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"," Dee wants the quilts simply because they would make attractive accents to her new
home and her new life, not because they have significance having been sewn by hand by women who
came before her, worked hard, suffered and built a life for themselves. For Dee has rejected
that part of her heritage.
Her sister Maggie sees the world in a much
different way. It is because of the hands that have joined the tidbits of cloth together that
she values the quilts and wants to use them "everyday," and so honor the lives of love
and sacrifice of her ancestors.
Maggie doesn't see very good and she is not
overly intelligent. Mother and daughter have more in common with each other than with Dee. Dee
has left her roots of poverty behind her. She cares nothing for her heritage, a major theme in
the story.
Dee is very intelligent. She can use language. She reads. Her
humor is "scalding" like bubbles in
harsh chemical substance often used to make soaps. There seems to be little softness in her, and
little desire to recognize her family or the people she comes from. She has not visited in a
long time. This is something of an event for the narrator, but Maggie isn't greatly
impressed.
When Dee arrives at the house, with a "stocky man," she
is wearing a traditional African dress. Dee greets them, "Wa-su-zo-Tean-o!" The man
has taken an African nameAsalamalakim: but he'll answer to Hakim-a-barber. Dee announces that
she has a new name as well:
Not 'Dee,' Wangero Leewanika
Kemajo!
Dee also announces that the person who was once
Dee is now dead.
I couldn't bear it any longer being named
after the people who oppress me.
Although Dee wants
nothing to do with the house and no wish to acknowledge the women who made her life possible,
she is particularly interested in the handmade benches and the old butter churn. The churn, she
announces...
...I can use...as a centerpiece for the
alcove table...
She proceeds to take it and wrap it to
go. In fact, Dee who lives comfortably in the city is happy to take the several items from her
mother's home...a home that doesn't even have windows, but only holes with strips of rawhide
covering each opening. The narrator makes note of the many hands that used the churn, and how
they have worn the wood down, but Dee is oblivious.
After dinner Dee comes
into the room with two quilts she wants.
They had been
pieced by Grandma Dee and then Big Dee and me had hung them on the quilt frames on the front
porch and quilted them.
Dee's description reveals exactly
how she feels about them:
"Mama," Wangero said
sweet as a bird. "Can I have these old quilts?"I heard something
fall in the kitchen, and a minute later the kitchen door slammed.
The slamming is done by Maggie, and this tells the reader how she
feels about Dee's desire to have the "old quilts." The value of the quilts is in their
age, not by who carefully stitched them. Dee assumes she will get them. The
narrator explains that they are for Maggie after she marries. Dee is appalled:
She'd probably be backward enough to put them to everyday
use.
What makes them valuable to Dee is that they are
"priceless," not the hands that made them. As if the Holy Ghost had come over her in
church, the narrator hugs Maggie and gives them to her, knowing it's where
the quilts belong because Maggie will appreciate them as Dee never could.
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