Two and a half weeks after filling out their applications, and then returning to the registrar's office every day to check on their applications, the six went again to see Mr. Heywood. They arrived expecting the same stall they'd experienced on the day before, and the day before that. The three secretaries ignored them, kept their heads focused on their desktops, their little fans decorated with red ribbons kiting in the breeze. The dark-haired woman with the sour face picked up her phone and pushed a button, then replaced the receiver.
"Mr. Heywood be out here in a minute." She waved a look to the six, her eyes never focusing.
The outdoorsy woman with the suntan walked to a file cabinet in the corner by the high windows and opened and closed file drawers as if looking for something she couldn't find. Even the younger woman who'd offered Celeste the opportunity to register to vote stared out the windows, away from them, as the clouds from the Gulf of Mexico rolled through. It might rain, Celeste thought, following the younger secretary's eyes to the window. She wished it would rain hard. She'd stand in the middle of Freshwater Road watching the lightning zag in the sky, feel her bare feet sinking in the sandy mud, feel the pelting drops on her face and in her hair.
Mr. Heywood came out of his office and looked at them with a surprised expression as he wrestled into his brown suit jacket, grabbing papers from the edge of the dark-haired secretary's desk. He stood behind the counter and swiped a handkerchief over his sweaty face. His hair, parted on the side, slid across his receding hairline, revealing an expanse of pale scalp. Celeste noticed again how Mr. Heywood's eyes were darker at the center, surrounded by a blue-gray marbling. They hadn't seen him once since their very first attempt in the lobby, when he'd hustled them out the side door.
"Don't y'all have nothing else to do?" His eyes danced around the countertop, appraised the painting of the Confederate soldier on the wall, the clock, anything and everything but a look at them.
"Not today," Mrs. Owens said, shaking her head no. "How you doing, Mr. Heywood?" A yearning look spread over Mrs. Owens's face, a plea that seemed to beg for his righteousness. He'd told Mrs. Owens to get that "gal" out of her house. He'd said, "Niggers didn't belong in this building." And here they were. No one had called out the Mississippi National Guard to stop them. Mr. Heywood was eating crow because someone more powerful than he had told him that he had to backtrack on his promise of no Negro voting in his county as long as he had breath in his body. He had to bend so now he glided above, camouflaging his loss. His lips nearly parted, but the greeting died before it could float into the air. Celeste knew Mrs. Owens had ironed his shirts in years past, had greeted his wife with her baskets of rough-dried clothes. But this was about voting and that had been about ironing.
"Well, we might as well get this over with. It looks to me like Landau, Geneva, and Hazzie Mobley now registered to vote in the State of Mississippi." He didn't look at them for as much as an eye blink, spoke the names without title. In all this time, Celeste never knew Sister Mobley had a first name. Tony called her Ma, everyone else called her Sister Mobley. Hazzie.
Mr. Heywood flipped a stapled page over, wiping his face again with his handkerchief though it was dry, smoothing those errant hairs back across his balding spot. "The other two didn't pass the test." His head wiggled like a kid standing on the other side of a line in a game. Dolly and Reverend Singleton hadn't made it. Reverend Singleton, a graduate of the University of Chicago, didn't pass Pineyville's test. Dolly, one of the best readers in the group, hadn't passed the test. Celeste knew it was a lie.
Mr. Heywood opened the ledger book on the counter. "Come on now and sign this book." He cut his eyes at Dolly. "Need you to print your name and address and then sign your name on the lines." Celeste figured that the eye-cutting had to do with his disdain for Dolly's relationship with Percival Dale. That's what not passing the test was for Dolly. It had nothing to do with what was on the paper. The lie of the south. The second biggest lie of all. The eye-cut was the tip-off. Moments eased by on a breath. Dolly knew the rules.
"You must be out of your mind." Dolly sounded confused, hard, her voice bringing Celeste back into the room.
Mrs. Owens stepped up to sign, proud, her face barely able to contain her personal joy, as mixed as the joy had to be that everyone hadn't made it. Mr. Landau and Sister Mobley stepped up right behind her, proud to be signing in that ledger book, finally.
Mr. Heywood leaned on the counter like the keeper of the gate, like the owner of the lock. He'd let them sign in his book and then would close it again for God only knew how long before he opened it to another Negro hand. He'd sit on it, bury it in an unmarked grave before he let another Negro hand touch it, unless that hand held a feather duster.
Celeste watched how they printed their names, their addresses, and then, in their unpracticed scrawls, wrote their signatures. She held onto the edge of the counter, euphoric with triumph, wanted to whoop right out loud in the office, to scream that they'd made it. Things would change, and it started right then and there. No more stepping off the sidewalk to let a white person pass. Negroes could laugh, talk, be their Negro selves right there in Pineyville. No running back to the woods. No more looking at the ground instead of dead into the eyes of any white person who came along. This was the beginning, at last, a hundred years after the end of the Civil War, a hundred years after the Constitution gave them the rights of citizenship.
Reverend Singleton braced, erect and proper though she knew his heart had to be breaking. He'd lost his church for this and now he'd lost this, too.
Dolly had stepped aside with a flush on her face to let the others sign the book, but now she spoke again. "What kind of shit is this?" Her voice was barely loud enough for the people behind the counter to hear. She no longer wore a purse to the Pearl River County Administration Building, but rather carried her necessities in her pockets like Celeste. Her tone, her words didn't match her copycat college girl looks. She moved to the counter beside Celeste and stared Mr. Heywood right in his face. "You crazy for sure. I wanna know how come I didn't pass your test?" Her eyes nearly popped out of their sockets, her hands flew to her hips. Her gym-shoed feet paralleled for balance.
Mr. Heywood backed away from the counter. "We don't have that kind of talk in here."
Celeste put her arm on Dolly's arm to calm her. Dolly yanked it away.
Reverend Singleton's dark skin went ashy. "Perhaps there's been some sort of a mistake." He spoke quietly, not a note of anger or threat in his voice. He knew the Mississippi State Constitution as well as he knew that Bible he preached from every Sunday morning. "May I see my test please, too? Show me where I answered incorrectly."
Things were spinning out of control again, going in the wrong direction. Mr. Heywood tugged at the sleeve of his suit jacket. He angled his body to include the secretaries behind him who now stared, eyes wide as if they expected a brawl. Reverend Singleton and Dolly had done the unthinkable-they'd questioned a white man's authority and intelligence in front of other Negro people and white people, too. Panic rippled through Celeste's body.
Dolly banged her fist on the counter. "You got no right or reason to do such a thing." The press bell bounced. Her hand flattened out on the counter top and slapped it. "I know I passed that test. You just trying to punish me for something that doesn't have anything to do with voting."
Celeste grabbed Dolly's arm more forcefully this time, pulled her away from the counter, keeping an eye on the three women in the back. If one of them picked up a phone, it would surely be to call Sheriff Trotter. In her head, she heard one of those women on the phone: Sheriff, you better come on up here and get these niggers, they gettin'surly again. Mr. Heywood is under attack.
"Let's go, Dolly. It's a beginning." Celeste hissed the words into Dolly's ear, held her as tightly as Trotter might. She wanted to sock Dolly. "Calm yourself. I'm not going back to that jail cell, and neither are you." They'd gotten a piece of what they came for. That was enough. She bottom-lined it like Shu
ck would've done. "Let's go, now. Come on. I don't want any more of my teeth cracked in Mississippi."
Mr. Landau, Mrs. Owens, and Sister Mobley finished signing in the big book and stepped back with nervous eyes darting around, nobody knowing quite what to do. Mr. Landau, Celeste knew, had been on his best behavior for the cause of this voter registration drive, but he couldn't be contained forever. They needed to get out of there before something awful happened.
Dolly retreated, tears overlapping the anger on her face. Reverend Singleton moved to Dolly and put his arm around her. "Quiet, now. Just like Sister Celeste said, it's a beginning. We knew going in it wasn't going to be easy. Be happy for the ones who did pass."
Celeste stared at the side of Mr. Heywood's face. "They'll take the test again and again."
Mr. Heywood walked towards his office door. "I guess you may do that. I've done all I'm going to do." He disappeared, closing his inner office door.
Everything went quiet. Just the pearl blue sky and and the roofs of the neighborhood houses peeking through breaks in the trees. Green below, blue above. They were suspended on the second floor of the Pearl River County Administration Building. Celeste longed to get out of the registrar's office, out of the building with its institutionalized disdain for Negro people, out of Mississippi.
The secretaries' voices lifted, chatting about a yard party planned for the weekend. They'd turned their backs on the Pineyville Six. They spoke again as if behind a glass, as if the six were not there. Pineyville's voter registration summer project effectively ended.
Reverend Singleton shook his head in wonderment as he exited the registrar's office, the rest of them filing like wingless ducks behind him. Would there ever be a complete success? Would joy ever ring clear up to heaven? Celeste knew very well that Dolly might never get registered because of Percival Dale. No way to know if Dale's wife had called Mr. Heywood to remind him of the situation. As if anyone in town didn't have an unspoken reference to it on the tips of their tongues at all times. Dolly probably needed to move to New Orleans; she'd fit right in with those black Creoles.
In the cool hallway, Celeste surveyed the people coming and going, searched for any uniforms and clanking handcuffs. She saw none, heard no hard-soled boots hitting floors. She went straight to the drinking fountain and slurped the cool clear water into her mouth, let it sail down her throat cooling her entire body. Reverend Singleton pulled her away, though, telling her the water fountain wasn't included in the package they'd just gotten.
They started down the stairs. Mrs. Owens walked with Reverend Singleton. She had known him longer than anyone else in the group. She would be his comfort as he had been for her. Reverend Singleton, as Pineyville's own civil rights minister, might never sign his name in the ledger book for Pearl River County. They had burned his church, and now they wouldn't let him register. He would pay for being uppity. They wanted him out of Pineyville as much as they wanted Celeste out.
Celeste grabbed the banister and walked down with Dolly, smoothtalking her out of gouging the wall with her car key. Mr. Landau took Sister Mobley's arm as they descended like debutantes floating in the big sunlight of the stairwell windows. Sister Mobley beamed and lifted her head up grandly coming down those stairs from Mr. Heywood's office, clutching her bible proudly to her heart.
The whites in the lobby barely noticed them. They'd been in this building every day since they took the test, coming in the front door each time. Celeste wondered how long it would take the rest of the Negro people of Pearl River County to come up that front walk, come through the front door, go up those stairs, and demand to take that test to register.
Going back to the car, the sun brazenly hot after the cool of the brick and stone building, Celeste ran it through her mind. Three people made it, two didn't. Only five people even tried. She remembered Ed and Matt stalking around in the St. James A.M.E. Church as if they owned it, questioning her about how many children she had in freedom school and how many adults in voter registration class. Where would her project rank with the others all over the state? She'd find out in Jackson, when the volunteers all met to be debriefed and to say a goodbye that strained against reality. Some of the success of a project had to do with the selling skills of the volunteers and some of it just had to do with how hard and brittle a particular town was. Celeste reminded herself that Negro people all over the south still stepped off the sidewalk to let white people pass. It was entirely possible that some towns didn't register anyone at all. Then again, places like Hattiesburg or even Gulfport or Biloxi might have done a lot better.
Later that night, Mrs. Owens got to pumping water and heating it on the top of the stove and dragged out the portable tin bathtub for Celeste's bath. Said she deserved a victory bath. They pumped, heated, and poured water until she had enough in the big tub for an all-over bath. Celeste closed her curtain-door and sat in that tub like she was in a marble bath in a palace in France. She slid down and rested her head on the thin rim, then folded a towel to use as a headrest. She swooned in it. As the softness of it settled onto her body, she relaxed and then the tears streamed down her face without sobs, without breath or break.
29
In her dreams, Celeste skittered from trumpeting the rights of Negro people as a harried lawyer to being a beret-wearing backroom revolutionary grinding out mimeograph copies until her hands bled. She even turned up as a sad-eyed expatriate languishing in an exotic city sipping muddy coffee in a dark cafe. Ed Jolivette sat opposite her planning their escape.
When the smells of scorched chicory coffee, pork fat, and collards wafted into the room, she woke fully from her dream-drenched sleep. As they had so many times this summer, thoughts of the letter kept her nailed to the mattress. Not just her suitcase but the room itself had become a holding zone for Wilamena's missive. She eyed that glowing Pandora's box peeking from under the bed frame.
"Why did she tell me this now?" Celeste talked to the raw wood ceiling from her mattress on the floor. Grandma Pauline used to say, "Let sleeping dogs lie." Wilamena evidently never listened. Maybe the dog slept for everyone but her.
"Who you talking to in there?" Every grunt and mumble sailed through this house. "Ain't nobody in here but us." Celeste loved being grabbed up in Geneva Owens "us," heard the clanking pots and refrigerator door opening and closing, wondered what could be going on in that kitchen.
"Myself. I'm losing my mind." She called out, still in the habit of speaking as if she had a real door instead of a curtain separating her room from the rest of the house. She got up from her mattress, heaved it onto the bed frame, checked her tooth and her lip scar in the washstand mirror, then stuck her head through the curtain. "Just gonna put on some clothes, Mrs. Owens."
"Take your time, child." The ringing merriment of a freshly registered voter in her voice.
Celeste washed herself, relishing a slight lifting of the morning heat, glorying in the fact that she hadn't sweated away last night's tub bath while she slept. She pulled on slacks, a soiled blouse, and her gym shoes. She grabbed her hair back with a rubber band and stepped into the kitchen carrying her small basin of dirty water, ready to help Mrs. Owens.
Light streamed in through the east-facing back door and the sidewindow. Mrs. Owens had tied back the white eyelet-embroidered curtains with a black shoestring. Cooking utensils covered the small kitchen table. Every pot and bowl she owned lay around on the stovetop, the shallow counter, on top of the refrigerator. She turned to Celeste and nodded towards the steaming coffee pot, her knotty hands sliding the shell from a hard-boiled egg and adding it to a bowl full of them. "We gon have something around here. A celebration, a something. A hello to votin' and a send off for you. I don't care what else." She'd thrown years off of herself over night, her apron splotched with dark grease spots and circles of dampness. Joy, Celeste thought, had to be the greatest palliative against age.
Celeste headed for the outhouse with her basin, ready for any relief from her tangled thoughts of leaving, of jail
cells and burned down churches, of missing Ed like a lost limb, of Shuck and Wilamena. She poured out the dirty water and used the facility, hating it as much today as the first time she'd used it two months ago. On the back porch, she rinsed her basin with pump water and bleach, and noticed the smooth, hard Mississippi-grown muscles in her arms for the first time. In her room again, she grabbed her pitcher and thudded out the front door to the spigot.
Mrs. Owens was preparing for her goodbye. The thought of it-of leaving-made her stomach tighten unexpectedly.
In the bright morning light, Freshwater Road was so quiet you could hear the clouds whooshing by. She stood by the spigot with the big Mississippi sky unfurled like a vast blue drape. The clouds would come later in the afternoon. Morning birds on the power lines and in the trees chattered in soft whistles. No traffic, no sirens, no students yelling across the Quad, no Detroit Negroes with robust voices calling out of back doors. All summer long she'd ached to be out of this place and now she could barely entertain the thought of leaving. Time had dragged and flown by simultaneously. She filled the pitcher, the wild spray of good water splashing her pants and arms, deposited the full pitcher in her room, then rejoined Mrs. Owens in the kitchen.
"Who all's coming?"
"Reverend Singleton stopped by this morning, brought these greens from Etta. Already cleaned. Thank the good Lord. And he brought the chickens for frying. I'm making some potato salad, too, and maybe some shrimp and okra. He's gonna tell the others." She paused. "And those children, too. Lord, help me." She chopped onions now and dipped them in ice water, tears running down her plum brown cheeks. "Reverend Singleton puts his best foot forward no matter how hard life gets. We're blessed to have him in this town."
The words sank into Celeste. "Yes, he does." Had she slipped into her room and read her letter? This appraisal of Reverend Singleton rang bells in Celeste's head. Was she telling her to do that, too? Maybe she'd stood staring at the photo of Shuck and Billy and put it all together. Celeste shook the possibilities from her mind. Heartbroken that he wouldn't be voting come November, Reverend Singleton planned a celebration for the ones who would. There was nothing else in it. Mrs. Owens had just been duly noting his generosity of spirit. She had to learn to stop reading her own meaning into everyone else's. She remembered Shuck saying that some blues let you hold on to the belief that no matter how hard life got, sweetness lay like a lost charm in the moonlight.
Freshwater Road Page 36
