Ginger couldn’t see that any of those things would help. “But, Miz Connie, it will ruin your dress.”
“Honey, my closet is so crammed that I’ll never miss one dress,” she said as she got out a tiny pair of scissors and went to work. “I’m thinking that we need to cut two inches off the bottom, too. I can do that after we dye eggs. You’ve got good legs. Enjoy them, girl. They’ll turn cheesy when you get old. I’ll have it all done by bedtime and you can try it on again. What size shoes do you wear?”
“Seven,” Ginger answered.
Connie cocked her head to one side. “I think you probably wear about the same size shoes as Mama did. She’s got a lovely pair of white satin flats that will work. Don’t worry, darlin’. She never wore them. I wouldn’t want to wear a dead woman’s shoes, either, not even Mama’s, but she bought them to wear the last Easter she was with us, and then she passed before the holiday.” She rattled on as the sewing machine buzzed.
“You’re really good at sewing,” Ginger said.
“Mama insisted that we be self-sufficient as much as possible.” Connie glanced down at Ginger’s hands. “You must have white gloves, but don’t worry, I’ve got a drawer full. I’ve got a pair of pretty lace ones that will go perfect with this dress.” Connie laughed. “I feel like I’m dressing Cinderella.”
“A very pregnant Cinderella.” Ginger went to the window and looked out over the field where Sloan was riding on a small tractor. He sure wasn’t Prince Charming on a big white horse, but then, it had been years since Ginger believed in fairy tales.
Chapter Four
Ginger had thought that dyeing eggs was going to be a two-hour job, but she was dead wrong. The dining room tablecloth had been removed and replaced with newspaper. Four place settings had been arranged with paintbrushes, glitter, glue, all kinds of cute little stencils, and everything that could be imagined to decorate the eggs.
“All this just to put the eggs in the grass and then eat them tomorrow?” Ginger asked.
“Honey, the real prize isn’t the end; it’s the journey itself,” Kate told her. “This is one of our traditions, and we love this part of it as much as hunting the eggs.”
“And after they’re decorated, we put them in the refrigerator,” Betsy told her. “That way, it’s safe to use them tomorrow. We always, always have egg salad sandwiches for supper on Easter night.”
Ginger made a mental note right then to have lots and lots of traditions for her baby, and one of them would be decorating Easter eggs. She pulled out a chair and sat down. “What do I do first?”
“You are the artist,” Betsy answered. “If you want the background to be a color, then you start dipping like this.” She picked up a boiled egg, settled it into a wire loop, and slowly submerged it in a bowl of blue dye. “The longer you leave it in there, the darker the color that you’ll get.”
Kate giggled under her breath.
“What’s so funny?” Connie asked.
“I was just wonderin’ if I’d be totally white if I soaked myself in buttermilk for a whole day,” Kate replied. “Maybe then I’d look like Edith Wilson, and I could have gotten a husband like Max.”
“Honey, you never would have had a chance with someone like Max Wilson. No way would a budding preacher man want a woman who came from the Banty House.” Connie laughed out loud.
“Or who had black blood in her veins, but I do remember the buttermilk days.” Betsy laughed with her sister.
“What’s so funny?” Ginger asked.
“I read about women soaking their hands and using buttermilk compresses on their faces in an old magazine I found in the attic back when we were little girls.” Connie dried her eyes on a paper towel.
“And she took a whole gallon of buttermilk up to the bathroom and Mama caught her smearing it on her arms and neck and face.” Kate drew a design on an egg and started painting a lovely picture of a little duck swimming in water.
“Did it work?” Ginger asked.
Connie shook her head. “Nope. I’m still not one thing or another.”
“I’ll tell the rest of the story,” Kate said. “We had one of our sister meetings in my bedroom, and we figured the lady in the article got it all wrong. It had to work from the inside, so we all three asked for buttermilk every night with our supper. I gagged with every swallow and still hate the taste today.”
“How long did you do that?” Ginger asked.
“About a week, and then one night at supper, Mama told us that it didn’t matter what we were on the outside,” Kate said. “What mattered was what we were on the inside—in our hearts and how we treated other people. I was so glad that she said that, and I’ve never put buttermilk in my mouth again.”
“Your mama was a smart lady.” Ginger put an egg in a little wire holder and dipped it in red dye just long enough to turn it pale pink. Maybe if she made sure all her eggs were shades of pink and decorated to please a little girl, her wish for a daughter would be granted.
“Yes, she was.” Connie picked up the silver glitter.
“It was after the buttermilk week that I asked her who our father was,” Kate said.
“You didn’t know?” Ginger asked.
“Not until many years after that. She just told us that he was a good man who’d died a hero, and that satisfied us until we were teenagers,” Betsy answered.
“But on her deathbed, she said she’d only ever loved one man, and that was the sheriff of Medina County. That includes Hondo and Rooster and a few more little towns around us, and he was the father to all us girls.” Connie sighed. “He died a few months after I was born.”
“I’m sorry,” Ginger said.
“He wanted to marry Mama, but she’d have none of it. She said being married to the madam of the Banty House would ruin his career. So they had about five years of love before he got killed during a bank robbery, and she never forgot him,” Kate said. “Too bad none of us ever found that kind of love.”
“Thank God we didn’t.” Connie rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “We’ve done very well taking care of the Banty House without a man telling us what to do.”
“You’ve got Sloan,” Ginger reminded them.
“Oh, honey, he’s like our shared son. That’s different from a husband who’d always be meddling in our affairs.” Connie made squiggle designs on her egg with glue and rolled it in glitter.
“More like our grandson,” Kate told her. “If he was a son, we’d have to keep him in the house. But a grandchild is different. We can spoil him and send him home. Shhh . . .” She held a finger to her lips. “The tractor has stopped, so he’ll be coming in for a break.”
Ginger drew a princess crown on her pale-pink egg with glue and then shook gold glitter on it. “I so hope this baby is a girl.”
“Got a name picked out?” Kate asked.
Ginger shook her head. “I wouldn’t know what kind of name to give him or her. What if I picked out Grace and that didn’t fit her at all? Or maybe Ross if it’s a boy and he looked more like a Declan? I’ll just wait until I’m holding the baby in my arms and then make the decision.”