The Book of Lost Friends(122)

In this newspaper copy, Robin has identified two of the club members, noting Hannie and Juneau Jane, above their images. When I trail down to a smaller photo positioned among the text, I recognize the two women standing alongside the bronze statue of a saint, as it awaits placement on its nearby pedestal.

I also recognize the saint.

The library’s first book, the bold print says on the caption.

I rest my chin on Nathan’s shoulder and read on,

Within this fine marble pedestal, the members of the library’s formation committee have placed a Century Chest that was moved from the original Colored Library behind the church, to the library’s fine new Carnegie building. The items within the chest, contributed by library founders in 1888, were not to be seen for one hundred years from that time. Mrs. Hannie Gossett Salter, recently moved from Texas, here sees to the placement of a statue donated in memory of her late husband, the much-revered Deputy U.S. Marshal Elam Salter, with whom she traveled the country as he spoke of the life of a frontier lawman after an injury forced his retirement from field duty. Donation of the statue is courtesy of Texas and Louisiana cattleman Augustus McKlatchy, a lifelong friend of the Salter family and patron supporter of this new library building and many others.

Within the Century Chest, Mrs. Salter places The Book of Lost Friends, which was used to inform distant congregations of the “Lost Friends” column of the Southwestern Christian Advocate newspaper. Through the newspaper and the notations in Mrs. Salter’s book, countless families and lost loves were reunited long after separation by the scourge of slavery and war. “Having found many members of my own family,” Mrs. Salter remarked, “this was an impassioned service I could provide for others. The greatest hardship to the heart is to endlessly wonder about your people.”

Upon the cessation of ceremonies today, the marble base will be sealed, containing the Century Chest within, to remain so until the future year of 1988, that the importance of this library and the stories of its people be remembered by generations yet unborn.

Awaiting placement atop the sealed pedestal, the donated statue stands both benevolent and ever watchful.

St. Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of the lost.





EPILOGUE


BENNY SILVA—1988 LOUISIANA STATE CAPITOL GROUNDS, BATON ROUGE

A single ladybug lands featherlight on my finger, clings like a living gemstone. A ruby with polka dots and legs. Before a slight breeze beckons my visitor away, an old children’s rhyme sifts through my mind.

    Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home,

Your house is on fire, and your children are gone.



The words leave a murky shadow inside me as I touch LaJuna’s shoulder. She’s breaking a sweat under the blue-and-gold calico dress. The open-air classroom we’ve set up today as part of a festival on the Louisiana State Capitol grounds is the biggest undertaking yet in our year-long living history project. The opening of the time capsule has provided us with opportunities we could never have dreamed of otherwise. While our pageants have not yet taken us to the cemetery in Augustine, Louisiana—and may never—we’ve told our Tales from the Underground at museums and on university campuses, at library festivals and in schools across three states.

The hand-stitched neckline of LaJuna’s costume hangs unevenly over her smooth amber-brown skin, the garment a little too large for the girl inside it. A single puffy scar protrudes from the loosely buttoned cuff. I wonder about the cause of it, but resist allowing my mind to speculate.

What would be the point? I ask myself.

We all have scars.

It’s when you’re honest about them that you find the people who will love you in spite of your nicks and dents. Perhaps even because of them.

The people who don’t? Those people aren’t the ones for you.

I pause and look around our gathering place under the trees, take in the various Carnegie ladies, as well as my students’ little brothers and sisters, Aunt Sarge, and several parent volunteers, all dressed in period costumes to add authenticity to our project today, to stand in respect and solidarity with those long-ago survivors who are not here to speak their truth. While we’ve told our Underground stories many times, this is our first attempt at a recital of the Lost Friends ads. We’ve tried to reimagine how they may have been written over a century ago in churches, on front porches, at kitchen tables, in improvised classrooms where those who had been denied literacy came to learn. In towns and cities all over the country, letters were composed for publication in newspapers like the Southwestern, sent out with the hope that loved ones stolen away years, decades, a lifetime before, might be found.

We have the Century Chest and The Book of Lost Friends to thank for giving us rock-star status here at the state capitol. It’s enough of a story to have beckoned the TV cameras our way. They’re really here to cover a contentious special election, but they want to film us, too. The media attention has produced an audience of dignitaries and politicians who want to be seen supporting our project.

And that has pushed the kids into meltdown mode. They’re terrified—even LaJuna, who is normally a rock.

While the others fumble with nib pens and inkwells, pretending to compose letters to the “Lost Friends” column, or hunch over their papers, mouthing the words of the ads they’re about to recite out loud, LaJuna is just staring off into the trees.