Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society

by Amy Hill Hearth

  Nine

  In no time flat, the citizens of our small town got back to our normal, nitpicking ways. The men as well as the women. I guess we were all relieved to think about something other than atomic missiles.

  Several of our town’s most dedicated gossips had taken notice that Miss Dreamsville had chosen the 1945 version of Sinatra’s patriotic song to celebrate the end of the crisis. Most people cried like babies and promptly forgot about the song, but a few suspicious minds began to wonder if this might be a clue to Miss Dreamsville’s identity. But the would-be Sherlock Holmeses of Collier County didn’t stop to think that Miss Dreamsville might actually be a member of the Sinatra generation. Instead, the rumors tended toward “Her father must have been in the war.” We all missed a good clue, right under our noses, and Miss Dreamsville remained incognito, her most determined fans now fixated on making a census of every World War Two veteran in town who had a beautiful, young daughter.

  Not everyone was enthusiastic about Miss Dreamsville. In the checkout line at the Winn-Dixie, I overheard one lady complaining that her husband now ignored her at night so that he could listen to “that Miss Dreamsville woman.”

  Another time, when I ran into Dolly O’Brien, the school nurse who had been friends with my mama years ago, she told me her job had gotten much harder on account of all the sleepy children (especially boys) who were staying up at night listening to “that woman” on the radio.

  “It took me a while to figure it out,” Dolly said. “I thought they all had influenza, or maybe mononucleosis, and then I realized they were tired. Just tired! The children in this town are not getting enough sleep!”

  And, sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, the various ministers in town decided it was necessary to speak out. Like most southern towns, we had a healthy abundance of churches—five Protestant and one tiny Catholic parish for the whites, and two colored churches. The number of Christian churches was surpassed only by the number of bait-and-tackle shops.

  “Remember the story of Eve and the apple,” warned the Very Reverend Barclay W. Willoughby of the Everglades Church of Christ Everlasting, who had his own radio show on WNOG, very early on Sunday mornings. He tried to convince the good citizens of Collier County that Miss Dreamsville was evil, but the more he spoke against her, the more folks loved her. Miss Dreamsville, it seemed, was here to stay.

  I was as curious as everyone else about her, but the negative comments made me wonder about my hometown and the people who lived here. Some people were clearly having fun and were caught up in the mystery, but I was baffled by those who got worked up in an angry lather. Maybe, I thought, they were the kind of folks who just didn’t like change. Or maybe, with so little to do, we just had a bumper crop of busybodies.

  As for the literary society, our most recent book, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, had resulted in Jackie’s and Robbie-Lee’s fussing at each other, which now seemed awfully unimportant after living through the latest threat from Castro. We tossed around some ideas, all of which failed to ignite until Jackie accidentally said something that got us onto a new path. “Oh, let’s read something different, by someone unknown,” she begged. “There must be so many great books we never heard of.”

  We were all silent, mulling it over, when Priscilla spoke up in her soft voice. “Zora Neale Hurston,” she said. “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”

  “Who?” Jackie said. “What was that title?”

  “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Priscilla repeated. “It was written, oh, about twenty-five years ago. In 1937, I think.”

  “And the author . . . ?” This was Jackie, leaning forward.

  “Zora Neale Hurston,” Priscilla said.

  “I’m afraid I’ve never heard of her,” Miss Lansbury said apologetically.

  “I never heard of her either,” added Plain Jane, who looked around the circle to see if anyone had. The rest of the group shook their heads or shrugged.

  “You haven’t heard about her because she was a Negro writer, a woman Negro writer,” Priscilla said. She had a way of saying things that were a little jarring, in just the right way—calmly, as a statement of fact, with no emotion.

  “Well, tell us about her, and about that book,” Jackie said in the soothing, encouraging tone she seemed to reserve for Priscilla. Coming from someone else, this could have seemed patronizing, but Priscilla always seemed to draw strength from Jackie.

  “Zora Neale Hurston was a writer from right here in Florida,” Priscilla said with a smidgen of pride in her voice. “She wrote novels, plays, and short stories. And stories about real people too. She was a great writer but she was also an anthropologist. A Negro woman anthropologist.”

  “How do you know about her?” This from Plain Jane.

  Now Priscilla looked a little self-conscious. “Well, my favorite teacher from high school studied under her—under Zora Neale Hurston—at Bethune-Cookman College,” Priscilla said. “Miss Hurston started a dramatic arts program there.”

  “But what was the name of that book?” Jackie was persistent.

  “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”

  “Let’s read it!” Jackie exclaimed, clapping her hands together. Our group seemed susceptible to enthusiasm, so everyone agreed.

  “There may be one problem,” Miss Lansbury said. “I’m not sure how many copies I can locate.”

  “If you contact Bethune-Cookman’s library, I bet they will loan us a few,” Priscilla said.

  “Oh! Good idea!” Miss Lansbury responded, looking a tiny bit embarrassed.

  “Bethune-Cookman—isn’t that where you want to go to college?” Robbie-Lee asked Priscilla.

  “Yes,” she said. “I mean, I hope to. Someday. If . . .”

  “Well, Priscilla, if you set your heart on going to college, I’m sure you will make it happen.” This was Jackie again, and I cringed slightly. Jackie did not understand how high the cards were stacked against Priscilla. This was the kind of advice you might give to a young person who was white.

  “Well, let’s get our hands on that book and read it,” said Plain Jane.

  Mrs. Bailey White cleared her throat and, inwardly, my heart sank that she might say something rebby. But I had underestimated her. “I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by a Negro woman author,” she said, “and maybe it’s about time I did.”

  We weren’t exactly a well-loved group in town, but once word got out that our library had borrowed books from a Negro college library, the tension escalated, even seeping more deeply into our private lives—for Jackie, especially. After the episode with Judd and the Berlitz records, old Mr. Toomb began to take more notice of the Hart household. After he discovered that Jackie was spending time with persons widely believed to be of questionable character, the old curmudgeon prodded Ted for an explanation.

  Jackie saw this coming and tried to stay calm. “Why should Mr. T care?” she asked, when Ted raised the topic.

  “It doesn’t look right, the wife of his key financial adviser, cavorting with such an . . . unusual crowd.” Ted was picking his words carefully. He knew he was tiptoeing his way through a minefield on a moonless night.

  Jackie was frosting a cake, and without pausing or even looking up, she replied to her husband of fifteen years. “Don’t ask me to give up my friends, Ted.”

  “I knew you’d say that,” Ted said.

  “Then why did you ask?”

  “I thought you might be reasonable.”

  Jackie put the final flourishes on the cake. “It’s just the Women’s Literary Society.”

  Ted stood silently. Finally, Jackie looked at him. “I know—why don’t you tell Mr. T that I’m a spy for the CIA and I’m keeping track of the undesirables?”

  “Very funny.”

  “All right, here’s a better idea—more palatable. Tell him that as a good Christian woman, I have decided to help these poor souls, in the hope that I may lead them to see the error of their wicked ways.”

  “Sarcasm is
not helpful, Jackie.” To avoid the temptation of throwing the cake at him, Jackie sat down in the breakfast nook and pretended to busy herself with straightening her reading pile—books, magazines, mail, and to-do lists. On top was Their Eyes Were Watching God, which she was two-thirds of the way through reading. The worn copy had the faint smell of mildew, even from several feet away.

  “That book smells bad,” Ted said.

  “Of course it smells bad,” Jackie said. “It’s old, and this is Florida. All of our copies came from a Negro college. They don’t have the money to replace books. And their library—you can bet on it—doesn’t have air conditioning.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Ted asked softly. “What does that have to do with what we were talking about?”

  “Everything. It has everything to do with what we were talking about. It’s about life. The world we live in. I can’t sit here and read another copy of Good Housekeeping, for God’s sake!”

  “Well, that’s fine, Jackie. You go ahead and read your radical books and hang out with your new friends. But you need to remember—all I’m trying to do is provide for this family.”

  Ted left the room, and pretty soon, she heard him rummaging around in the storage closet near the carport. This meant only one thing—he was going to Fort Myers to play golf. He didn’t even say good-bye.

  Ten

  I love that a woman wrote this, and I love Janie Starks,” Miss Lansbury said breathlessly. “I’m ashamed I wasn’t familiar with Zora Neale Hurston’s writing.”

  “I’m so glad you liked it,” Priscilla said, beaming. I noticed her maid’s uniform had a big stain near the collar. She saw me looking at it. “Oh, I was carrying a tray, and I tripped on the rug and splashed Mrs. B’s afternoon coffee all over me. Mrs. B says I’m awfully clumsy sometimes!”

  “Priscilla, how come you’re so darned nice?” Jackie said. “I think if I worked for that mean lady, I’d put poison in her breakfast cereal. Really, I think I would!”

  Priscilla looked horrified. “Oh, shush, you must never say something like that, even though you’re joking!” Our eyes all drifted over to Mrs. Bailey White, who seemed to have no reaction.

  “Let’s talk about the book!” Robbie-Lee almost shouted. “It’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Jackie said, “and how about Janie finding true love in her forties? And with a man in his twenties?”

  “You would like that part,” Plain Jane teased Jackie. “Anyway, what I see here is incredible insight and lyrical writing.”

  We were all busy dancing around the race issue, waiting (hoping) for Priscilla to bring it up, but she didn’t.

  “Mrs. Bailey White, what do you think?” Miss Lansbury asked, a bit desperately.

  “I think it’s the real Florida,” she said.

  “The real Florida? As opposed to the fake one, in which we live?” Jackie asked playfully.

  “No, I mean it’s about real people—a great big piece of the population—that we don’t usually read about. I mean black folk, of course.”

  Now we were getting somewhere. But Robbie-Lee got us sidetracked. “I thought it was very romantic,” he said wistfully, a tone that was unusual for him. “I can see why she fell for that fella, Tea Cake.”

  “And he didn’t leave Janie,” I added. “But what kills me is the way all those people in the town were always looking down on her. They were so quick to judge her and think the worst when she came back home.” It dawned on me that I could have been speaking about myself.

  “Can we get back to what Mrs. Bailey White was saying?” asked Jackie. Opening her copy of the book, she flipped some pages quickly. “Here it is—let me read this aloud. It’s the opening sentence of chapter nine, and I think this is what Mrs. Bailey White meant: ‘Joe’s funeral was the finest thing Orange County had ever seen with Negro eyes.’ Am I right, Mrs. Bailey White? ‘With Negro eyes’? The whole book is seen with Negro eyes! And that, I think, makes it very unusual.” You could practically see Jackie’s mind working.

  “Oh, I get it!” said Robbie-Lee. “There aren’t even any white characters in the book. It’s about Negro life. And love. And other stuff. I sure did find that hurricane scary.”

  “Sounds a lot like the one back in 1928,” Mrs. Bailey White said. “That was a humdinger.”

  “Yeah, reminded me of how I felt when Hurricane Donna came through here. Dang.”

  “Well, the one in ’twenty-eight killed about two thousand people in the ’Glades,” Mrs. Bailey White said.

  “You all are getting sidetracked,” Miss Lansbury scolded gently. “I’ve been doing some research, and before I forget to tell you, the town that is featured in the novel—Eatonville—was founded in 1887 near Orlando. Eatonville was the first incorporated black township in the United States! Now, I think that is so impressive. And that is where Zora Neale Hurston grew up.”

  “Hm,” Priscilla said thoughtfully, almost to herself. “I guess that’s why she was able to see things the way she did. She was raised in a place where it wasn’t a spectacle, being colored. Everybody was just themselves, that’s all. And you were just you. You weren’t colored you. Am I making sense to y’all?”

  “Perfect sense.” Miss Lansbury beamed. “I can see this book means a great deal to you.”

  Priscilla removed her maid’s cap and smoothed her hair with both hands. It seemed a nervous gesture for such a normally unflappable young woman. Her voice was soft when she finally spoke again. “Yes, I love the book,” she said. “But I’ve never recommended it to anyone who is . . . not . . . Negro. I think most white people wouldn’t read a book written by a Negro woman. But I thought you all might . . . like it.”

  Jackie reached over and patted Priscilla’s knee. “Indeed we did, and I think I can speak for everyone that we are grateful to you for suggesting it. For sharing it with us.”

  This was starting to make my white, southern skin crawl. We just didn’t have conversations like this. Priscilla, talking about race. Jackie, gushing about how swell it all was. I wanted to run out of the room. I shot a desperate glance at Robbie-Lee. He may have been a homosexual, but he had a man’s gift for telling a joke to put everyone at ease.

  He took the hint. “What do y’all think about a man named Tea Cake, anyway? Can you beat that? I mean, I love a good southern nickname, but that’s a name that would be hard to live with! I can’t get over that.”

  It made us smile, but it wasn’t as funny as Robbie-Lee intended. There was an undercurrent of loneliness in everything he said. I looked around the group and saw they sensed it too. It wasn’t obvious until you got to know him, but the sadness was sometimes there.

  That night, as Jackie drove us home, we were a little quieter than usual. Maybe we were just thinking to ourselves. Or maybe we were just tired. The last thing we needed, or saw coming, was trouble.

  We were halfway to Priscilla’s grandma’s house when we saw it—a light in the distance where there shouldn’t have been one. “Oh, it’s probably the police,” Jackie said. “Maybe there’s been an accident. They’ll probably just let us go by.”

  “I think we should turn around,” said Robbie-Lee.

  “Me too,” said Priscilla.

  But it was too late. Our headlights illuminated two police cars blocking the way. Two men in uniform stood scowling at us, pump-action shotguns at the ready. They were both wearing Florida Highway Patrol uniforms and I remember thinking, This ain’t a highway, it’s a damned dirt road. What are they doing here?

  Jackie stopped the station wagon and rolled down the window. She stuck her head out, with that wild red hair flying in every direction, and called out, “What’s the problem, gentlemen?” This was brave but also smart. She let them see that the driver was a woman.

  Searchlights from both police vehicles made it seem like daytime inside Jackie’s station wagon.

  “Don’t move a muscle, no matter what,” Robbie-Lee said through clenched teet
h.

  The two men approached with great caution. They crouched down and peered at Jackie, then at each one of us, and finally back at Jackie.

  “License and registration,” one of them grunted.

  “I have to go into my pocketbook to get it,” Jackie said.

  “Just hand us the purse,” said one. Jackie slowly passed her handbag through the window.

  “Who are you looking for, Officers?” Jackie said politely.

  They ignored her. “Where you from, lady?” asked one, picking through her wallet. “You got Massachusetts license plates and registration. But you got a Florida driver’s license?”

  “My husband and children and I just moved here from Massachusetts,” Jackie said. “My husband works for Mr. Toomb. I got my new license but I haven’t gotten the new plates or registration yet. You know how busy you are when you’re moving . . .”

  They weren’t listening to her. They had jumped visibly when the name Toomb left Jackie’s lips.

  “Who else is in this car?” They studied us again, and I thought for sure they would ask for IDs from all of us. But they seemed impatient now, ready to let us move on.

  Just then, a third police car pulled up. This one came from behind us, and next thing we knew, we heard the familiar, grating voice of our sheriff. He joined the other two peering at us.

  “Aw, hell,” he said, and spat on the ground. “I know who this is. This is Mrs. Hart. Her husband works for Mr. Toomb. What we have here is the Ladies’ Literary Society of Collier County. They are headed home from the library—one Boston bitch, one ex-con who murdered her husband, a man whose mother poaches alligators, a divorcée who works at the post office, and a colored girl.”

  The only one he didn’t recognize was Plain Jane, who promptly provided him with her name and address.

  “Say,” he said, taking another look at me. “Ain’t you the Turtle Lady? The one who was fool enough to carry that snapper across the road? You’re lucky you didn’t lose a finger or two. Or get hit by a damned truck.” For some reason he found this funny.

  “May we go now, please?” Jackie asked. “I really need to drop everyone off and get home to make sure my children did their homework.”