“I have no idea,” Saundra said.
I looked down at her empty hands. “Did you bring the diary with you?” I asked.
“Well, I hope you don’t mind,” she said, an apology in her voice. “I’ll definitely turn it over to you, since that’s what she wanted me to do, but I would really like to read it first myself. I had no idea she kept it and I really—”
“Of course.” I could imagine how hungry the daughter of a loving mother would be to read about her life, although I couldn’t care less what stories my own mother might tell. I wanted to ask Saundra, When can I get it?, but managed to hold my tongue.
“I’ll have to break the lock.” Saundra looked apologetic.
“Of course,” I said again. “I wonder if there’s something in it about Anna Dale and that’s why she’s leaving it to me.”
“I’ll let you know if I come across anything like that,” Saundra said, “but honestly, Morgan? you shouldn’t get your hopes up. She wasn’t thinking clearly at all the last couple of days. It doesn’t make any sense she’d leave her diary to you. I think she was simply not herself that night.”
I nodded. “I understand,” I said. “And I’d like to read it, but I’ll give it back to you afterward. It should stay in your family.”
“Thanks for understanding that,” Saundra said. “Oh, and I also found some old sketches of family members that Uncle Jesse drew when he was a boy. Do you think Lisa might want them for the gallery?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I’ll ask her.” But my words came out woodenly, mechanically. All I could think about was getting my hands on Mama Nelle’s diary.
Chapter 54
ANNA
April 5, 1940
Anna wasn’t sure if Jesse was angry at her or maybe just worried. She didn’t really care which. He was wisely keeping people away from the warehouse and they didn’t understand why they couldn’t come inside to watch her paint, as they had in the past. She didn’t know what he told them or why they obeyed him, either. She heard someone muttering about the “uppity colored boy” giving them orders, but she shut out the words. They had to stay away.
Martin’s spirit was in the warehouse. Jesse didn’t believe Anna when she told him, but two of the lights that hung from the ceiling beams blew out during the week and Anna was certain Martin had made it happen. She’d never believed in spirits before, but now she did, utterly and completely. The lights were up too high for her and Jesse to fix, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything. She didn’t even care about painting the mural … except that she’d added a hammer to the painting before Jesse’s arrival the day before. He hadn’t even noticed, which had struck her as amusing for some reason.
“Why you laughin’?” Jesse had looked suspicious. “That ain’t no real laugh.”
Anna’d tightened her lips to hold back her laughter. The hammer was practically right in front of him and he didn’t see it. It didn’t seem all that funny to her later, but at that moment, she’d nearly been in hysterics. She’d thought she should add some drops of blood dripping from the hammer’s claw.
“You done lost your marbles,” Jesse had said, worry in his dark eyes.
She knew she’d lost her marbles. Every once in a while, she thought she found them again and in those moments she knew clearly that her mind was going downhill but it was easier to just keep plowing forward than to find a way to fix the mess she’d made.
The doctor came to the house on Friday afternoon. Miss Myrtle insisted that Anna see him, and he came upstairs to her room and listened to her heart and her lungs and looked into her throat and her ears.
“You are very slender for your height,” he announced, tweaking the end of his waxy mustache, “and Miss Myrtle is afraid you’re not getting enough to eat.”
“I don’t have much of an appetite lately,” Anna said. “It must be the weather.”
“Try to eat more,” he said. “You need to put some meat on your bones.”
The word “bones” made Anna think of the skull in the window of the Mill Village house and she thought she was going to start laughing right then and there. It was a monumental struggle to prevent the burst of laughter from leaving her mouth, but she succeeded.
“Do you sleep well?” the doctor asked.
“Perfectly,” she said, but in her mind she added, Except for the nightmares. They were wretched things, the nightmares. If she thought the doctor had a pill to make them go away, she would have told him about them.
“Do you feel melancholy?” he asked.
“No!” She spoke sharply. Melancholia had been her mother’s diagnosis during her dark spells. Anna resisted the word. She was not like her mother. “Melancholy” didn’t capture how she felt. She was angry about what Martin had done to her. What he’d taken from her. And she felt sick to her stomach with guilt, and scared to death. But the doctor didn’t ask her about any of that.
“Miss Myrtle thinks you might be working too hard,” the doctor said.
“I’ll slow down,” she said, thinking, If I got any slower, I’d be dead. She was now spending her time in the warehouse either staring into space, thinking of nothing, really, or telling Jesse how to do what still needed to be done on the mural. Jesse kept trying to get her to pick up a brush and work on it herself, but she had no interest.
“When was your last menstrual period?” the doctor asked.
She was surprised by the question, and she didn’t know the answer. She’d never kept good track.
“Three weeks ago,” she said, but she started thinking about the sanitary belt in her lingerie drawer. When was the last time she’d had to wear that wretched thing? When did she last reach into the box of sanitary pads?
She made herself think about something else. The way the doctor’s mustache was uneven, one side higher than the other. That made her smile.
“Why are you smiling?” He smiled warmly back at her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I’m happy.”
She waited until he’d left her room before she burst into tears.
Chapter 55
MORGAN
July 27, 2018
I handed my signed AA attendance form to Rebecca as I took my seat next to her desk.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said. I was only late by five or six minutes, but the last thing I wanted to do was irk Rebecca. I’d lost myself in the mural that morning. Absolutely lost myself. I’d been working on the silver handle of the knife in the peanut factory worker’s mouth. It took me hours to do the inpainting. I did it perfectly, though. I was tempted to call Oliver over to have him tell me how awesome it was, but I didn’t need his approval anymore. I knew it was awesome. Even sitting there next to Rebecca’s desk, I could still see the sheen of the silver blade and the line of shadow where no light hit the handle.
“You look like the cat that swallowed the canary today,” Rebecca said, looking up from the AA form. “What’s up with you?”
“I did amazing work today,” I said. “Amazing work all week, actually. It feels good.”