"You didn't buy anything?" Celeste asked. She wanted to get going.
"Mr. Heywood angered me so, I lost my train of thought." Mrs. Owens's eyes flashed in the direction of the county building. "I be back another day, Mr. Dale."
"All right, then." Mr. Dale glanced sideways at Celeste and went back into his store.
A few more steps and Mr. Heywood would arrive at the county building. If she told Mrs. Owens about Mr. Heywood scoffing ice cream spittle into her face, it would only make matters worse.
Mrs. Owens took off at a stomp. No sideways looks into store windows, no head nodding toward a living soul, just a marching forward under the magnolias, then out into the sunshine, then back under the luxuriant trees. Celeste kept pace. "What'd he say?"
"Say I should get you out my house or else." She marched on, her empty plastic shopping bag swinging, her black purse hugged into her body.
They left the little town center and turned into a block of houses where the air itself had taken on a greenish hue, grass that went from forest green to nearly black in deep shade held by the orange-tinted soil. It was a shortcut to the two-lane.
Celeste spoke under her breath. "You hear about the three boys?" Reverend Singleton brought the news when he came to pick her up after freedom school. She let the children go without mentioning it, sat in the church with the Reverend for a few minutes.
"After all this time." Mrs. Owens huffed.
Celeste didn't know if Mrs. Owens was talking about the civil rights workers' bodies being found or Mr. Heywood. After all this time. Every thing in Mississippi was a crisis of after all this time. Mrs. Owens walked her down a block of houses at a good clip, sweat streaming down her body. The houses here were wood framed with screened porches, painted white with green trim. Rain gutters, plots of impatiens, giant yellow hibiscus exploding through the green lawns. She imagined eyes peeking out from behind curtains and blinds peering at the two Negroes hurrying over the pavement. They weren't going to work anywhere, so they shouldn't have been on this street. Mrs. Owens marched like she was in a demonstration, telling all that she had a right to walk the sidewalks of a town where she'd lived and worked for more than forty years.
"He can't tell me who I can have in my own house." Mrs. Owens turned the last corner, a street lined with a sheltering of live oaks. Sunlight slanted through the contorted branches. Celeste had an urge to sit on the grass in the shade, lie down under the grand canopy of trees. Then she wondered which of the town's old trees had suspended the dancing apoplectic feet of a bug-eyed Negro man who had laughed walking down the street, or turned his head to a white woman whose sweat-wet dress clung to her body, or simply didn't step off the pavement when a white person walked by. And the boys. What had been the last thing they heard or saw or thought? All of life ahead of them, all the good in the world in them to give.
They turned onto the two-lane and walked down the gravel shoulder, the sun like a blowtorch playing hide and seek with the darkening rain clouds moving up from the Gulf. She watched for traffic, let Mrs. Owens walk out her anger. The humidity thickened like wet wool. The village crickets agitated. As she always did, Celeste checked each passing truck and car for gun-toting white men. Small gusts lifted her dress then died, releasing the fabric. Rain started falling in fat isolated drops, warm as a shower. The two women made it to Freshwater Road as the downpour began in earnest.
In the kitchen, Mrs. Owens rested from the walk, her usual glass of iced tea nearby. "I'm 'bout ready to go on down there and register." She didn't look at Celeste, instead stared out the back door as the water pelted the thin roof and ran off in sheets. "You ready? You think the others ready?" Her agitation fanned her courage to fight back in the only way she could. By going to see the registrar, the man who'd insulted her dignity.
Celeste counted up her voter registration students. Sister Mobley and Mrs. Owens. Dolly Johnson and of course Reverend Singleton, and maybe Mr. Landau. But Mr. Landau didn't believe in nonviolence. No way he could go yet. She would be there herself for moral support and any lastminute instruction. Should have more people, though. "We all have to go together. Reverend Singleton will have to okay us making our first trip." The memos coming from the Jackson office over the last two weeks had encouraged projects to go on to the registrar. Nobody registered on the first try, and there might be arrests. It would take time to get people out of jail, then back to the registrar. Get moving, they'd said. That was before the bodies were found.
Mrs. Owens swirled her iced tea and said, as if to herself, "Told me to go on home and take care of it."
Celeste poured herself a glass of tea, wishing she had a tall gin and tonic. The whole town might erupt. No riots here. People would be arrested before any riots had a chance to erupt. Mass arrests. Ed talked about the special prison in the swamps for civil rights workers. Plaquemines. Did Sheriff Trotter have some Plaquemines hidden out in the bayous near the Pearl River? As the outsider, she'd be the number-one target when they went to the registrar. She and one local person would take the brunt of any physical attack. That's what orientation taught. "We can make our first trip on Monday morning, depending on Reverend Singleton. Start the week. It's going to take more than one try." She stopped before she said what she thought-that it might not happen at all.
"Yes." Mrs. Owens went into her bedroom and closed the curtain behind her. Celeste could hear her mumbling scripture.
The rain slowed to dribbles interspersed with a few last thick, thumping drops, washing the gravel path to the outhouse. The dust was quelled for a while. A slight breeze, a small tailwind of the storm passed through. Celeste sat in the kitchen, relieved that all the power lines still hung from the poles. When the last of the rain stopped, she went to the front porch and sat in Mrs. Owens's rocking chair. The darker rain clouds moved out, leaving snow white dumplings lolling across the sky. She stood at the screen door to see Dolly Johnson stepping out of her old car wearing jeans, a blouse, and gym shoes, her hair parted in the middle and pulled behind her ears, and carrying a small purse.
"You got time to visit?" Dolly came up the porch steps and Celeste saw that her overdone make-up and painted fingernails didn't quite fit in with the new Dolly. She had something, a kind of style that made her stand out in Pineyville. The way she presented herself showed courage, bucking the eyes-down mentality of Mississippi.
Celeste unhooked the screen and held the door for her. "Come in. You want a cold drink?"
"Thank you." Dolly didn't move beyond the screened door.
"Sit down, Dolly." Celeste brought her a glass of iced tea and resumed her seat in the rocking chair.
Dolly sat and held on to the arms of the straight-backed chair like it might fly off the porch with her in it. "The rain makes it nice, for a few minutes anyway." Her face was slightly round and nicely shaped.
The heat began to build up, but the late afternoon shower and the small breezes that followed it prevented the day from being a scorcher. Across the road, the sunlight glazed the pile of cinderblocks and wood slats. A wild crepe myrtle grew like a precious gift springing up out of the despair of a vacant lot. The Hudson wasn't parked at the Tucker house down the road. Three children lived in that house, yet it always seemed deserted.
"You hear about them finding the boys?" It had been more than a month since they'd gone missing. Hard to hide three men. But it had been done, and they'd still be under the dirt but for a purchased tip to the FBI.
"Where'd they think they were? On the moon?" Dolly shook her head from side to side.
"Might as well have been. Supposed to be a memorial service over in Meridian." Celeste had already decided she'd go with the Reverend and his wife.
On the narrow blacktop, the meager trickle of cars seemed to be moving too slowly. It was an illusion created by the sunlight.
"Things don't get better around here, I'm sending my children awayjust as soon as I'm able," Dolly said.
Celeste wondered if that meant she'd leave, taking them with her,
or if she'd stay and send them to relatives somewhere. She longed to tell her she would do the same thing, too, though the point wasn't to leave, but rather to pound this place into livability. Even so, Celeste knew as well as she knew her own name that she'd never let a son-especially a son-of her own grow up in a place called Mississippi.
"Did you know Leroy Boyd James?" She hadn't thought about him for some time but now that the bodies of the boys had been unearthed, it brought the earlier death to mind.
"Sure, I did. Wasn't that long ago. Dirty shame the way they treated him." Dolly's eyes searched the air for reasons.
"Does he have family around here?" She wanted to ask Dolly if she thought he'd raped the woman he was accused of raping. Nobody'd said a word about it since she arrived in Pineyville. What did it mean for so many dreadful things to happen and not be discussed? How could you keep doing that, year in and year out, sweeping nightmares under the rug? But those things lived on in hearts and minds whether they ever crossed the lips or not.
"Oh, no. They left town soon after." Dolly sipped her iced tea.
Not only did the Negro people in Mississippi live surrounded by hatred, endlessly fearing all manner of reprisal, they had to do it without a legal drink. Just based on the discovery of the three bodies, every Negro in the state should be having a shot of something a whole lot stronger than iced tea. At Momma Bessie's dining room table, the stories and tales of the dead were interspersed with the splashing of hard liquor drinks over ice cubes. A community of storytelling eased the pain of the church ritual, buoyed the release. Not in Mississippi. Celeste sucked her teeth and wagged her head like an old person.
"How my kids doing in your class? They learning anything new?" Dolly rested her glass on the porch floor.
The subject of their conversation was effectively changed. Was this the reason Dolly had come over? Had her children complained about Celeste? Labyrinth didn't like standing to say her name before she spoke each time. That was baby stuff to her. "Oh, they're doing fine. Reading the newspapers, talking about current events." Georgie stayed quiet but he read well, too.
"Good." Dolly stared through the puckering screen at the orange sand road. The puddles had shriveled to spoonfuls of rainwater on their way to disappearing.
Celeste rocked the chair, grinding the floorboards of the porch. Maybe she and Dolly could just sit there and girl talk, forget Freedom Summer, forget all that still had to be done, all that had already happened. Pretend they were out for lunch with not a care in the world. She wanted to tell Dolly she didn't need to wear so much makeup.
Dolly took a handkerchief out of her purse and gently patted her moist face, blotting the rouge on her cheeks and the oil from her nose. "I don't make no difference between them, you know, and I don't let nobody else make a difference, either." She put the handkerchief back in her purse and fiddled with the clasp.
Dolly rightfully assumed that someone had told Celeste her story. "Surely that's the best thing." Celeste stumbled around to find a calming word to say to Dolly. She hadn't as far as she knew made any difference between them, but Labyrinth was such a stand-out, it was hard not to focus on her. "They're fine children, Dolly. Labyrinth takes good care of Georgie, too. She's protective."
"That's what she's supposed to do. He's the baby." They talked for a while longer about the children, what they were studying, how they got along with the other kids. Dolly seemed to have some other notions in her mind that played across her face, but they didn't come out of her mouth. She was subdued, thoughtful.
"I better be getting on home." Dolly stood. "Thank you for the tea."
There was more she might have said to Dolly, so much she wanted to ask. But Reverend Singleton admonished her to keep a distance between herself and the adults who came to voter education class. She was the teacher first, though all the class members were older. "Come by anytime."
"I'll do that." Dolly got into her car and U-turned on Freshwater Road then turned on the two-lane going toward Pineyville.
In her bedroom, the after-storm evening light slanted through the lacy curtains. The end of Freedom Summer was approaching. The race was on now to see if the work of the summer would net out to something that could change this place forever. A new tension would settle in over the exhausted one that had hovered around the missing civil rights workers. It was time to go see Mr. Heywood. She'd alert the One Man, One Vote office that they were shifting into gear for the final showdown. If they attacked her or any of her little group, she'd need a doctor they could call on. Who? Where? Maybe someone in Hattiesburg. She'd ask Reverend Singleton. She grabbed at straws, trying to gird herself against faceless eventualities.
Celeste opened her dresser drawer and touched Wilamena's unopened letter. It was there. She held, it anticipating distance, afraid she'd never make it through the coolness. She sat on the side of her bed and slowly, carefully opened it, its two pages folded once. Wilamena had written on both sides of each sheet.
A landscape in pale colors hinted across the top of the paper. Mountains and pine trees. Pinon. Her mother always liked good stationery, kept boxes of cards with painted birds, flowers, and landscapes. She'd taught Celeste from the time she was a child to send formal thank-you notes as gratitude for the smallest gestures. Wilamena's handwriting etched on the page, the lines perfectly even like she'd used a ruler.
Dear Celeste:
I hope you're managing to stay out of harm's way though I don t see how that's possible considering where you are. You should be running as far and as fast away from that place as possible. I can't imagine a reason to even pass through there. Of course, ifI hadn't called Shuck looking for you, I wouldn't even have known you'd gone to Mississippi. Imagine that?
Now that you're adult enough to run about the world doing what you please, putting yourself in harm's way willingly and knowingly, there are some things I need to share with you. I'm weary of carrying this burden alone.
When Shuck and I were married, things grew difficult between us. I had your brother, Billy, and a husband who was never home or helpful in the least, and in-laws who never seemed to notice I was there. It wasn't easy. I was lonely and isolated. I found work, which gave me some relieffrom the dreariness of my daily life.
At any rate, I met a man. We struck up a conversation at Hudson's department store, of all places. He asked me to lunch, and I surprised myself by going. Before long, it turned into an affair.
Her next sentences swooped against Celeste like headwinds lifting off the page, pushing her back on the bed.
Perhaps I was looking for someone to assuage my loneliness, or maybe it just happened. A bit of serendipity. Hard to think of Detroit and the possibility of anything serendipitous, to say nothing of romantic. And it was that. Romantic. Secret meetings, lies to cover my whereabouts. Imagine that! Windsor was our favorite place. He knew that I was married, and so was he. Igotpregnant and broke off the relationship. I was terrified of the consequences. Shuck and I were still together during that time, you see.
That November, you were born. I don't think Shuck knew about my affair. I certainly never told him. There was nothing to discuss really. We were married, if troubled, and I was pregnant. At some point, much later, he may have had suspicions because you don't really look like him. But of course that happens in families, especially in Negro families. His suspicions went away in time. You do, my dear, have something of this other man's looks, minus that hair ofyours which has a mind of its own.
It was long ago. The man never knew I was pregnant, and I never allowed him to know where I lived. I was the mystery woman. I don't know if it would be wise to search for him, if that's what you're thinking. What would be thepoint? Shuck has been your father, so why upset the apple cart? Shuck has street smarts. He may well know the truth. But it's too late now for me to broach the subject with him. That I'll leave to you, since you're so close.
Had she opened some stranger's mail? With her mouth dry as ash, she checked the forwarding address written by s
omeone in the Jackson office of One Man, One Vote. Yes. Celeste Tyree, C/o Mrs. Geneva Owens, Freshwater Road, Pineyville.
After that, I couldn't wait to get out ofDetroit. I imagined walking into him on a street with you and Billy in tow. Imagined a thousand things. I may never go back to that city for as long as I live.
Please take good care ofyourself. You'll give and you'll give and it'll still be crabs in a barrel. I pray you'll be safe. Shuck should never have allowed this. I always thought him too permissive.
Love from your mother,
Wilamena
Celeste paced around her room like a caged cat, sat again, her neck in a painful crick. She reread the words feeling like naked prey in a ghostly field, her body hairs spiked for danger. Search for this man? Her eyes had not failed her. Had Wilamena gone crazy? She held the pieces of stationery, pine trees and mountains etched across the top, faint blue sky behind. Calm. She shoved the letter under her pillow, caught an escaping breath in her throat when Mrs. Owens moved about in her room.
It was in the spring, not that long ago, after Easter break from school, that she'd last called her mother. Celeste kidded her about her husband, Cyril, not allowing music in their house, said she couldn't imagine that much quiet. Shuck couldn't live two minutes without music. I couldn't either. "Music's not everything," Wilamena'd answered. The air crackled through the phone. She told her she was only joking. In truth, she hadn't been joking. Now she understood her mother's taut response. It had as much to do with her identifying her tastes with Shuck's as anything. A Shuck who was not her father? But she'd said nothing in the letter that could be taken as conclusive proof of anything, except that she'd had an affair and got pregnant at the same time. Had she been sleeping with the both of them? During that phone call, Celeste had asked her what had really happened between her and Shuck all those years ago, why they hadn't made it. Wilamena dodged the question with something about Shuck never being home, always in the streets. Celeste had heard the frantic energy underneath her last words. She hung up with a curt goodbye.
Freshwater Road Page 24
