The meal began with a lengthy grace, perhaps inspired, Anna thought, by the family’s very long morning at church. Jesse’s father had some of the preacher in him. He sat at the head of the table and thanked the Lord for everything under the sun, including Anna, which surprised and touched her. Then they began passing the food. Fried chicken, whipped potatoes, a bowl of some sort of greens, corn, and canned tomatoes. Every bit of it came right from the farm, Jesse told her.
“Really!” Anna said. She wondered if the chicken she was eating had been running around the Williams’s yard a few hours earlier. “That’s amazing.”
“What’s so ’mazin’ ’bout that?” Nellie asked, looking up from her plate where she’d been playing with her food more than she’d been eating it. She was a tiny, adorable child who looked closer to six than eight. Her hair was in short braids, so many of them that they nearly formed a halo around her head. She had absolutely no knowledge of how to behave with company, which led her to say funny and inappropriate things that made Anna laugh. Except for Jesse, Anna felt more at ease with the little girl than with anyone else at the table.
“Don’t be so rude,” Dodie said to the child in response to her question. Dodie struck Anna as sullen and quiet, and Anna wondered if she was always that way or if it was her presence that brought out that side of the girl. Was it as odd for them to have a white woman at their table as it was for her to be there? It felt strange to be the different one in the group, she thought. Being different could lead to paranoia. She kept wondering, Are they saying that or acting that way because I’m white or is this the way they always are? Silly thinking, she decided, and not very useful.
“Not many farms up north, I guess?” Jesse’s mother asked.
“Oh, yes, there are plenty of farms up north,” Anna said. “As a matter of fact, New Jersey, where I live, is called the ‘Garden State.’ But I live in a town not too far from New York City. We get our food from the grocery store.”
“You’re a city girl for sure,” Aunt Jewel said with a smile. She struck Anna as the sharp blade in the family. The smart one. Well, perhaps they were all smart, but Anna thought Jewel must be better educated than Jesse’s parents. She spoke better English and there was something more worldly about her. Anna remembered Jesse telling her that his aunt was a midwife for the colored community. She’d probably been educated as a nurse, then. Maybe Aunt Jewel would be the one to understand why Jesse’s talent needed to be nurtured.
Anna felt Nellie’s gaze riveted on her and she caught the girl’s eye and smiled.
“You so pretty,” Nellie said. “I wish I had hair like that. And your eyelashes.” She touched her own lashes. “Yours is so thick.”
“Well, I think your hair is adorable in all those little braids,” Anna said.
“You got a piece of collard in your teeth,” Nellie said, pointing to her own two front teeth.
“Don’t be so rude!” Dodie said again.
“No, that’s fine.” Anna laughed, then worked the offending piece of collard free with her tongue. She regretted taking so many collards onto her plate. She’d never eaten them before and hoped never to eat them again. “Thank you for telling me, Nellie,” she said.
“And you know what else?” Nellie asked.
“Nellie…” her mother warned.
Nellie ignored her. “Dodie stealed some of Mama’s toilet water when she went out last night.”
“Did not,” Dodie said. “I borrowed it.”
“How you gonna give it back?” Nellie sniped.
Jesse put his arm around his little sister. “Why you wanna stir things up?” he asked her, his voice soft, and the little girl’s eyes instantly filled.
“I dunno.” She sounded suddenly remorseful, and Jesse gave her shoulders a squeeze. The tenderness in his gesture moved Anna. She had the feeling Jesse looked out for this little girl who didn’t seem to have the self-control to look out for herself.
Anna decided to shift the conversation with what she hoped was a neutral question. “How long has this land been in your family?” she asked, which set Mrs. Williams and Aunt Jewel off on a long story of the family’s history. For the most part, Mr. Williams stayed out of it, continuing his quiet observation of the goings-on, even though it was his lineage being discussed. Anna learned that Mr. Williams’s grandfather had been promised land when he was freed from slavery, but that land had been taken away from him, and he and his family had had to work as sharecroppers for many years before they could afford to buy a small parcel of land for themselves. They faced all kinds of hardships—some of them the same sort that white farmers would face, like drought, but they also faced hatred and prejudice that made it hard for them to hang on to the farm. Now, though, Mr. Williams and his whole extended family—sisters and brothers and cousins and the list of relatives went on and on—all owned bits and pieces of the fields surrounding the house. Jesse pointed this way and that as they described land belonging to their many cousins. It sounded like holding on to the land was an ongoing battle for all of them. Anna got the feeling that while Jesse’s family was not poor, they had to work very hard to hang on to everything they had.
“I’m sorry it’s been such a rough road for your families,” she said.
“Oh, we fine now,” Jesse’s mother said. She looked at Anna and drew in a long breath that signaled a serious change of topic. “Jesse tol’ us you was a old lady,” she said. “He say we don’t have nothin’ to worry about, him workin’ with you, but you ain’t no ol’ lady.”
Mr. Williams tilted his head in his wife’s direction at the change of topic, but still said nothing, and Anna tried to set her mind at ease. “I’m twenty-two,” she said. “Jesse is very talented and I want to help him grow to be a good artist. But I’m concerned—”
“Don’t matter what your intent or his intent be,” his mother said. “People see things where there ain’t nothin’ to see.”
Maybe Mrs. Williams had seen Mr. Wayman’s letter, after all. Anna understood her worry. Miss Myrtle told her colored men—and boys—had been beaten and even lynched for getting a bit too close to white women. “That’s all in the past, though,” Miss Myrtle had said. “That hardly ever happens at all anymore, and certainly not in Edenton.”
Anna imagined Jesse’s parents didn’t want their son to be Edenton’s first.
After dinner, Nellie wanted to show Anna around the farm. They put on their coats and walked together—Anna being careful where she stepped—and Nellie held her hand the whole time. They visited the barn and the mules and the kittens—all of whom Nellie had named—and the chicken coop. As they headed back to the house, Nellie said, “Can you come every Sunday?”, endearing her to Anna forever. She was a lovable child.
When they returned to the house, they were greeted by Jesse, his parents, and Aunt Jewel, who asked Anna to join them in the living room.
Finally! They would get down to the business of her visit.
The living room was large and homey, filled with handmade quilts folded neatly on the arm of nearly every chair, a braided rug in the center of the floor, and a large gray sofa. A fire crackled in the fireplace, and photographs of Jesse and his sisters, as well as children Anna didn’t recognize, covered one of the walls. She took a seat on the sofa, the cushion nearly swallowing her, it was so soft. She could tell from the atmosphere in the room that they were about to get down to brass tacks.