Mama Nelle frowned. “Jes’ a big ol’ blur to me,” she said.
“Let me see it,” the 1950 woman said, and I held the phone in front of her.
The woman laughed. “That’s a big mess, that’s what that is. How you expect her to make anythin’ out of that?”
I looked at the picture myself. I supposed to someone not accustomed to seeing the damaged mural every day, it did look a mess. To me, though, it was becoming a source of fascination.
I sat with Mama Nelle a while longer, asking her questions about her and Jesse’s childhoods, and that seemed to be where the old woman’s dementia had not yet taken its toll and her memories were the happiest. At one point, Mama Nelle took my hand and held it on her bony knee, and I felt touched by the gesture. I liked sitting there, talking to her. Even though she didn’t mention Anna again, it didn’t matter. She had known the living, breathing Anna. We couldn’t let nobody know nothin’ ’bout her. Why not? I wondered. What was that all about?
By the time Lisa came to hustle me out of the sitting room, I found it hard to tear myself away.
In the kitchen, Lisa introduced me to a stunning woman who was setting candles into a large chocolate-iced sheet cake. Happy Birthday, Mama Nelle was written in yellow icing on top.
“This is my cousin Saundra, Mama Nelle’s daughter,” Lisa said. “And Saundra, this is Morgan Christopher who’s helping out in the gallery.”
Saundra set the last candle into the cake, then smiled at me. Everything about her face was symmetrical, from her perfect eyebrows, to her high cheekbones, to her straight white smile. “Lisa tells me you’re restoring a huge, musty ol’ mural for Uncle Jesse’s gallery,” she said.
“Yes, and Mama—your mother—remembers the artist, which is so cool.” I heard the enthusiasm in my voice. It felt good to be excited about something. “We know next to nothing about her,” I added.
“She does?” Saundra shook her head with a chuckle. “That woman. You never know what she’s going to pull out of that memory bank of hers.”
“Don’t make so much out of it,” Lisa said in the cool voice she often used with me. “Mama tends to make things up these days.”
“Oh, I think a lot of what she remembers is at least partially true.” Saundra stood back to admire her handiwork with the candles. “But oh Lord, I’m such a bad daughter!” She laughed. “I wish I’d written down everything she’s said over my fifty-five years. She has all the family history locked in that brain of hers and we’ve lost it because I’m lazy.”
“You’re the least lazy person I know,” Lisa said, patting her cousin’s arm. She looked at me. “Saundra is superintendent of schools in Elizabeth City.”
“Wow,” I said, trying to sound polite, but I wished I was back in the sitting room, picking Mama Nelle’s brain.
“Mama is the repository for the family history,” Saundra said. “She has land deeds and letters and all sorts of what-not from ancient times tucked here and there in her bedroom, and I know I’m going to have to be the one to sort through all of it when she passes.”
“You could just toss it,” Lisa suggested.
“You’re evil,” Saundra said, then she looked at me. “She was always the evil cousin.”
I can believe it, I thought, but I only smiled.
An older, gray-haired woman suddenly blew into the room. She was big boned and smelled strongly of some sweet perfume and she swept Lisa into her arms. “Baby,” she said. “How are you, honey? Come talk to me!”
I watched Lisa get pulled away by the woman as if she were a small child obeying an elder, and Saundra turned to busy herself with a tray of small pastries. I thought I should offer to help, but instead I excused myself. I wanted to go back to the sunroom and Mama Nelle, where I’d felt a strange comfort. Even if the old woman could remember very little of the past, we shared an interest in the dusty old mural. For Mama Nelle, it was a memory. For me, the here and now. Yet we did have one thing in common, I thought, and that was Anna Dale.
Chapter 22
ANNA
January 8, 1940
From the United States Treasury Department, Section of Fine Arts
Special 48-States Mural Competition
January 3, 1940
Dear Miss Anna Dale,
Thank you for sending your sketch for the Edenton, North Carolina, mural. You mentioned that you will be using models for the cartoon and I implore you to do so. While the figures in your sketch were competent, they lacked a realism that can only come through the use of live models. Similarly, I’d reconsider the color choices of the frocks on the women in the central portion of the sketch. To my eye, those particular shades of purple and blue clash against one another. Also, I would not have known the Negro woman was holding peanuts in her apron had you not told me, but I’m sure you’ll take care of adding more detail in your cartoon. I do applaud your liberal use of reds. Few of the artists have been so bold with color.
With these slight changes, the Section believes your final mural will be a success and we are enclosing a check for your first payment of $240. Please send a photograph of the full-scale black-and-white cartoon as soon as possible.
Sincerely, Edward Rowan, Art Administrator, Section of Fine Arts
Anna read the letter three times to be sure she understood. Her sketch had been accepted, and she’d actually been paid for her work. She could barely believe that doing something she loved could result in so much money. Mr. Rowan hadn’t found the sketch perfect, but perfect enough, and that was what counted at this stage. Anna had been told that he was persnickety and always had to find something he wanted corrected. That was fine. She would happily address his concerns. She already had the roll of cartoon paper. Now she could move forward.
She needed to find her models, though. Three women for the Tea Party. A Negro woman for the peanut factory. A white man for the lumber yard. There were no people in the painting of the Cotton Mill Village, and the men in the fishing boat were at such a distance that she didn’t need to see them in detail. So she needed five models in all. She hoped she wasn’t biting off more than she could chew.
On Friday, she’d spoken by phone with the art teacher Mayor Sykes referred her to at Edenton High School and asked if she might have a couple of art students willing to help her in the warehouse.
“I won’t be able to pay them,” she’d explained, “but the experience should be illuminating to them as future artists.”
The teacher called her back to say there were two students, a boy and a girl, who would work for her a couple of hours every afternoon for school credit. Anna was relieved. Not only did she need the help, she would also be glad to have some company in the spooky warehouse. She called the mayor’s office to give him the news and asked if he’d had that key made yet, but he said he’d thought it over and a key didn’t make sense, since the large garage doors had no locks.
“Why bother to lock the door, then?” he’d asked. He assured her that her supplies would be perfectly safe. She was disappointed, but she had to trust that he knew his town better than she did.
As soon as she set down the letter from the Section, she called the art store in Norfolk and ordered her canvas and paints, both in tubes and cans. She would have a great deal of canvas to cover. She hoped Pauline had been serious about going to Norfolk with her to pick up the supplies. Then she called the lumber company and ordered the wood she’d need for the stretcher. So much wood! It made her nervous to imagine the work she had ahead of her, building that stretcher, and she hoped and prayed she had the measurements right.