Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,56

longer, asking her questions about her and Jesse’s childhoods, and that seemed to be where the old woman’s dementia had not yet taken its toll and her memories were the happiest. At one point, Mama Nelle took my hand and held it on her bony knee, and I felt touched by the gesture. I liked sitting there, talking to her. Even though she didn’t mention Anna again, it didn’t matter. She had known the living, breathing Anna. We couldn’t let nobody know nothin’ ’bout her. Why not? I wondered. What was that all about?

By the time Lisa came to hustle me out of the sitting room, I found it hard to tear myself away.

In the kitchen, Lisa introduced me to a stunning woman who was setting candles into a large chocolate-iced sheet cake. Happy Birthday, Mama Nelle was written in yellow icing on top.

“This is my cousin Saundra, Mama Nelle’s daughter,” Lisa said. “And Saundra, this is Morgan Christopher who’s helping out in the gallery.”

Saundra set the last candle into the cake, then smiled at me. Everything about her face was symmetrical, from her perfect eyebrows, to her high cheekbones, to her straight white smile. “Lisa tells me you’re restoring a huge, musty ol’ mural for Uncle Jesse’s gallery,” she said.

“Yes, and Mama—your mother—remembers the artist, which is so cool.” I heard the enthusiasm in my voice. It felt good to be excited about something. “We know next to nothing about her,” I added.

“She does?” Saundra shook her head with a chuckle. “That woman. You never know what she’s going to pull out of that memory bank of hers.”

“Don’t make so much out of it,” Lisa said in the cool voice she often used with me. “Mama tends to make things up these days.”

“Oh, I think a lot of what she remembers is at least partially true.” Saundra stood back to admire her handiwork with the candles. “But oh Lord, I’m such a bad daughter!” She laughed. “I wish I’d written down everything she’s said over my fifty-five years. She has all the family history locked in that brain of hers and we’ve lost it because I’m lazy.”

“You’re the least lazy person I know,” Lisa said, patting her cousin’s arm. She looked at me. “Saundra is superintendent of schools in Elizabeth City.”

“Wow,” I said, trying to sound polite, but I wished I was back in the sitting room, picking Mama Nelle’s brain.

“Mama is the repository for the family history,” Saundra said. “She has land deeds and letters and all sorts of what-not from ancient times tucked here and there in her bedroom, and I know I’m going to have to be the one to sort through all of it when she passes.”

“You could just toss it,” Lisa suggested.

“You’re evil,” Saundra said, then she looked at me. “She was always the evil cousin.”

I can believe it, I thought, but I only smiled.

An older, gray-haired woman suddenly blew into the room. She was big boned and smelled strongly of some sweet perfume and she swept Lisa into her arms. “Baby,” she said. “How are you, honey? Come talk to me!”

I watched Lisa get pulled away by the woman as if she were a small child obeying an elder, and Saundra turned to busy herself with a tray of small pastries. I thought I should offer to help, but instead I excused myself. I wanted to go back to the sunroom and Mama Nelle, where I’d felt a strange comfort. Even if the old woman could remember very little of the past, we shared an interest in the dusty old mural. For Mama Nelle, it was a memory. For me, the here and now. Yet we did have one thing in common, I thought, and that was Anna Dale.

Chapter 22

ANNA

January 8, 1940

From the United States Treasury Department, Section of Fine Arts

Special 48-States Mural Competition

January 3, 1940

Dear Miss Anna Dale,

Thank you for sending your sketch for the Edenton, North Carolina, mural. You mentioned that you will be using models for the cartoon and I implore you to do so. While the figures in your sketch were competent, they lacked a realism that can only come through the use of live models. Similarly, I’d reconsider the color choices of the frocks on the women in the central portion of the sketch. To my eye, those particular shades of purple and blue clash against one another. Also, I would not have known the Negro woman was holding peanuts in her apron had you not told me,