CHAPTER 3 #2
After swatting at the sand flies that had begun to swarm around my neck and ankles, I lifted the shovel high, stabbing the earth with the tip as I’d seen my grandfather do, and gritting at the wave of pain that grabbed my spine.
I wasn’t used to doing more than walking around in my house and leaning over a computer desk at various libraries as I researched, despite the insistence of George, my grandfather, and my physical therapist that I be more active.
Using my good leg, I pressed down with the heel of my foot and embedded the entire head of the shovel in the dusty ground of my back garden.
Starting to feel the light-headedness I associated with my medication, the pain seemed to ebb, its edges soft and bubbly like that of an oncoming wave sliding onto shore.
I wiped a bead of sweat that had begun to drip down my forehead, then lifted the shovel with a full load of dirt and dumped it behind me.
It didn’t take long; the hole had only been as deep as the shallow box required. But by the time the shovel finally hit metal my blouse and pants clung to my skin with sweat and I had begun to see spots before my eyes.
I knelt in the sparse weeds beside the gaping wound in the earth and reached inside for the tin box, my fingernails scraping red clay as my fingers found their way around it.
Impatiently I lifted it out of the hole, eager to have it over with, and relieved that it wasn’t too heavy to lift by myself.
I brushed off the top, then lifted it open, the old hinges hardly protesting.
I sat back with the box on my lap, the unearthed dirt and small rocks clinging to my pants, and I looked inside.
A bundle of raw-edged scrapbook pages, stacked beneath a worn and cracked front cover and wrapped in a frayed black grosgrain ribbon, lay nestled inside.
On top of the pile, as if placed as an afterthought, was a framed sepia-colored photo of three young girls, two unrecognizable but the blond one uncannily familiar.
I wasn’t sure at first. In the photo, the girl had a sparkle in her eye as if she knew a secret and her smile was full of mischief.
But the wide eyes and slightly snubbed nose were definitely my grandmother’s; I recognized them mostly because I saw the same eyes and nose every time I looked in a mirror.
I pried off the stiff cardboard backing, not feeling the pain when my nail tore back.
Pulling the frame in closer to block the sun with my shadow, I peered down at the back of the photograph where someone had scrawled in amateur calligraphy three names: Lillian Harrington, Josephine Montet, and Annabelle O’Hare.
I startled, recognizing the first name as the name on the letters my grandmother had written.
My eyes flickered down to the words written beneath the names: Dum vita est, spes est—Cicero.
I frowned, recalling the quote written on the wall of my high school Latin teacher’s classroom and often repeated by her.
I stared at the words for a long moment, remembering that my grandmother had written the same ones in her letter to Lillian.
Where there is life, there is hope. I had never understood its relevance and still didn’t.
I lifted out the pages and gave them a cursory flip, my perusal slowing as I noticed the brutally torn edges of each page, as if they’d been ripped from the spine with force.
Sweat dripped onto a page and I stood to bring the bundle in the house for closer inspection.
I must have stood too suddenly; my head swam and my vision blurred as I lost my grip on the pages and fell to my knees.
I put my head down to my chest and waited for my head to clear before opening my eyes again.
The scrapbook pages lay scattered on the bare earth and encroaching weeds, the pages fluttering like moths.
Crawling on my hands and knees I began gathering them up, shaking off the dirt before stacking them.
As I lifted a page that had been nearly torn in half, I spotted a small newspaper clipping that was stuck facedown to the back of it.
Yellowed glue with paper remnants coating its top clung to the side facing out as if the clipping had once been glued between two scrapbook pages.
Carefully, I pulled it off and read it, feeling my skin growing colder and colder despite the pressing heat of the summer sun.
The article was from the Savannah Morning News and dated September 8, 1939. It read:
The body of an unidentified Negro male infant was pulled from the Savannah River this morning around eight o’clock a.m. by postman Lester Agnew on his morning rounds. The body was found naked with no identifying marks and has been turned over to the medical examiner to determine the cause of death.
I felt ill, either from the pain pills or the heat.
Or maybe it was from facing a past that perhaps would have been better remaining hidden.
I lay down, pressing my face against the cool earth.
I tasted dirt and weeds and stubborn grass but I didn’t have the energy to turn my head.
I stayed that way for a long time until my stomach settled and my head stopped spinning.
I opened my eyes and pulled myself up on my elbow, catching sight of the upturned tin box, where something glinted from an inside corner.
Slowly, I reached out my hand and pulled it toward me, unsure of what I was looking at.
It was a necklace of sorts, with a thick filigree chain halfway filled with a mismatched assortment of charms that bore little resemblance to one another.
They reminded me of the angel charm Mr. Morton had given me and I sat up to examine the necklace more closely, clenching my eyes shut for a moment to stop the spinning.
I dangled the charms in my hand, studying them and wondering why most of the chain had been left empty.
I fingered the figures like a blind woman uncoding Braille, trying to read the stories behind them until I reached the last one.
I looked down into my palm and saw a tiny gold baby carriage, its spokes delicately molded, and wondered what all of these charms meant. The sand flies continued their invisible attack as I stared down at this buried treasure, biting me without mercy and as persistent as old grief.
The necklace slipped through my fingers and into my lap and I inexplicably began to cry.
I wasn’t sure if my tears were for the old woman whose stories remained untold, or for the girl I had once been who had believed herself invincible but who had grown into a woman who no longer believed in anything at all.