“What?” As I moved closer, I could see that the book’s small gold lock had been pried open. I reached out to take the book from her hands. The leather felt like butter beneath my fingers.
“It’s not Mama’s after all,” Saundra said. “I believe it might be your artist’s.”
I simply stared at her, speechless. “Anna Dale’s?” I finally managed to say, as if there could possibly be another artist she would refer to as mine.
Saundra nodded. “The inscription in the front reads To Anna and it’s from her mother. When I realized it wasn’t Mama’s, I felt like I’d be intrusive reading it—not to mention I have zero time—so you’ll just have to tell me if it says anything exciting.”
I looked down at the book in my hands and gently lifted the leather cover. There, in slightly blurry, slanted blue handwriting, were the words:
My darling Anna, share your deepest thoughts here in this journal, my love, and know that I will always be with you, forever and ever. Mom
I could barely tear my eyes away from the words to look back at Saundra. “Oh my God, Saundra!” I said. “This could tell us so much.” I opened the book at random. The pages felt crinkly and brittle, and they were covered with a rounded vertical script—a miniature example of the distinctive vertical loops so evident in Anna’s signature on the mural. “This is so cool!” I looked up at Saundra again. “I spend half my day wondering what was going through Anna’s mind while she painted this thing.” I nodded toward the mural. “Maybe this will tell me.”
“Why on earth my mother would have it, I don’t know,” Saundra said.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I agreed. “Mama Nelle would have been a little girl when Anna painted the mural, right? Nineteen-forty?”
“Right.” Saundra nodded. “But however it came to be in her hands, I’m just happy you want it, and that Mama was able to let me know I should give it to you.”
“Me, too.” I hugged the journal to my chest. I felt ridiculously happy, holding something that had spent so much time in Anna’s hands.
“Would you like to see the sketches?” Saundra asked.
“Yes, sure,” I said, although I was answering more to be polite than anything else. What I really wanted was to dig into the diary. The journal.
Saundra pulled a sheaf of sketch paper from the box and began spreading the portraits out on the table. There were six of them and the subjects all looked like African Americans.
“I’m pretty sure this one was my mother when she was a little girl,” Saundra said, pointing to one of the drawings. “It looks like a photograph I have of her. And this one might be my aunt Dodie, Mama and Uncle Jesse’s older sister. I can make some educated guesses as to the others, but I really don’t know for sure.”
“These really don’t look like Jesse Williams’s work,” I said, frowning at the sketches. “I’ll have to show them to Oliver—the curator—and see what he thinks.”
Saundra pulled out her phone to check the time. “Well,” she said, slipping her purse over her shoulder, “do what you want with them. They have to be from when he was a kid, given the age of my mother in the drawing, so probably not as polished an artist as he was later. And I’ve got to run.” She nodded toward the journal I still held against my chest like a treasure. “You be sure to tell me what you learn, all right?”
Chapter 58
ANNA
Wednesday, May 22, 1940
I’m pregnant with Martin Drapple’s child.
Those words make my skin crawl.
I haven’t written anything here in so long because … I don’t know. I guess because I didn’t want to see the truth in writing. I’ve been sick, but it seems the sicker I’ve felt physically, the stronger I’ve felt mentally, and the sickness is finally waning. I’m thinking clearly these days. I paint constantly and well. The mural is once again my friend.
Jesse doesn’t agree. He tells me I’m still not myself. “You ain’t a right-thinkin’ woman, Anna,” he says. He bases this on the fact that I have left the motorcycle and the skeleton head and the hammer and a few other odds and ends in the painting. I’ve come to see beauty in them, which worries him and sometimes makes me think he’s right. I don’t think I’m crazy, but I have changed. Of course I have. Martin no longer haunts me in the warehouse, turning out the lights, turning them on again. No, Martin now haunts me from inside. His spirit grows in my belly and I can’t get away from it. There is no question which haunting is worse.
Miss Myrtle asked the doctor to come see me again, but I refused to let him into my room. Miss Myrtle commented on how little I eat. “Yet you seem to be putting on weight,” she said. Oh, she must know, but how? I certainly am not yet showing. Has she heard me getting sick in the early mornings? Does she think I’m carrying Jesse’s child? If she thinks I’m expecting, who else could she possibly imagine to be the father? And what exactly am I going to do? I will be able to camouflage my growing belly with my smock when I’m in the warehouse, but out in the world it will be another story. I must finish the mural and install it on the post office wall very soon before everyone in Edenton guesses my secret. I’ve already ordered the lead white that I’ll use for the installation. Jesse will help, and Peter and Mr. Arndt, and I’ll have to find one or two other people. It’s going to be quite a job. Jesse says I have to take out the motorcycle and other things before it’s installed. I know he’s right, but for now, they remain. That’s my Edenton in the mural right now. My personal Edenton. Beauty and the beast.
This morning, I finally told Jesse about the baby. I think he’d guessed, because I’ve been so sick. His aunt Jewel, who lives with his family, is a midwife full of stories. He knows more about these things than most seventeen eighteen- (he just had a birthday) year old boys.
He flat-out told me I have to get rid of it. “Aunt Jewel might could help,” he said.
I don’t think I could do that. The baby was fathered by a monster, yes, but it is half mine. And yet … I can’t possibly have a baby! Where would I go? I can’t return to Plainfield with a child. I have no one there to help me and I’d be ostracized by my neighbors and bring shame to my mother’s memory. But I can’t stay in Edenton, either. I would be more of an outcast than I already am. Jesse said people will think the baby is his, and he’s probably right. “Who else you been spendin’ every day with?” he asked me. If people believe the baby is his … I can’t bear to think about it, and I’m sure it’s on his mind. Negro men have been hung for less.
I told him I’d protect him. If anyone questions me, I’ll make up a lover. I won’t let him be hurt by what’s happened.
Jesse is with me in the warehouse only in the afternoons now, as his family needs him on the farm for planting in the mornings. He still comes nearly every day though, and I look forward to the sound of his bicycle tires on the dirt road. No one else comes to the warehouse these days, and that is fine. Karl and Pauline rarely come to Miss Myrtle’s for Sunday dinner any longer, either. The couple of times they came were nothing like our chatty festive Christmas meal. Conversation was stilted. Karl was stiff and quiet. Pauline was distant, although she does talk rather incessantly about the curtains and blankets and things she’s making for the nursery. Miss Myrtle chatters throughout the meal, seemingly ignorant of the chill in the room. I liked Pauline and I’m sad to lose her, but I have no time for her, really, now. I must finish the mural and then figure out what to do about this child I’m carrying.