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.