“There are strange things about the mural that we don’t understand,” I said, moving to stand in front of the painting. “The knife in her teeth. The motorcycle.” I pointed out the other oddities. “But we think Anna … Miss Anna painted them. Not Jesse. But … Mama Nelle.” I took a deep breath. “I was wondering if Jesse and Miss Anna were more than friends.”
Saundra turned her head from the mural to me. “You think they were lovers?” she asked.
Mama Nelle didn’t seem to hear either of us, her gaze still on the mural.
“I saw an article in the paper from back then,” I said to Saundra. “It said there’d been a racial slur written on the outside wall of the warehouse where Anna painted and where Jesse was her … apprentice, or helper, or … I wondered if there was something more between them.”
“Ah,” Saundra said, understanding. “Well, if there was, it’s certainly ancient history now. It hardly matters, does it?”
It didn’t matter at all, actually, but it was more than prurient interest driving me. “You’re right,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. It’s just that I’ve come to feel … close to Anna Dale, working on this thing.” I gestured toward the mural. “She created a perfectly nice sketch for this mural and then when she actually painted it she added all these … horrific details to it, and…” I seemed to run out of words.
“We’d just like to understand her better.” Oliver stood next to me and he surprised me by cupping my elbow in his hand. The touch didn’t last nearly as long as I would have liked. “And of course there are very few people alive now who were alive then,” he continued, dropping his hand to his side, “and Morgan thought maybe your mother might have some—”
“They wasn’t anythin’ of the kind,” Mama Nelle said suddenly. She looked across the room at me. “Ain’t you never had a friend that was a boy but not a boyfriend?”
I felt Oliver next to me. Until recently, he’d fit that description perfectly. Was it my imagination that there was something more between us? Something growing? Something I wanted to grow.
“Yes,” I said to Mama Nelle. “I know what you mean. Are you saying that’s all there was between Anna and Jesse? Friendship?”
“That’s ’xactly right.”
I tipped my head, curious. “How do you know that for sure?”
She looked at me in silence for so long I began to wonder if she was having some sort of spell.
“Mama?” Saundra prodded.
“We ain’t talkin’ ’bout Miss Anna no more,” Mama Nelle said in a near whisper. “Come here.” She motioned me to come closer. I walked the five or six steps to her chair and she reached out to take my hand. I bent low until her lips were next to my ear. “You’ll keep her secrets, right?” she whispered to me. “Me ’n’ you? We the only ones that know.”
Know what? I wanted to ask her. Her cool dry fingers grasped mine in a plea or a promise. I wasn’t sure which, but I knew it wasn’t the time to press for more. That would have to wait. “Yes,” I whispered back. “I’ll keep her secrets.”
Chapter 48
ANNA
March 22, 1940
Jesse arrived before dawn. Anna sat, half naked, on the broken cot. All the way broken now, its legs splayed and splintered on the concrete. She followed Jesse’s gaze to where Martin lay on the floor. She followed his gaze to the bloody hammer. His eyes grew wide. He raised a trembling hand to his mouth.
Anna thought of how the hammer actually belonged to Miss Myrtle, who’d said she could keep it as long as she needed it. She’d liked the feel of the smooth wood in her hand when she pounded nails into the walls of the warehouse. She’d liked the solid head of it.
At midnight, though, she’d liked the claw end.
“What happened?” Jesse lowered his hand from his mouth, his voice a husky whisper.
Anna couldn’t speak. It would have taken effort she didn’t have.
Jesse walked toward her. He pried the journal from her fingers where she held it on her bare thighs and read what she’d written earlier that morning when she was sick to her stomach. So, so sick. She didn’t even remember what words she’d used.
“Oh, shit, Anna,” Jesse said. He stood above her, reading. It was the first time she’d heard him swear. The first time he’d said her name without “Miss” in front of it.
She started to cry. Again. She’d thought she was out of tears.
Jesse made her stand up. She started to fall, but he caught her. He helped her put on her underwear. Her pants. She felt no modesty. She didn’t care. Then he helped her walk around the other side of the cot so she wouldn’t step through the blood. So much of it! It had soaked into the concrete floor. Already dark, ruby red for all time. She thought she would get sick again, but the feeling passed. Jesse had her sit in the chair by his easel.
“Are you all right?” he asked, though it would be clear to anyone that she was not all right. Not in the least. She couldn’t speak, but she didn’t need to explain what had happened. He’d read it all. She watched him look around the room—the broken cot, the bloodstained hammer, the red concrete, Martin’s skull split open like a bloody egg.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said.
How? she wanted to ask, but the effort it would take to produce that word was more than she could summon.
She turned her gaze away from Martin. She wouldn’t look at him again. Did she strike him more than once? She thought she had. Once had been enough to kill him. She hit him more than once, though. Once, twice. Maybe three times. She couldn’t remember. She’d used all her might, but it hadn’t felt like enough for her. Was he truly going to kill her? She didn’t know. He’d been turned away from her when she rose in a fury from the cot, grabbed the hammer, and struck him down with all her might. Strength she hadn’t known she had. A side of herself she hadn’t known existed.
She would tell the police he was going to kill her.
That was what she’d say.
“I’ll take care of it,” Jesse said again.
She looked up at him, vaguely aware that he was the child and she, the adult, and that this was all backwards.
“I’ll have to use your car.” He picked up her keys from the table where she kept her paints. Then he picked up a pair of those work gloves she’d bought for him that he never used. He studied them for a moment.
“I’m gonna wreck these.”
She nodded her consent and he put the gloves on.
Maybe there will be no police, she thought.
Jesse opened the warehouse door and she turned away as he dragged Martin’s body outside. Although it was very early morning and few people would be out, she was glad the warehouse was nearly surrounded by trees and at the end of a long road cut off from the rest of the world. Jesse came back inside. He picked up the hammer, walked over to her paint table. He opened a can of paint with the bloody claw of the hammer. Then he walked over to the bloodstained concrete. Anna watched in shock as he poured red paint over the blood. He dropped the can on top of the mess.