According to the paper, my car was discovered a week after our disappearance on a street in Norfolk, Virginia. There was no mention of the mural being inside it and I wonder what Jesse did with it. I can’t imagine him trying to travel unnoticed while carrying that enormous canvas. It hurts to think that he might have had to burn it or find some other way to get rid of it. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s only an object. It’s Jesse’s escape that really matters.
The reporter must have interviewed half the people in Edenton that first week. Everyone had an opinion. People thought they’d spotted Jesse and me one place or another. A man thought he saw the mural in the woods, but it turned out to be an old patchwork quilt. Some people who watched me paint in the warehouse say they saw a romantic spark between Jesse and me. Others said I was envious of Martin’s talent, “which Miss Dale couldn’t begin to match.” Mr. Arndt seemed more upset over the loss of the mural than anything else. “I hope that it can be recovered in pristine condition,” he said. “We were truly looking forward to having it grace the post office wall.”
And now, a month after our “disappearance,” the paper seems to have run out of news on us. I think that is the best news of all.
Monday, July 22, 1940
I’ve been living with the Williams family for two months now. I have a routine, starting with getting up when they do. It took me a while to make that transition, but I felt selfish sleeping in while they all got up to work. I have a quiet breakfast with them in the near dark. Then they all—even little Nellie—go outside to work on the farm, rain or shine. I could never be a farmer! Only Aunt Jewel stays behind. She puts on a white pinafore, gets her medical kit, and heads out to see her patients. She has a car, a very old Buick that she worries will give out on her someday at a critical time, but for now it’s working well enough to take her—or as they say here, to “carry” her—from farm to farm or into the colored neighborhoods of Edenton. She wears a serious expression when she leaves the house. Serious, with a sense of purpose and anticipation, all her focus on the patients she will see that day. On the babies she will deliver. Someday in the not too distant future, all her focus will be on me.
I spend the day cleaning and sewing and cooking (to the best of my ability). Dodie taught me how to pluck and clean a chicken and how to get the grit out of the leafy vegetables. I think she’s smart and could probably go back to school and then college, but she seems content to live here and help out on the farm. I know she doesn’t like me. She calls me “a right spoilt white girl” and I guess I am. She sees me as a burden, which I also am. She has friends, including a boyfriend, and it annoys her that she can’t invite them into the house at any time the way she apparently used to. I’m more than happy to hide in Nellie’s bedroom when the friends come over, but she gives me a sour look when she asks me to do so. I don’t think very many things make Dodie happy.
Sometimes in the evening, I sketch the family members on sketch pads that Jesse left behind. Except for Nellie, they refuse to pose, so I have to catch them on the sly. Mr. Williams falls asleep in his big rocking chair while everyone else reads, and that’s when I draw them, waiting for the moment they look up so I can sketch their eyes. The whole family looks tired from working so hard. I am tired too, which is why I haven’t written much in this journal of late.
I don’t dare sign anything I draw here. One evening a policeman came by. Fortunately, Dodie saw the car come up the driveway and I was able to rush up the stairs and into the closet with its claustrophobia-inducing wall pocket just in the nick of time. He didn’t stay long, but when I came downstairs again, Mr. Williams chastised me for leaving the sketches in plain sight on the table by the sofa. Dodie told the policeman the sketches were old, from when Jesse lived here. I hope he believed her.
Anyway, I’m doing my best as I wait nervously for my baby to come. It’s the nights that are hard. I hate going to sleep because of the nightmares. They are bloody dreams about murder and childbirth. I toss and turn and wake up trying to scream but only squeaks come out. At first, I scared Nellie, but I told her I just have bad dreams sometimes, so now when I wake up that way, she comes over to my mattress on the floor and tries to comfort me. “You all right,” she coos, smoothing one of her small hands over my hair. She tells me my dreams are only make-believe. “Ain’t nothing to worry ’bout,” she says.
I tear up when she treats me so kindly. I wonder if my own child could be like her? A funny, smart, winsome little thing with a caring heart? But then I remember my child is also Martin Drapple’s child, and I feel ill.
How can this be happening to me? I lie on my mattress, Nellie often curled up next to me, asking myself that question over and over again.
I have no answer.
Wednesday, July 24, 1940
Last night, Mrs. Williams and I were sewing in the living room when she suddenly asked me if she was ever going to see her boy again.
I don’t know what got into me. I broke down crying. It was her voice, so different from her usual voice. It had pain in it—the pain of a mama who knows she might never again see her child. I went over to where she sat on the sofa and put my arms around her. She didn’t soften or return my embrace, but I didn’t care. I know she still blames me for getting Jesse into this terrible mess. But I needed the comfort of a human touch, and I held her as long as I dared.
“I sure hope so,” I said, when I finally pulled away. I told her I hoped we’d both get to see him again someday soon, but I know that will never happen. It’s too dangerous for him to come home. Mrs. Williams turned away from my impossible words. Most likely, neither of us will ever see Jesse again.
Friday, July 26, 1940
I was taking my turn in the bathtub last night when I felt the baby move. At first I thought it was some odd bubbling in the bathwater, but then I realized what it was. I guess most women feel joy at that sensation, but it made me sick to my stomach. Maybe I’d been denying what was really happening in my body all this time. I don’t know. What I do know is that I felt no joy, only the horrible realization that a part of Martin Drapple is still alive and, worse than that, it’s alive inside me.
I rushed out of the tub, put on a robe Mrs. Williams had given me, and ran down the hall to Aunt Jewel’s room.
I have been in her room several times. She checks my blood pressure there, takes my temperature. Feels my belly. Hers is the most sterile-feeling room in the house. There is nothing on the top of her bureau or vanity dresser. Her spotless yellow bedspread has sharp corners and is tucked smoothly beneath her pillow. She does have a bookshelf lined with what I assume are books about midwifery, and even the tops of the books look free from dust. I don’t clean in this room—there is nothing to clean—so I know she keeps it that way on her own.
When she saw the frantic look on my face and that I was still dripping water from my bath, she took my arm and led me to the stool in front of her vanity dresser. Then she sat down on the corner of her bed. Her room is so small, so compact, that our knees were practically touching.
She asked me if I was in pain, and I told about feeling the baby move.
She smiled. Sat back. “I figured that would be comin’ soon,” she said. “Good. You have a healthy little one in there.”