Freshwater Road (17 page)

Celeste nodded to him, the weight of it pressing down on her again.
It sounded so grand, so important, and she just a nearly motherless child
from Detroit. He spoke as if she was a seasoned volunteer like Matt and
Margo. The instructions from orientation squirmed around in her mind,
alternating with feelings of fear and general ineptness toward what lay
ahead. She was crawling toward the moment of absolute engagement, and
the movement had already taken her by the elbows and rushed her to the
starting line, her feet dragging in the dirt. What if she registered no one?
Would Miss Lewis understand? Would Reverend Singleton think of her as
a failure? Would Pineyville be the same in August when she left as it was
right now? The questions single-filed through her mind.

"May I use your restroom?" She wasn't going to leave this house without
using the restroom. She wanted to flush a toilet, to put her hands under a
faucet and turn on the water, have the water pool in a real face bowl.

Sophie Lewis directed her to the foyer and to the center of the house. She
entered a guest restroom completely encased in white marble with gold fixtures molded into leopards. There were tiny balls of perfumed soap piled on
a gold-rimmed dish and satin-inlaid guest towels fanned out on the marble
sink. Silk flowers in crystal vases decorated the marble top. She flushed the
toilet and saw the clear water enter the bowl, then flushed again just for the
hell of it. Finally, she sat on the toilet seat, not even bothering to line it with
toilet paper. No need for squatting here. She washed her hands using the
perfumed soap and let the water run into the porcelain face bowl, then dried her hands on a guest towel, folding it neatly and placing it to the side. She
had an urge to lock herself in the bathroom and never come out. She stared
at her darkening face in the oversized gilded mirror, remembering the week
of life under the scorching sun in Jackson before she came to Pineyville.
Jiggaboo girl. At this rate, by summer's end she'd be as dark as Ramona.
No high-yellow quips then. Wilamena would pass her on the street and not
even know her.

Reverend Singleton and Miss Lewis waited for her in the foyer. At the
top of the porch stairs, the woman pinned Celeste with intent in her big
eyes. "You've taken on a great challenge, young lady, and you will succeed.
I will hear of nothing less." She kissed Celeste and Reverend Singleton on
both cheeks and said, "Adieu."

She expected success. Celeste's eyes burned. The woman suddenly struck
her as both in touch and out of touch at the same time. Elegantly dismissive. Wilamena in a grand dress and a head wrap. Miss Lewis would be off
on one of her tours when things came to a boil. But she'd given the Negro
people of Pineyville her support in that envelope. Still, Celeste knew they
needed people, bodies to line up. Bodies ready to take a beating. She knew
also that people did what they could, and it all mattered.

From the car, Celeste and Reverend Singleton waved to Miss Sophie
Lewis. She watched them from her porch, a great statue of a woman, her blue
and gold head wrap striking against the white of the house, the deep color
of her skin. It wasn't easy to leave the cool luxury of that place. Celeste wondered what must it have been like to grow up there, to live there now, leaving
and coming back to this grandness. They'd turned back onto the earthen
road under the alley of live oaks. The DeSoto barely made a sound.

They drove through Carriere as a thick warm rain smeared the dust on
the windshield, shining the green of the trees and grass. Celeste opened her
window and stuck her head out to let the rain fall on her face, then cupped
her hands and smoothed the lotion-like rainwater up and down her arms.

"You got some country girl in you." Reverend Singleton smiled as he
turned on his windshield wipers.

"That's what my grandmother used to say." She cranked the window up
when the rain turned to a downpour. "Why won't Miss Lewis come sing
at the church?"

"Well." Reverend Singleton's mouth seemed poised to say more. "It's a long story. When all the pews are in and we're as good as we can get,
perhaps she will come and sing for us. I certainly hope so."

Celeste stared across him to the sinking land, to the tilting willows at
the edge of the bayou. Reverend Singleton pointed out the swamp oaks,
sweet bay, and yellow poplars with flowers like big tulips as they drove north
towards Pineyville.

The next morning, Reverend Singleton drove Celeste to see the dilapidated Negro elementary school. Negro students had to take one of the
old school buses parked on the grounds to Lumberton for high school,
and he told her what few teachers they had lived in Hattiesburg. He then
drove her to see the sturdy brick buildings that housed the whites-only
school and its well-maintained grounds and play areas, including a bright
green baseball diamond. He didn't need to point out that this was where
all of Pineyville's children should be going to school. Celeste stared out of
the car window; the effort to push down her anger was making a bothersome knot in her stomach.

When he turned onto the church road, Celeste expected to see a group
of excited children waiting on the steps anticipating the start of freedom
school. Not one child waited. She didn't blame them. It's a rare child who
wants to go to school all summer long. Hard enough to be in there during
the regular year, especially in this place of few books and broken-down
facilities. They didn't yet understand how very different this school would
be. How to get that message out, she didn't know.

Inside, pull shades controlled some of the sunlight roaring in the tallish
windows. The side aisle floors were finished wood. The pulpit area, up two
steps from the floor, and the center aisle all the way to the door had a thin
layer of dark blue carpet. An organ sat to the side of the pulpit area and the
preaching stand was off to the other side. A thick rope, the bell cord, was
hooked to the side wall and, high above, extended into the small bell tower. There were five rows of wooden pews followed by a few rows of assorted
folding chairs, and then more rows of all manner of hand-me-down chairs.
It was a work in progress.

"I'll need a chalkboard." Celeste paced across the front of the church,
glancing to the front door and praying for the arrival of a child, any child, for
her freedom school. "And a couple of boxes of chalk and an eraser or two."

Reverend Singleton sat on the front pew. "Hattiesburg." Celeste thought
him so well-dressed in a suit and tie, a spiffy shirt. He still had Chicago
in his veins. She wondered what his plan could be, where he saw himself
in the future.

"I'm going to need a daily newspaper, too. We'll use it for reading exercises and civics lessons." Celeste sat on the pulpit step.

"We can pick them up in town every morning. I might try to find a couple
of nice standing fans to sit on each side here. Give you a little cross breeze."
Reverend Singleton leaned over, his arms on his thighs, studying her.

The overwhelming quiet of the place seemed to settle on them. The
church clearing was far enough from the highway to shelter them from any
sound of cars or trucks. And at just that moment, no birds sang, no insects
moved, no breeze stirred the trees. Even the wood snakes stopped to hear
the great nothing. Reverend Singleton was openly staring at Celeste.

"Is something wrong?" His stare didn't make her necessarily feel uncomfortable. There didn't seem to be anything lascivious in it. His look was
at her and also very far away.

"You remind me of someone I used to know." Reverend Singleton shifted
on the pew ever so gently as if to break the spell. "I didn't mean to stare.
Forgive me."

"It's all right." Celeste walked to the window to give him a moment to
himself. She tried to imagine what had his life been like before he came
back south. He'd lived in Chicago, gone to school there. He'd lived a life
as far away from life in Pineyville as possible. How in God's name had he
returned to live here? Was it only about the dreadful things going on in the
south? Or had he come to mend himself, as she had? She was a visitor, an
interloper who'd be gone by the end of August. He'd still be there with that
other life spinning around inside him. The stare had been about a woman.
She wanted to ask him how long he'd been married to Mrs. Singleton, why
they didn't have children. She wanted to pry.

"How many children do you think we'll get?" She walked toward him, the light behind her slanting in from behind the shades. Her questions helped
ease her own anxiety about the responsibility she had for the job ahead.

"Hard to say. Some folks are plain scared, and some have to negotiate
transportation." Reverend Singleton rested back against the pew, and seemed
himself again. He knew that she was trying to take the reins.

"How do we get around their fear? I mean, there's good reasons for it."
Celeste sat on the pew near him.

"At some point, the fear becomes more of a burden than the action it
forestalls. People get tired of being afraid." He angled his body towards
her, comfortable.

"I can see that." She'd already felt it since coming to Mississippi, a coupling of fear with fear-fatigue. But she was from the north. It was a shorter
trip to that fatigue for her. Not so for the locals who'd learned to live with it
morning, noon, and night as a survival mode. The lynchings, the beatings,
the scoffs, the many deprivations and denials over years sealed that fear into
the human heart, and surely had, at times, saved lives, too.

they waited, Celeste thinking they should grab the bell cord and ring
the bell to call the children to the freedom school. She sat gazing at the cord
then up into the small bell tower, which really was just an alcove in the ceiling. It was a primitive affair but the church was small, so it was sufficient.
They weren't in Paris in a cathedral. They were in a modest, whitewashed
church in southern Mississippi. Having a bell at all was remarkable.

"I'll show you my office and my treasured bathroom. I saw that look on
your face. Don't you let those children go in there and mess up my privy." Reverend Singleton walked toward the side aisle, a knowing smile on his face.

"Now, Reverend Singleton, I'm gonna do exactly as you tell me." Celeste
followed him. They passed a door opening onto the grassy clearing that led
off into a thick stand of trees, a deepening forest. His small office had one
window with its shade pulled down, the room in shadow. He opened the
lavatory door and showed it off. It was indeed small, with the tiniest face
bowl Celeste had ever seen. But there was the toilet, and she intended to
use both every chance she got. Out the side door, he pointed to the back and
a path that led to the outhouse. Stepping outside was like stepping upright
into an oven after being in the relative cool of the church.

By noon not one child had come. Reverend Singleton took full responsibility. When the heat pressed down like the sun had mistakenly moved
too close to the earth, they left the church.

Reverend Singleton drove down Freshwater Road, well past Mrs. Owens's
house, turning on and off of side roads until she had no sense of where they
were. They passed clapboard houses and scattered shanties, some painted
bright pastels and some raw cypress wood, some with jalopies parked at odd
angles or rusted out trucks. The few people there waved their hands and
arms at Reverend Singleton and stared at the girl sitting in his front seat
who surely was not Etta Singleton.

Just after six that evening, Mrs. Singleton picked her up to go back
to the church for the first voter education class. Not one adult came in
the door.

Dear) D.,

I couldn't have imagined this place. Nothing I read, nothing
I heard from any speaker on campus, no Bob Dylan song, no blues
song, no photograph tells the truth about Mississippi. Its between the
monster things that happen, it's in the air. It's the place where hideous
nightmares rupture to life then breed and hide behind a cloying magnolia veil. An archeology of hatred, bones in the earth, sowed under
the cotton, fed into the roots of live oaks, men, women, and children
for over two hundred years.

Mrs. Owens's rocking chair ground against the sagging porch planks
just outside Celeste's window. The grating sound roared in her head as she
sprawled and sank into the soft mattress, writing to J.D. After stuffing
little pieces of tissue into her ears, she took her freedom school books and
voter registration materials to the kitchen table. She put her head down on
folded arms, small twists of tissue sticking out of her ears. Oceans coursed
through her head.

I am so lonely here. There are no paintings, no movies, no bookstores,
no fast rides on two-lane country roads with sharp winds in my face.
There are trees and cloud-skies and rains that come fast and hard and
then disappear, taking all relief with them. The heat is a stockade. I'm
bending from the torture of it. I don't know if the people see the sky.