Celeste was the ghost-sister of her own mother, headstrong, wily, and only just beginning. He didn't know what to warn her of anymore, didn't know how to protect her. She'd taken herself to a place beyond anyone's protection. Not something Wilamena would've done. He saw Wilamena in Celeste sometimes, the way she said a certain word or how she moved her hands, but they were oceans apart. But how had she put it together to go to Mississippi? He caught himself. If white children had the courage to put themselves on the line, why not his own? God bless the child. His heart gave a different answer. Negro people had paid enough. Their ancestors paid with the lash and the rope and no money for hundreds of years of backbreaking work. If anybody on earth had a right to be tired, it was Negro people in America. It wasn't enough and he knew it. The struggle would go on until the end of time.
Celeste had a rebellious streak and that would bring her pain, the kinds of pain he could not protect her from. He told her that when he met that white guy with her. He came down hard on her because he wanted her to understand she was treading on shaky ground, bound for the big fall, the kind of hurt that destroyed a spirit. He didn't want to see that happen. Like her mother, Celeste was restless. They were women who stared into space, loved cold winds, storms, and deep colors. You couldn't hold them too tight. A man who was like a rock, Wilamena had said, was there to catch her when she spun one last time out of control. In the old days, Shuck knew he was too much in the streets to be anybody's rock. He'd forgiven Wilamena's wandering because he hadn't been there himself. He had to forgive her whether he wanted to or not. He prided himself on being a stand-up kind of man.
He scraped his shoes with a tree branch, left the top up, and locked his doors. He drove around the island, passing the all-white yacht club, the beach, and headed back to the bridge, then turned to go across downtown and over to the Royal Gardens. Maybe it was time to keep a gun in the car the way things were playing out in the city, hard to know where it was safe and where it wasn't these days. He was a businessman who made bank drops with zippered bags of cash. Easy to explain to the cops why this Negro man traveled the city streets with a gun. Then he remembered those boys high-dancing in front of his car. He didn't know anymore what he'd have done if he had his gun.
8
The driver, 'Middleman, "grinned at them in his rearview mirror. He ferried a steady stream of girls from campus to the abortion doctor in River Rouge, charging fifty dollars for door-to-door service in his customized hearse. He collected the three hundred dollars for the doctor's services. Back-alley entrance, no-nonsense Negro nurse as cold as Celeste 's feet in the icy stirrups, body open like a cave, cramping, feeling the scraping and hearing the flushing. You had to have an appointed time, and the doctor was always busy. Images of clothes hangers, mangled girls, and dead babies skydived in her mind. Momma Bessie put the fear of God in you, but you couldn't stay scared forever. Lying on a sheet-covered table, half-asleep in the dark, Celeste waited for the other two girls who came from Ann Arbor that day. They sipped orange juice and took huge whitepills with five more to take. She wouldn't tellj.D. and nota thought about telling Shuck.
Geneva Owens's voice and a man's voice, too, wafted through the house, seeped into her dream, riding on the aromas of frying bacon and strong coffee. She woke fighting to free herself from the dream's residue, knowing she'd revisit it, like it or not. She lay there listening to them talking about a neighbor woman, Sister Mobley, who had half of a job, three small children, and a long-gone husband. Her hostess sounded chatty, saying she took food to the bereft family whenever she could. Her slow and easy vocal gait was a counterpoint to the strong, stage-savvy male voice. He said the church was doing all it could for those in dire straits.
The nearness of the Gulf, of Lake Pontchartrain, and God only knew what other bodies of water had directed no cool air to Pineyville. Maybe the talk in the kitchen would go on, they'd forget her, let her drift until she adjusted to the swelter, the smallness of the thin-walled house, and the lack of an indoor bathroom with a toilet or a tub. She was learning the stillness of the south, the slowness. Less racing around, less body heat. She had a thought that she might not get a full bath until the end of the summer.
She threw the top sheet aside and studied the color schematic of her body. Her arms and lower legs were well past a shade that would be acceptable to Wilamena. Good. She knew her face was beyond the pale and laughed at the double meaning. Wilamena had been known to grow impatient when Celeste played too long in the sun. Stay out of the sun, girl. A tad too much curl would sneak into her hair in the summer humidity. As she matured, Wilamena's coolness became profound, the physical distance a true rendering of the emotional. Eventually Celeste lost interest in struggling to make herself Wilamena's adored child. Maybe it wasn't that at all. Maybe Wilamena just didn't know how to love.
When she could lie there no longer, she planted her feet on the cool linoleum floor. The tiny, healed-over cuts in her skin had the crusty feel of minute scabs. She used every drop of remaining pitcher water to wash herself from face to feet, realizing too late that she had no clean water with which to brush her teeth. She dressed in a sleeveless blouse and a skirt and tiptoed out the front door to the spigot, squinting in the hard sunlight, beckoning to the distant clouds to bring shade in God's name to Freshwater Road. She eyed the long-needled pines. No shade trees near any house that she could see. Where had that car or truck in the night gone? She stared at the empty road. The two-lane was a short city block in the other direction, the road Matt had disappeared down. With the sun like a hot iron on her neck, she bent over to refill her pitcher.
Mrs. Owens stood at the stove frying eggs. Celeste downed a waiting glass of ice water as the smooth-voiced man rose from his chair. "I wasn't sure until last week if they'd send someone. We're on the low rung down here. I'm Reverend Singleton."
"Celeste Tyree." She joined him at the table. What was the high rung, she wondered? Jackson or even Hattiesburg. "I was with the last group. They called us the stragglers." She might've said she was happy to be there, but Leroy Boyd James's name leaped into her mind, followed quickly by the prowling car. This Pineyville was a lynching town, and 1959 wasn't that long ago. She needed to talk with a local about the real deal in Pineyville without being rude to the person who'd guide her to what she was there to do. "The work's the same wherever it is." She said it thinking that maybe it was true and maybe it wasn't.
"We're so happy that you're here." Reverend Singleton resumed eating, cleaning his plate. "We'll take you, straggler or not, and we'll show them a thing or two in Jackson."
"Thanks, Reverend Singleton. Nothing would please me more." It felt good to say his name, to hear that he understood the undertow of competition between the volunteers to register the most people to vote.
That got things off on the right foot. He had the cheerleading enthusiasm they'd need to get up and running. The question remaining was who was good for the long haul once the going got rough. She'd learned enough about Pineyville to know that it wouldn't be a cake walk.
The kitchen vibrated with heat. The coffee smelled bitter, and the plate of food Mrs. Owens handed her swam in a shallow of yellow grease. Margo had admonished the volunteers to not waste the hosts' hard-to-come-by food. Celeste forked in a small bite of fried egg, then ate a corner piece of biscuit. Thankful she was that the woman had given her less to eat than she had last evening, when Matt shoveled in food like it was his last supper, and she'd tried to keep up with him. She chewed a piece of bacon that gloriously melted on her tongue after a crisp beginning, and waited patiently to pounce on the Reverend about that lynching.
"If Etta'd allow it, I'd eat over here every day, Sister Owens." Reverend Singleton pushed his empty plate forward. "You make a biscuit that brings tears to a man's eyes." He reared back in his chair, brown face glowing in satisfaction. His neatly trimmed moustache camouflaged full lips, and his thick eyebrows set off dark brown eyes.
"You and Etta both come over here to eat anyti
me you feel like it." She took his dirty plate to her pump and washing tub on the small back porch. She gave the handle a few bricks pumps and sulfur-yellow water belched and spewed over the plate. "You did real good for a second breakfast, Reverend." She wiped her hands on her apron, eyes bright and strong, her face ten years younger than yesterday when Celeste and Matt had arrived. Her hair was tucked into a bun at the back of her neck, her housedress crisp and fresh.
"You're right. Etta won't let me out of the door without breakfast." He had the sated tone of a well-cared for man. Sweat creeks trickled from his cropped sideburns, beaded on his forehead. He took a handkerchief from the jacket hanging on the back of his chair and mopped his face. Every man who sat at Momma Bessie's table in Detroit got that look and sound. She took good care of them. Negro men triumphed in the kitchens of older Negro women, if nowhere else. Celeste ate slowly. The coffee was too hot and acrid-smelling to drink. She sipped more water with a thought to the outhouse.
"That chicory might take some getting used to." Reverend Singleton smiled and pointed to her steaming cup. His hairline receded slightly at the temples, his hair cut close. Celeste figured him to be in his late thirties or early forties. "I imagine this heat does, too."
Celeste nodded, wondering what chicory was. "I'm getting used to it," she lied.
"Been getting the church body ready for you. Telling them what I see for all of us here in Pineyville." His eyes were set just a bit too far apart.
"You be comfortable starting up by say, Thursday?" He put his elbows on the table and clasped his hands, his gold wedding ring a beacon on his finger.
"Just want to see the church and figure out what we might need to get going. I've got books for the children." Celeste felt the effects of the food drugging her brain, a slow caving in of her energy. She'd have to learn to eat differently or risk dozing the summer away. Here was the full meaning of porches and rocking chairs. Idle time after each meal. Mississippi siestas. Whites only. Everybody else had to march back to work. Maybe Mrs. Owens would allow them to eat on the screened porch, as far away from that stove as possible.
"Good, good. We'll be all right. Today, I'm taking you sightseeing." He had a city way about him, polished, a smile at the mouth corners and thinking with his whole face, clear enough to grasp. "I told the church that we'd start the classes come Thursday."
"I'm ready." Not sure she knew what ready meant anymore. She'd been ready for her final exams, ready to get out ofAnn Arbor. But this place called out for a new kind of ready. "They told me in Jackson-there was a lynching here in '59?" She blurted it out, fear like a river undertow right beneath her words. She hoped she sounded like a researcher, like Ramona. She couldn't have stopped the question if she'd wanted to.
Mrs. Owens whisked her dirty plate off the table. "They do that all over Mississippi. Always have." Mrs. Owens said it like she was playing a trump card and the game was over.
"Don't fret. We'll be all right." Reverend Singleton sounded like a leader man talking. He'd said, "We'll be all right. "He wasn't going to talk about that lynching. Maybe, after they left the house, he'd tell her the story, maybe he didn't want to ruin Mrs. Owens morning by going into the details.
Just like home. Momma Bessie and Grandpa Ben, even Grandma Pauline, Wilamena's mother, all clammed up that way when it came to the details of the old days. Now she was living in the old days. When she'd asked questions about those times, the older ones paused as if gathering enough air into their lungs, enough cushion to even think about the old days. They'd packed those times away. It was too painful, too backwardfacing to go digging around unearthing whatever had been.
Celeste's last stop before getting into Reverend Singleton's car had to be that outhouse. She collected her basin of scummy water and came back through the kitchen, letting the screen door slam. She walked on the dirt path beside the small vegetable garden toward the little shack near the tree line. The garden segued into an expanse of pale-orange, sun-drenched, sandy earth.
The daytime smell escaping into the morning air wasn't as rank as she expected. She took a deep breath and went into the little outhouse, her sandals and feet powdered with a film of dust. Sunlight shot through the small window above the plank-board platform with its smooth round hole. She poured the dirty basin water in just as she'd done the night before. What lurked in that black abyss, and could it creep up? If Shuck found out about the bathroom facilities in Mrs. Owens house, he'd be down there in one snap of his well-manicured fingers. She did her business and rushed out again.
One stop in the kitchen for breakfast, one trip to the outhouse, and she was already in a full sweat. At the spigot, she scrubbed her hands with soap, patted her face with cool water, and washed her basin. Mrs. Owens had placed a clean towel on a tin plate. The morning air smelled of old wood, mold, and mangy dogs. But when you turned in the other direction, it smelled of a sandy beach, like shells and kelp. The freshest air, with that faint aroma of pine, whiffs of magnolia and jasmine at the edges, would tumble into a moving car with all the windows down. She couldn't wait to get going.
After Reverend Singleton cleared the DeSoto's front passenger seat of his papers and bible, putting them in the back along with his suit jacket, he held the door while she climbed in. His starched white shirt was brilliant in the harsh sunlight. Her pale green blouse and tan skirt gave in to the humidity, wrinkles softening into damp furrows, and the day just beginning. They rolled away, pulverizing the gravel as they made a left turn onto the blacktop leading into Pineyville. She'd listened for that sound all night, even in her sleep. She hugged the passenger side window, arm on the opening, air already breathing up into her armpit.
The tall thin pines decorated the nearly barren landscape on the road, throwing a few delicate shadows here and there. That tropical breeze swept in. Such a relief to have moving air on her face. She sat buttoned and demure beside this man of the cloth with his wedding ring on. She was a stranger in town walking a thin line toward what she hoped would be acceptance. She wanted to release the rubber band holding her tight ponytail, pull her skirt up to her thighs, unbutton her blouse down to her cleavage, and let the fresh air blow over her clammy skin. But in the south, you kept your buttons buttoned up to your neck and your skirt down below your knees. They'd been told in Jackson that the women in the south kept to a rigid standard of comportment. The female volunteers, especially the ones from the north, had been warned not to bring their college campus freedoms down here because they wouldn't sit well at all with the locals, Negro or white.
They drove through the center of Pineyville, a one-stoplight affair. Reverend Singleton pointed out the Pearl River County Administration building, which housed the office of the registrar of voters, Mr. Heywood. By the end of the summer, she imagined she'd know that future-denying fortress well enough. A sheriff's car parked as they floated by, an officer stretching his neck to see inside their car.
"That's Sheriff Trotter." Reverend Singleton didn't turn his head. "He's rock hard and full of hate."
"I heard." She nodded to the uniformed man, felt momentarily powerful sitting there beside the reverend and watching the sheriff's face freeze over. He knew she'd arrived. The Jackson office informed the FBI of the whereabouts of every volunteer. At least then there was a starting point if a volunteer turned up missing. Some FBI men hated the movement as much as the local whites and passed information on to local law enforcement. It traveled from there to the White Citizens Councils and the Klan. She was marked, set to be watched for the entire summer. The Reverend and his car, too. They'd both be under scrutiny, targets for any backward-thinking person in the area. A bullet might fly from the black hole of a gun and shoot one or both of them dead. She saw Matt's body going limp beside his car yesterday on the highway from Jackson. What good had it done? The troopers beat him anyway.
"Story goes that his daddy had a Negro worker on his place who he abused unmercifully for years. Seemed he couldn't get it through his head that slavery was over. Never wa
nted to pay the man a decent wage, called him out of his name. One day, the worker ran him through with a pitchfork. The son blames the entire Negro race, never given so much as a mumbling thought to how mean-spirited his daddy was. He's a chip off the old block." Reverend Singleton drove slowly on, Celeste twisting to get another glare at Sheriff Trotter, who'd gotten out of his car and was walking up the front walk of the County building.
They passed a cluster of small storefronts, a grocery, a drugstore. Awnings and nicely spaced magnolias shaded the storefronts with slashes of sunlight baking the curb-less pavement between. You might run from tree to tree or awning to awning escaping the sun, much like ducking the rain. White people in shade hats went in and out of the few stores and the county building.
"Now, Celeste, the phone company removes our request to the bottom of the list for phone lines at the church. That means you have to use that phone there by the gas station to check in with Jackson and make your calls to home." He drove by the gas station and the pay phone. "We have a phone at our house, but it's too far for you."
She spotted a red Coca-Cola machine against the side wall of the gas station and wondered if they could get a cold drink. But that might necessitate a bathroom stop somewhere, and God only knew what that might mean. She had a thought that one of the distinct pains of the south was the constant necessity to plot your way from one accepting place to the next, for bathroom facilities, for lodging, for travel, even for shopping. You had to have it on your mind at all times.
"Where are the Negro people?" She hadn't seen one since they got into town.
"They come into the grocery and the gas station when they have to. Town's not too friendly to its Negro citizens."
At orientation, they told her that in Pineyville, Negroes stepped off the sidewalk to let whites go by. No wonder they didn't come to town. What would she do if she passed a white person on the street? Margo said it was a decision you had to make at that moment, careful of everything going on around you. No matter what you decided, she said, remain respectful. If you stepped off the sidewalk, keep your head up and say a "good morning" or a "good afternoon." If you decided to cross the street, say your greeting and keep going as if you'd planned to cross the street anyway. She saw herself zigzagging back and forth at a dizzying pace to somehow avoid the obeisance but keep the peace. She almost laughed out loud at the ludicrousness of it all, but underneath, another layer of fear crept into place.
Freshwater Road Page 10