Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,121

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.

Thursday, May 23, 1940

Odd that just yesterday I wrote about my sadness over losing Pauline’s friendship and then today she showed up at the warehouse! Her smile seemed sheepish, and I guess she felt embarrassed about letting our friendship fall to the wayside. She’d brought along a small box of ginger cookies and she set them on the table where I keep the paints. I think the cookies were a peace offering. Then she stood back to look at the mural. She said, “Why, it’s a masterpiece!” which ordinarily would have pleased me, but I didn’t want her to study it too closely. I stood in front of the Tea Party ladies where the motorcycle cut through their dresses, masking it from her eyes. Jesse’d told me I was playing with fire, leaving the motorcycle in the painting, and in that moment, I realized how right he was and how foolish I’d been. I’m not as sane as I thought.

I swept forward, slipping my arm through Pauline’s as though we are still great and intimate pals, and steered her away from the mural. I asked about how she was fixing up her house for the baby, which I know is her favorite topic, and I could hear my nervousness as I spoke and my fake enthusiasm. I wondered if my question sounded as false to her ears as it did to mine.

I sat her down in the chair by Jesse’s easel and moved the other chair—the one I still thought of as Peter’s—close to her, picking up the box of cookies along