption…”

“Beyond redemption!” Dennis stuck the needle through the edge of another sun. “I’m telling you, they’ve been this way since square one![3] I went to the library, Ma! I found out they’ve been investigated for everything from swindling, to child labor, to price-fixing, to even a Satanic emblem on their logo. It is beyond beyond redemption.”[4]

“Denny, I know this is hard for you, especially after all those days you thought you were getting some kinda therapy there on that sad little couch.” She rocked back and forth, cuddling her work in her ample lap. “But an evil mastermind tinkering behind what looks so big to you and me is nothing—nothing—compared to the Benevolent Force of Good [5] that turns the earth and shines the sun and grows this little blessing in my belly. Miracles, around every corner! The great Hand of God stirring everything into place. Why I tell you…”

She went on like that for the next hour, happily singing praises of the new life the Sacred Sovereign had bestowed upon her, completely and immutably convinced of the way that the world worked.

Dennis could only sit, sew, and listen.

He had no room for anything else.

This was his mother, and she was dying one stitch at a time.

Months down the road, when the baby came and the virus had advanced into full-blown AIDS, Dennis watched his Divine Mother on her deathbed, treating the child like a glowing Lamb, like the Gift of the new Aeon, like her doorway to Heaven. Through pain that had long since blown the charts, she was stoic, untouched, beatific. She named the baby Morning Glory, for the dawn of a new day and for the flowers that grew outside the last window she lay behind.

Dennis never found out for sure if she was openly lying to herself the whole time or if she was simply altered by that one last trauma, altered in a way she could not come back from, living in the shadow of some fairy tale she sewed together to blanket the suffering world.

When he received the baby in his arms, he sobbed until its skin wrinkled up like their mother’s. Then he bundled it in a quilt and drove it home like she asked. A week later, up to his elbows in sudsy baby bath, he received the call.

He moved outta that town the day after the funeral, driving all the way to the West coast singing the mantra of his new life to the new child of his mother’s DNA, singing, “Something’s gotta change, something’s gotta change, you know it, something’s gotta change, baby girl, something’s gotta change.”

 

-**

1. Etymologically speaking.
2. IBS?
3. Quilting joke.
4. I, too, went to the library.
5. The BFG!