Page 25 of Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Book
“God had another plan for me,” Beverly told Jeanette. “Looks like I’m gonna need to educate myself.”
Nothing seemed to surprise Jeanette. She’d heard it all over the years. “I’m happy to help. What interests you these days?” she asked.
“Everything,” Beverly told her. “That’s the problem. I don’t even know where to begin.” Then her eyes landed on a book that was lying on the counter.This Blood and Soil.“What’s that?”
She’d seen the way Jeanette took her measure before she spoke. Years later, Beverly remained amazed that the librarian had decided to trust her. Ms. Newman had seen something in her that few people had ever bothered to look for.
“It’s a book about the plantations of Georgia. It won all kinds of awards when it came out last year, but it’s not what you’d call a lighthearted read. It’s history as seen through the eyes of the enslaved. You might learn a few things about your ancestors that aren’t all that flattering.”
“Are they true?”
“Yes,” Jeanette told her. “They’re true.”
“Then I’ll take it.”
When she finished the book, Beverly finally understood the phraseignorance is bliss.Her world was different. It was shattered, it was sullied. It wasturned upside down. She saw things now that no one had shown her. The vastness of the fields outside of town. The mortar between the bricks in her family home—mixed and spread by enslaved human beings. The hand-hewn tombstones huddled together at the edge of the woods, miles away from the perfectly manicured cemeteries where Troy’s Confederate veterans were laid to rest.
And when she reread the inscription below Augustus Wainwright’s statue, she was overcome by shame at her family’s role in it all. The audacity of a man like her ancestor—claiming words likefreedom, honor,anddignitywhen he’d deprived so many people of those very things.
Beverly walked through this new world in a daze. She had no idea what to do with the information she’d gleaned. She wondered how anyone could live with the knowledge that their forefathers had enslaved other people. That they’d beaten them. Raped the women. Stolen children from their mothers and sold them. How did you live with the fact that the descendants of the people who’d suffered still lived all around you? That you likely shared DNA with many of them? And finally Beverly realized youcouldn’tmake peace with it. She knew why so many who’d gotten a glimpse of the horrible truth had chosen to turn away.
Beverly didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t sure what to fix—or if fixing was possible. But she knew she wouldn’t flinch. She took the book back to the library.
“What did you think?” Jeanette asked her when Beverly slid it across the desk.
“I’m not sure who I am anymore,” Beverly confessed. “I was always proud of being a Wainwright. Now I know I’m descended from monsters.”
“Every human being has their share of monsters lurking in their family tree. Millions of people around the world can trace a family line back to Genghis Khan.”
“I’d rather be one of them.”
“Augustus Wainwright was your great-great-great-grandfather?” Jeanette asked.
“Four greats,” Beverly said.
“Well, you have sixty-four great-great-great-great-grandparents,” Jeanette told her. “I promise you, they weren’t all monsters.” Then she leaned forward across the counter. “You get to choose whose footsteps you’ll follow. Find a set that went in the right direction. Somewhere out there, you have an ancestor who made the world better. Whoever they are, decide to take afterthem.”
“Where do I look?”
“Does the Wainwright Bible have a family tree in it? Maybe start there. Or ask your parents what they know. There are sure to be plenty of folks in your history who’ve been waiting to step out of Augustus Wainwright’s shadow.”
“Seems like I should be doing a whole lot more.”
“The first thing you need to do, Beverly, is keep learning. There are people in this town who are stuck. There are some that insist on going backward. You want to make up for what your ancestor did? Learn everything you can and do your best to lead the way forward.”
That day, Beverly went home with three new books.
Now Beverly sat in the chair in Val’s salon, staring out the window at Jackson Square and the statue of Augustus Wainwright as she got her blowout. By the 1860s, Wainwright had purchased and sold thousands of souls. Those who toiled in his fields were beaten, tortured, and worked to death. In 1860, he joined the Confederate Army and fought a war to keep the enslaved in shackles. After he recovered his fortune, he toiled day and night to prevent Black citizens from exercising their hard-won rights. Before he expired, he commissioned a statue of himself. The young man atop the pedestal was far more regal than Augustus had ever been—and bore no resemblance to the disease-ridden drunkard he’d become in late life. When the statue was erected, it was common knowledge he’d stolen the epitaph off a monument to Revolutionary War heroes. But no one remembered that anymore.
A van with a satellite dish on top and a giant blue 4 painted on the side pulled up across the street, blocking Beverly’s view of the statue and the courthouse behind it. Val switched off the blow dryer that had been howling in Beverly’s ear for the past twenty minutes and began fluffing her creation with a comb. “You suppose they’re here about Skeeter?”
“Can’t imagine who else,” Beverly said just as a second van arrived and parked behind the first.
Less than twenty-four hours had passed since Darlene Honeywell had published her post on Facebook. For legal purposes, she hadn’t named any names. But everyone in Troy knew exactly who she was accusing. And more than a few of them knew it was true. Randy Sykes had resigned as mayor the previous evening. Now it seemed all the local news stations had picked up on the story, too.
“Better late than never, I guess,” Wanda Crump piped up from the chair beside Beverly’s.
Beverly tried to look over without moving her head. Yvette Jones was still at work touching up Wanda’s grays. “Sure was looking like it was gonna benever,” Yvette said. “You know that rat bastard thought he wouldn’t have to answer for what he did.”
