Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society

by Amy Hill Hearth

  “Well, you ran ’em down.”

  “Did I?” Jackie said. “Are any of them . . . dead?”

  “Don’t know that either.”

  Plain Jane interrupted. “I think Priscilla needs some water or something,” she said, sounding alarmed.

  Mrs. Bailey White scurried off toward what must’ve been the kitchen. When she returned, she and Plain Jane hovered over Priscilla like she was a baby bird fallen out of its nest.

  “Oh my God,” Jackie said suddenly, half rising from her chair. “My kids! My kids must be wondering where I am! I need to call them!”

  “No phone—sorry,” said Mrs. Bailey White. “Had my phone turned off years ago.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to use it, even if she had one,” Dolores said to Jackie. “That would leave a record that you were here.” Dolores laughed under her breath, then added, “Look, it’s already four a.m. You’ll be back by six or so. You can tell ’em you had a flat tire.”

  “How strange.” Jackie’s voice was hoarse. “I’m in trouble but not the hoodlums who burned down a church and terrorized a group of citizens.”

  “We’re not really citizens,” Priscilla said. She sounded stronger now that she’d had some water.

  “This is a stupid world,” Jackie said to no one in particular.

  “Let’s go, Junior,” Dolores said to Robbie-Lee. “We don’t gotta wait until dawn. Better if we go now.”

  I was sorry to see them leave—Dolores, who at least seemed to know what to do, and Robbie-Lee, our only man.

  We were to leave next, and surprisingly the time passed quickly, at least for me. For Jackie, though, it may have been a very long two hours. She kept looking at her watch. Finally, it was time. We slipped out the back—Jackie, Plain Jane, and me. Priscilla would leave last, on foot, as planned.

  The sound of the Buick’s engine turning over was loud enough to set off a chorus of hound dogs, but they were a long way off and not too likely to call attention to us directly. Jackie had hoped to drive without headlights but had to drop the idea, thanks to fog so heavy it seemed to hang in sticky tendrils, like Spanish moss from the trees.

  I did not want to go home. I’m not sure why but going to the post office seemed safer. No one would be there yet and I could use my key, go inside, and pretend everything was normal. Jackie and Plain Jane were in no mood to argue, so they dropped me off in the back parking lot of the Green Stamp Redemption Center, the cinder-block architectural wonder a few hundred yards behind the employee entrance to the post office. I felt sad, relieved, and a little sentimental as they drove away. I couldn’t help but think how much had changed. Just two days before, I had spent a mindless hour inside the Green Stamp building, trying to decide which toaster I wanted, having waited until double stamp day to trade in my little stamp books so I could get a better deal. At the time, there was nothing more important to me in the entire world. How odd the place looked to me now, and how idiotic I’d been to care so much about a toaster. The night’s events had left me feeling like a stranger in my own life.

  Everything went as planned. Plain Jane was dropped off at the end of her cul-de-sac and walked the rest of the way home. This left Jackie, alone, to pull into her driveway.

  Ted was in Atlanta and the twins were asleep. But, she said later, Judd was sitting bolt upright on the living room couch like a nervous parent.

  “Oh, Mom,” Judd groaned in relief when he saw her. “I kept thinking I should call the police. I’m so glad you’re okay.” He was trying to stifle tears—and was humiliated that he was not succeeding.

  “Did you?”

  “What?”

  “Call the police?”

  “No,” Judd said. “I don’t know why, but something told me not to.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t.” For a fleeting second, Jackie considered Dolores’s advice to tell a simple lie about a flat tire. But Jackie wasn’t that kind of mom. And Judd wasn’t that kind of kid.

  She told him the whole story.

  Seventeen

  We stayed away from each other—an act of self-preservation. As Mama used to say, better to be a scaredy-cat and alive than brave and six feet under.

  Jackie stayed at home, waiting to be arrested or at least questioned at any moment. She wished Ted was home so she could talk to him, but he was on one of his trips for Mr. Toomb. She didn’t dare tell Ted over the phone.

  Dolores told Robbie-Lee that Priscilla’s grandmother was okay but that several Negroes had been injured. Robbie-Lee whispered this information to me at the post office, where he stopped by, pretending to buy stamps.

  Nothing had appeared in the paper about the church fire. I wanted to reach out to Priscilla, to see how she was doing, but I didn’t want to take the chance of complicating her life further. She was, I knew, in more danger than any of us, even Jackie.

  But after a full week passed, I went to look for Priscilla. I took the bus and waited for her at the stop near Mrs. B’s house, hoping to catch her on her way home. I did this three times but she didn’t show up. That’s when I got up my nerve to walk to the house and try to talk to her there. I thought maybe she was living with Mrs. B full-time now, for some reason.

  I expected Priscilla herself to answer the front door, since that seemed to be part of her duties. But my knock was answered by a much older woman, her back stooped slightly, with tight, gray curls peeking out from under her maid’s cap.

  I was so surprised, I took a step backward. “Where is Priscilla?”

  The older woman craned her neck to look at me carefully. Her eyes were angry. Or maybe she was just plain tired from living too long and seeing too much.

  “She ain’t here no more.” She said it in a way that let me know there was no point in asking questions. Now I wished I had dressed better. If I hadn’t been wearing slacks, a polo shirt, and my Keds, I might have been able to put on airs. I could have gotten more information, maybe even wormed my way inside for a chance to speak to the Boss Lady.

  But I skittered away, aware that I was probably being watched, which made me so self-conscious that I tripped on my shoelace, the one with three knots in it that always seemed to come undone at the worst possible moment. I knew what I had to do next, though. I went back to the main road and took the next bus, but only as far as the Esso station. From there I called Jackie from the pay phone.

  “What?” Jackie screamed predictably. “She’s not there anymore?” Within a half hour, Jackie pulled up. There was only one place to go—to Priscilla’s grandmother’s house. We hadn’t made that journey since the night we’d encountered the Klan. I wasn’t sure we’d ever have the nerve to drive that way again, but there we were, only this time it was just me and Jackie.

  As we drew near the church, I felt queasy. I looked at Jackie out of the corner of my eye. She was very pale, and she was biting her bottom lip, but something about the way her hands held the steering wheel made me realize she was going to be okay.

  I tried hard not to cringe at the sight of the burned-out church. It had the forlorn look of an abandoned campfire. Then I spotted one hopeful sign—a small scaffold, in what would have been the sanctuary, hinted at rebuilding if not rebirth. It brought tears to my eyes, and when I glanced at Jackie, I realized she had seen it too.

  When we arrived at the bungalow community, it was still daylight. We’d only ever seen the place at night, lit up by the Buick’s headlights. One very old lady sat on the porch of the first house, smoking a pipe. She turned her head slowly to stare at us, but her expression didn’t change, even as we drove slowly past.

  Priscilla’s grandmother’s house was easy to pick out because I remembered that a log-cabin quilt—red and blue—had been neatly tucked around a saggy-looking couch on the porch. Even at night, the quilt had been visible. I went to the door and knocked gently while Jackie waited in the car. There was no answer.

  Just then someone called my name. It was Priscilla, walking up the road carrying a bucket of water in each hand. She
set them down, right in the middle of the road, and ran to me.

  “Dora! Dora!” she cried out. She hugged me so tight, she nearly squashed the life out of me. Then she ran back toward Jackie, who was getting out of the car, and threw her arms around her too.

  “Come in the house!” she cried, and we obeyed. The house was so dark inside, I felt like I was falling into a well, but a few seconds later Priscilla yanked open a gingham curtain that covered the house’s only window. “It’s still kind of dark, isn’t it?” she said apologetically. “I could light the kerosene lantern, but Grandma doesn’t like to do that during the day.”

  “Where is your grandma?” I asked, wondering if she would really want Jackie and me in her house.

  “She’s still at work, picking watermelons.” Priscilla gestured to a small kitchen table. “Let’s sit here,” she said, adding, “My great-grandpa made these stools.” She brought us cups of porch-brewed tea, which we sipped politely. I remembered what my mama always told me: When you’re visiting someone who’s rich, by all means, look around. They probably would be disappointed if you didn’t. But when you’re visiting someone who’s poor, keep your eyes to yourself. You don’t want to make them feel bad.

  “Priscilla,” I said, suddenly remembering the purpose of our visit. “Where have you been? I mean, you’re not working for Mrs. B anymore?”

  Priscilla looked down at the table and sighed.

  “What is it, Priscilla?” Jackie asked in her nurturing voice.

  “Yes, what was it you couldn’t tell us that night?” We all knew what I meant by that night, but even though I avoided the words Klan and fire, it still made the three of us shudder.

  Priscilla cleared her throat. “Well, since you came all this way to see how I am, I guess I ought to tell you.” She took a deep breath before adding, “I’m going to have a baby.”

  “You’re what?” Jackie shrieked. “A baby?”

  Now it was my turn to look down at the table. I was probably as shocked as Jackie but my instinct was to keep my emotions and my opinions to myself. Anyway, I knew Jackie would say enough for the two of us.

  “How could you do this?” Jackie wailed. “How could you throw your future away like this?”

  Priscilla seemed to think carefully before speaking. “I didn’t know I had a future,” she responded slowly. “I never really thought I’d find a way to go to college. And then I met someone.”

  “Oh my God!” Jackie said, then, “How did this happen?”

  “Well, the usual way, I suppose,” Priscilla replied, with an attempt at wryness.

  “I meant why did you let this happen?” Jackie sounded more like a mother than a friend.

  “It was just a onetime thing,” Priscilla replied.

  “Well, that’s all it takes! One time!” Jackie said.

  “It’s my life,” Priscilla said firmly. But after a moment, she added, “I’m sorry you went to all that trouble, getting me into college.”

  I was beginning to think we should leave. “Jackie, you need to calm down,” I said. “Maybe Priscilla is happy about it.”

  “Oh,” Jackie said. Obviously that thought had not occurred to her. “I’m sorry, Priscilla.” Then she added, “So—are you? Happy about the baby, I mean?”

  “Well, no, I wouldn’t say I’m happy,” Priscilla said softly. “I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life.”

  “How far along are you?” Jackie asked.

  “Five months,” Priscilla said, patting her belly. Under her loose-fitting shift, you couldn’t tell. I realized this was the first time I’d ever seen her without the maid’s uniform.

  There was a miserable silence, like when you’re at the dentist and you’re waiting for the novocaine to work. I had this sudden longing for days gone by, when my life was boring. At least my former life was predictable. I felt resentment toward Jackie, ’cause once again she had misstepped, making assumptions about the way things work here in the South. The chances of Priscilla going to college had been so small, who could blame her for not truly believing that could ever happen? Maybe Priscilla—like poor white girls too—got pregnant because she didn’t have anything else to look forward to. Such girls were in the habit of letting life happen to them. How hard it must be to keep fighting for your dream when that dream is probably a mirage. Maybe, I thought, they’d learned to grab happiness for the short term. Find a lover, not a husband, because men don’t stick around anyway. But a baby—now that’s something, or rather someone, that lasts. Babies grow up to love you forever. You are the center of the child’s universe. Maybe that’s why some women allowed it to happen. How else to find perfect love?

  Of course, there were women who got pregnant on purpose in order to trap a man, just to push him toward the altar. That idea had always disgusted and astonished me, because it required deceiving the person you supposedly loved most.

  The thought of Priscilla trapping a man seemed especially unlikely. First, she was too nice. Second, the man was not even mentioned. Maybe she’d had a momentary lapse of judgment and had just been unlucky.

  Priscilla interrupted my thoughts by asking a surprising question. Without looking either me or Jackie in the eye, she almost whispered, “Does this mean I’ll have to quit the group?”

  “The group? You mean our group?” Jackie looked at me, as if she was making sure she understood. “Why, of course not! It’s not the pregnancy, it’s the fact that you’ll lose this—this great opportunity. That’s why I care about it, and I’m sorry if I’m, well, if I’m making this harder on you. I just wanted you to go places in life. The way you were always talking about Zora Neale Hurston and Bethune-Cookman College and how you were going to go there someday—I was so sure that was going to happen that I helped make it happen.” Her tone was apologetic and maybe, also, a little wistful. “I’ve always regretted that I didn’t finish college. But you’re right—it’s your life. I should have stayed out of it.”

  “No!” Priscilla shouted with such force that Jackie and I jumped. We had never heard her sound like this before. “Please don’t say that!” Then, calmer, “It was the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. No one ever had faith in me like that! And now I’ve let you down, and I’ve let my grandma down, and I will never go to college and make something of myself.” Her voice trailed off but there were no tears, just a deep, sad ache that seemed to roll off her and fill the tiny room every time she breathed.

  A lost chance is hard enough, even when you’re able to make peace with it over time. But watching a young woman win and then lose the lottery of life in such a short period—well, it sickened me, especially because she was so very likeable.

  I figured we would never see her again. The divide between us would now be too wide. She had not only lost her chance at college, she couldn’t even work for the odious Boss Lady anymore, a demeaning job but a whole lot better than working in those watermelon fields. She would always be welcome at the literary society meetings, but I knew the chances were not good that she’d get there. She’d be too exhausted.

  As we drove back, Jackie and I were slump-shouldered and too depressed to talk. The day’s events had been too darn sad.

  Another week passed. Jackie began to think the powers that be were going to ignore her. After all, she reasoned, how could they accuse her of anything without implicating themselves in something much more sinister? She grew confident. She grew cocky. She drove all the way to Sarasota, where she found a pay phone outside a strip mall. She called every Washington agency she could think of, with a lot of help from a long-distance operator who must have been wondering what in the name of our sweet savior was going on. Yes, she told the operator, she was aware there were branch offices of the FBI in Florida. No, she didn’t want to talk to any of them. And no, she really didn’t want to say where she was calling from or give her home address at this time. She wanted to reach someone in Washington—the FBI, the Department of Justice, even the White House. She left messages with secretaries who p
romised that come hell or high water, someone would call back within two hours.

  She had thought that being a witness to a gathering of the KKK in which a church was torched would be a high priority. She would provide the details if someone “senior” called her back.

  For two hours—and an extra fifteen minutes, just to be sure—she stood in that hot little phone booth, waiting, staring at the phone. Several times people rapped on the glass, wanting to use the phone. One man even rattled the door, but she yelled at him and leaned against the door from the inside. The booth smelled of spilled Dr Pepper and chewing gum. Would that phone ever ring?

  It did not.

  Jackie cried all the way home. What was it that one of the secretaries had said? “That’s pretty common, ma’am, but we will get someone to talk to you and get the specifics.” She pictured housewives like herself by the hundreds. Did they all call from pay phones? Were the stories similar? Did they all feel confident the authorities would do something, then realize in horror they were wrong?

  She pulled up just as I was leaving the post office. “Hey,” she called out, and I could see she’d been crying. We drove to my bungalow. I didn’t think the whole world needed to see her all fallen apart like that.

  In my hurry, I forgot about Norma Jean, my watchturtle, who lumbered toward Jackie as soon as I opened the gate, making that god-awful noise that sounded to most people like a dog barking.

  “Oh my God!” Jackie screamed, grabbing my arm. “What is that?”

  “Norma Jean, stop that!” I scolded. I crouched down and rapped lightly on her shell. She retreated into the bushes.

  Jackie was still gripping my arm. “What was that?” she cried.

  “Just a snapping turtle,” I said. “Come on into the house.”

  The turtle encounter had shocked Jackie out of her weepy state, and over glasses of Coke, she told me what happened.

  “I’m glad the FBI didn’t reach you,” I blurted out, almost under my breath.

  “What?” Jackie’s arched eyebrows rose to an incredible height. “What? How could you say that? What are you saying?”