Almost unconsciously Sassafrass had begun the laborious process of warping the four-harness table loom she had transported from Charleston. The eccentric family her family had worked for as slaves, and then as freed women weavers, had seen fit to grant Sassafrass the looms her forebears had warped and wefted thousands of times since emancipation. Sassafrass had always been proud that her mother had a craft; that all the women in her family could make something besides a baby, and shooting streams of sperm. She had grown up in a room full of spinning wheels, table and floor looms, and her mother always busy making cloth because the Fitzhugh family never wore anything but hand-woven cloth . . . until they couldn’t afford it any more. Sassafrass had never wanted to weave, she just couldn’t help it. There was something about the feel of raw fleece and finished threads and dainty patterned pieces that was as essential to her as dancing is to Carmen DeLavallade, or singing to Aretha Franklin. Her mama had done it, and her mama before that; and making cloth was the only tradition Sassafrass inherited that gave her a sense of womanhood that was rich and sensuous, not tired and stingy. She thought that if Kingfish had bought Sapphire a loom, she would never have been such a bitch. She thought that the bronze Dionysius was not saving the sad frigid women of Thebes by seducing them away from their looms, but rather he was planning, under Osiris’ aegis, to wipe out Europeans before they went around the world enslaving rainbow-colored people . . . because when women make cloth, they have time to think, and Theban women stopped thinking, and the town fell. So Sassafrass was certain of the necessity of her skill for the well-being of women everywhere, as well as for her own. As she passed the shuttle through the claret cotton warp, Sassafrass conjured images of women weaving from all time and all places: Toltecas spinning shimmering threads; East Indian women designing intricate patterns for Shakti, the impetus and destruction of creation; and Navajo women working on thick tapestries. She tried to compel an African woman to come join them—women, making cloth—and the spirits said, “No. You cannot have her . . . in Africa men make cloth, and women . . .” Sassafrass tossed her head to the left side, and dismissed her congregation of international cloth makers while she rethreaded her shuttle. And Mitch was home . . .

Chapter 6

Hi there Sassafrass . . .

How’s mama’s favorite dumpling? Sounds to me like you have indeed worked wonders on your little house. Just watch now that you don’t overdo with too much color. Houses are supposed to comfort us, as well as invigorate the senses. You don’t get one by ignoring the other. There, you see, I do have a notion of aesthetics, black or not. They’re Southern, and that’s close enough. (smile)