She began pouncing the cheesecloth bag over the cartoon, climbing up and down the ladder to reach the various parts of the design. She knew it was difficult for some of the people to really see the cartoon and what she was doing, but they stood riveted, patiently waiting for the end result.
Jesse’s aunt Jewel and little Nellie arrived when Anna was about halfway through. They stood in the back, but Anna insisted they come up front next to Jesse so Nellie would be able to see, and no one made a fuss. This was Anna’s space and she could have whoever she wanted in her audience. She let Nellie do some of the low pouncing herself, hoping Mrs. Williams wouldn’t be annoyed that her daughter’s fingers and pinafore got a bit of charcoal dust on them. Nellie seemed to enjoy performing in front of the crowd, even taking a cute curtsy once she was finished. Maybe there would end up being two artists in the Williams family.
When Anna finally completed the pouncing, Jesse and Peter helped her remove the cartoon and everyone cheered when they saw the outline of the drawing on the canvas. The photographer had Anna and the boys pose with the canvas for the newspaper. Then the crowd slowly trickled out of the warehouse, Jesse and Peter along with them.
“It’s Valentine’s Day, Miz Dale,” Peter informed her with a wink as they sauntered out, and she guessed both boys had special girls they wanted to see. She watched them leave with a smile, and although she was left alone in the warehouse, sweeping up charcoal dust like Cinderella, she felt as content as she’d ever felt in her life.
Anna arrived at the warehouse Saturday morning to find that someone had painted the words NIGGER LOVER in huge red letters on the side of the building by the door. A wave of nausea moved through her and she pressed her hands to her mouth. Who had done it? Had it been someone from the crowd who’d watched her pounce the cartoon on Wednesday? Someone who stood there with ugliness in his heart while she’d giddily, naïvely, happily gone about her tasks with Peter and Jesse helping her? She hated the thought of Jesse arriving that morning and seeing those words in a place he’d come to feel comfortable and important. She wished she could snap her fingers and make them go away.
As she stood there trying to figure out what to do, she spotted Peter riding his bike up the dirt road toward the warehouse. Then suddenly, a good distance before he reached her, he turned around and headed back the way he’d come.
“Peter!” she called after him, her hands a megaphone around her mouth. She suddenly felt spooked being there alone and wanted someone—anyone but Jesse—with her. She couldn’t imagine why Peter was riding away like that. Surely he’d seen the words, though. They were big enough to see from a distance. Maybe he felt the way she did: neither of them wanted to be there when Jesse arrived.
She thought of leaving, nervous about being there by herself, but she wouldn’t let whoever had done this frighten her away, especially not today—the day she would begin painting. Steeling herself, she opened the warehouse door, walked inside, and turned on all the lights to illuminate every inch of the space.
She was mixing paint a short time later when Jesse showed up. He walked into the warehouse as though he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. Stopping right inside the door, he slumped heavily against the wall.
“I’m so sorry, Jesse,” Anna said.
“Maybe I shouldn’t come here,” he said. “Daddy says no good can come of it. Maybe he’s right.”
Anna hesitated. She wanted to say, No he’s not right! You deserve to be here every bit as much as Peter, but she was worried. A person who wrote such ugly words in the middle of the night might be capable of doing even uglier deeds. In that moment, she felt afraid, both for Jesse and herself. She thought back to Wednesday. What must the crowd have thought when Jesse and Peter and Anna displayed such a casual and easy camaraderie among them? Had it been misinterpreted? Did the “lover” on the wall of her warehouse imply something more than the fact that she treated Jesse the way she treated everyone else?
All those thoughts ran through her mind in the seconds after Jesse spoke. Finally, she found her voice.
“Nonsense!” she said. “Let’s not let some small-minded fool ruin what we’ve accomplished here.”
They heard the sound of a car on the dirt road and both of them froze, their eyes on the door. Anna’s heart climbed into her throat. In a moment, the door opened and Mr. Arndt and Peter stood in the doorway. A can of paint hung from the postmaster’s hand, while Peter held two brushes, and Anna let out her breath in relief. She’d thought Peter had been a coward, but he’d only gone to get help. She sent him a look of gratitude.
“You two all right?” Mr. Arndt asked her and Jesse. Anna nodded. Jesse seemed frozen, perhaps still stuck in the moment before as he and Anna imagined who might be driving up the road. Mr. Arndt looked at him. “You stay inside, son,” he said. “Me and Peter’ll fix this right up.” He started to head back out the door, but took a moment to look toward Anna again. “This ain’t the real Edenton, Miss Dale,” he said, cocking his head in the direction of the exterior wall with its hateful lettering. “I hope you know that.”
Anna thought of the lovely people she’d met in Edenton. Jesse and Peter. Miss Myrtle and her maid Freda. Pauline and Karl, and so very many others.
“I do know that,” she said.
Jesse helped her mix paint and clean brushes, while Peter and Mr. Arndt undid the damage outside, but there was no denying that they all worked in a wounded silence. Even when the painting outside was finished and Peter joined her and Jesse in the warehouse, they were quiet, and she believed their hearts were still heavy when the three of them finally headed home that night.
Chapter 39
MORGAN
July 11, 2018
Oliver talked me into going to the ER, the last place I wanted to be. Emergency rooms would forever remind me of the night of the accident. Plus, I thought he was overreacting, but once we were sitting in the crowded waiting room where I could finally pry my purplish foot out of my blue Birkenstock, I knew he’d been right. My ankle was positively bulbous by then. We were surrounded by people who looked worse off than I did, though, with their bloody bandages and faces contorted with pain, and I knew we were in for a long wait.
Oliver managed to get an ice pack from a nurse, and I sat with my legs across his lap as he held the pack to my bloated ankle. If I held my foot perfectly still, the pain was bearable, but the second I moved it a millimeter left or right, I had to bite my tongue to keep from whimpering.
“I hope it’s not broken,” I said.
“I think your pain would be even worse,” he said. He leaned over my ankles and sniffed.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked. I would have pulled my feet away from him if the pain wouldn’t have killed me.
“Don’t smell any booze.” He smiled at me. “I think your monitor was spared.”
I laughed. “You’re crazy,” I said. It was a lucky miracle that nothing had spilled on the monitor during the melee. I had an appointment with Rebecca in the morning and didn’t know how I’d explain myself if the monitor had gone off.
We were quiet for a moment and I realized I was shivering, though I didn’t feel the least bit cold. “I hate this place,” I said.