Chapter 20. Anna

Chapter 20

ANNA

January 4, 1940

Anna, who had been brought up on the New York Times, had to admit that the small, provincial Chowan Herald fascinated her. She read the paper that morning while sitting in Miss Myrtle’s little sunroom, which had a view of the backyard, the trees bare, the birdbath water crusty with ice. Billy Calhoun, the paper’s editor whom Anna had met at lunch and who didn’t want to be “above his raisin’,” had written a beautifully crafted wrap-up of 1939 for the paper’s front page. We live in a safe haven, free from the scorching breath of war, he’d written. Anna nodded in agreement. Americans were very lucky, she thought, when so much of the world was not. She needed to remember that and count her blessings.

Then she read that Edenton’s first white baby of the new year had been born at 2:15 a.m. on January 1. She wondered if a colored baby had come earlier, but if so, the paper didn’t mention it. And then she learned how to rid cattle of lice and where she could buy hog-killing supplies.

Her mother would have gotten such a kick out of this paper.

From the time Anna was or twelve or thirteen, she and her mother would devour the Times over coffee every morning—at least during her mother’s lively spells. They’d read the news to one another, argue mildly over politics, and daydream about attending shows on Broadway. More than anything, Anna missed those mornings with her mother, though if she was being honest with herself, she had to admit that her mother hadn’t gotten up early enough to make it to the breakfast table since late summer. Still, as Anna read the Herald, she remembered those mornings with her mother with a wistful tenderness.

What would her mother have thought of the Bible lesson that was always on the front page of the Chowan Herald? Anna couldn’t imagine seeing a Bible lesson on the front page of a Northern paper. Miss Myrtle was after Anna to go to her Baptist church with her, but so far, she’d resisted, although she was beginning to think maybe she should go. Church was important here, and she wanted to stay on people’s good side. She and her mother had been Episcopalian, but they only went to church on Christmas and Easter, and sometimes not even then, depending on her mother’s mood. These days, though, Anna was fed up with God. Why had he made her mother’s life so unbearable? Why had he taken such a wonderful woman so young? She hadn’t forgiven him for that and wasn’t sure she could sit through a service that praised him.

She was lifted out of her thoughts by the sound of footsteps heading toward the sunroom, and in a moment, Miss Myrtle appeared in the doorway.