Freshwater Road (18 page)

Night had spread its country dark canopy. Celeste took the plugs out of
her ears, heard the ritual locking of the front doors as if those frail pieces of wood and puckered screen could protect them from anything but a few
flies and summer gnats.

"Mrs. Owens, is that one mailbox for everybody on Freshwater Road?"
She counted houses. Maybe ten or so spread way down the road.

"Uh-huh." Mrs. Owens came into the kitchen. "They take they time putting anything in it." She checked the latch on the back screen and locked the
back door, cutting off the minute catches of air that sometimes whispered in.
"You want to send something out, just raise up that red arm. They'll pick it
up directly." She passed behind Celeste and went into her room.

All those people who'd moved to Chicago, Detroit, Texas, and California must send something back, even a scrawl telling where they were and
how they were getting on. "They told us in Jackson the post office workers
might not give us our mail."

The old woman brought her pitcher to get spigot water from the tiny lip
of the kitchen that passed for a back porch. The goal each night was to have
enough fresh water on the back porch so no one had to go out front. Celeste
watched her ladling the good water from a big bucket. "They just slow."

Emmett Till's mother must've wished with all her heart that she'd sent
a letter to Money, Mississippi, instead of her flesh and blood teenaged son,
all Chicago sharp and cool, no Mississippi hanging off his shoulders. She
wanted her back-home relatives to see her spiffy boy, but she must've forgotten how that look, that free way of being in the world, made white men in
Mississippi seethe. Maybe she just believed things had gotten better.

"I'm gonna be coming to that voting class tomorrow evening. I thought
by keeping you here, it would be my way. But I need to go on and try to
vote before I'm too old to care."

She'd paused in the middle of the kitchen between the refrigerator and
the stove, her intense face and eyes plowing into Celeste with years' worth
of meaning.

Mrs. Owens read the bible every evening, and Celeste needed readers.
From what Reverend Singleton said, not many folks here did much reading. The Mississippi State Constitution was written in i89o, the same year
Pearl River County was created. Its text was one gnarled paragraph after
another. Now, in order to pass the voter registration requirements imposed
by the state, the Negro people of Pineyville would have to sit in a hellishly
hot church and memorize whole sections of a document that had been used
for years to grind them into sediment. There was no time to teach remedial reading to an entire group of people. Mrs. Owens would help bring the rest
of the group along. "That's good, Mrs. Owens. I need you to come."

"Count on me." Geneva Owens walked into her room. "Nighty night,
now."

Celeste heard the gentle washing sounds as the old woman prepared
for bed, of water pouring into her basin, the cloth being wrung out and
rubbed over aging skin, sloshing in the water again and repeated until the
final wringing out, until only drips fell into the basin. She wondered if the
woman had ever bathed in a real bathroom. Then the old mattress springs
spoke briefly as she lay down. These small sounds were her only radio, with
the sounds of the country night, distant chirps and calls, a barking dog,
a lonely car on the blacktop, a subtle keening always in the background.
Country quiet was like no quiet she'd ever heard in her life.

Celeste gathered her materials, went to her bedroom, opened the Mississippi State Constitution, and then shut it again. She wanted to take it
outside and drop it in the outhouse hole.

She poured pitcher water into her basin, careful not to splash and waste
it because every time it was empty, she had to either go out to the spigot
and refill it or go to that bucket on the back porch and ladle fresh water
into her pitcher. She refilled at the spigot unless it was raining, giving Mrs.
Owens use of all the bucket water. She washed the day's caked sweat and
dust off of her body as best she could. She needed a shower, a bath, wanted
to feel clean; she hadn't had an all-over bath since the little apartment in
Jackson nearly a week ago. Back home, she bathed in a green and white
tiled bathroom, then soundlessly walked into a carpeted bedroom with a
canopy bed and flows of drapes and sheers.

There must be women in this world of tight-lipped lies who defied the
curtained doors and the penitent preachers with their bibles and shadow
swords, women who bathed in the streams naked, who walked the banks
of the Pearl River and the Bogue Chitto with their dresses tucked into their
undergarments, who loved with abandon in stands of pecan and magnolia trees, propped upright by live oaks like dolls, so overwhelmed by the
sweetness that they lost themselves. Did they all leave town? They probably
escaped to New Orleans. They collected tiny hand-painted matchboxes as
souvenirs and wrote notes home on hand-painted cards with scenes of New
Orleans life. That's why Mary Evans was so excited to get out of Mississippi, to breathe a free breath. The workers in the post office probably hid those cards, kept them for themselves to take out on Saturday nights when
the moon freed their lusts. In church on Sunday morning, they raised their
bible hands to God with images of courtyards, lapping fountains, gardens
of night jasmine, and naked bodies just behind their eyes.

Celeste paced, her own body smells adding to the dank vapor that lay
over everything. She felt like a lonely prisoner in the house, as if the walls,
as thin as they were, had already begun to close in on her. She was angry
at Margo and the office in Jackson for sending her to such a blighted place
with not even so much as a radio. How could she make it through to August
like this? She couldn't hold herself still in that cell of a room. She grabbed
her towel and tiptoed outside, gym shoes in hand, sliding the bolt back on
the front door so as not to wake Mrs. Owens. Before any thought of danger
crossed her mind, she went to the water spigot. Her ghostly white sleep shirt
would be the only thing visible about her from a distance. She took it off
and stood naked, the warm night air like hands on her body, and turned
on the spigot, which spewed and evened out into a cool stream of water,
splashing on the concrete platform, on her legs and feet.

She soaped herself from head to toe using her hands and the piece of
soap Mrs. Owens left on the tin dish. She prayed no one would hear the
splashing water in the quiet night, prayed no errant car turned into Freshwater Road while she stood there naked. She bent down to get as far under
the flow of water as possible. She rinsed her hair. The cool water assuaged
her anger. At least now she felt clean for the first time in days, pulled her
sleep shirt over her towel-wrapped hair, and sat down on the steps of the
leaning porch, slapping mosquitoes. How, in God's name, did people live
here? She removed the towel and let the warm air begin to dry her hair. The
new moon seemed lost in the starry country sky. Not a light on all the way
down Freshwater Road.

Mrs. Owens came through the short hallway and onto the screened
porch. "What you doin', child?"

"I felt so sweaty, and my hair needed washing." Celeste stood up on the
bottom step.

"People clean themselves down here. I got a tub for that. No need to be
washing your hair out in the front yard." Mrs. Owens was sharp and clear
in her disapproval.

"I'm sorry, ma'am." Celeste knew she'd stepped over the boundaries of what was acceptable. "I'm sorry." She flushed with embarrassment and felt
like Shuck's little girl again, scolded for stepping out of line.

"Mrs. Owens, I need to talk to my daddy." If anyone had told her that
she couldn't talk to Shuck that night, she'd have wept in distress. "I should
have called him before now. I promised." Maybe if she talked to Shuck just
the sound of his voice would calm her down.

"You caint go to that pay phone this time of night." Mrs. Owens's voice
broke, her words coming quiet, fast and fear-tinged.

"I can run it and be back before anybody knows I'm out there." Celeste
knew she had an edge in her voice, too, from her desperation.

"Then I'm goin' with you, and that means you cain't run." Mrs. Owens
turned to go into the house. "Cause I cain't."

Celeste hadn't been in this house a good week and already she was
wearing thin on Mrs. Owens with her petulant need for things to be the
way they were at home-exactly what the office in Jackson warned them
against. It would be dangerous enough for Celeste alone, but she surely
didn't want to be the cause of any harm coming to Mrs. Owens. She wanted
to run the whole way and run back. She needed the run, too-forget the
heat, she needed to push out, press herself into another mindset, another
place. She went to her room, pulled on cotton slacks and buttoned on a
short-sleeved shirt, laced up her gym shoes, clutched some nickels and
dimes so tightly in her palm she felt the indents in her skin. If anyone in
Jackson found out about this, they'd send her packing back to Detroit.

Voter registration projects were supposed to have cars. She needed one,
didn't like feeling so cut off from the rest of the world. With a car, the trip to
the pay phone would be nothing. She sat on the side of her bed and closed her
eyes, slipping into a reverie of freedom, aching to get out of Pineyville even
for a few hours. New Orleans wasn't very far away. There had to be a museum,
a park, places to take the freedom school children, a city street to walk on,
store windows to loiter in front of. She pictured the wide Mississippi River
like the Detroit River at home, a bridge like the Ambassador to Canada.
Ramona and Margo probably had cars for their projects. They were in bigger
towns. But a young woman driving around the countryside in a marked
car would be vulnerable. And, there was no safety in numbers. Schwerner,
Chaney, and Goodman didn't make it back to their project. Every sheriff
and highway patrolman in Mississippi knew the movement cars. They were
all registered vehicles, all the plates were known. Easy prey.

"I'm sorry. I might be better off on my own. I can move faster." Even
this, she knew, was against the rules.

"I'm goin' with you if you have to go." Mrs. Owens came from her
bedroom, buttoning her housedress, a light scarf tied around her hair and
looking like she could shake Celeste senseless. She had a white scarf in
her hand.

There was no way Celeste could force her to stay in the house.

"You best put something white on so drivers can see us in the dark." She
held the bandana towards Celeste.

"Maybe it would be better if no one saw us, don't you think?" Celeste
read the look on Mrs. Owens's face to say, how are you going to come
down here and tell me what the best thing to do is? Celeste shrank and
took the scarf.

Mrs. Owens stood there. "You best to put something light on so some
tired truck driver on his way to New Orleans don't run over us." She repeated it in a voice that defied misinterpretation. Celeste tied the white
scarf around her damp hair, feeling reined in by this woman like Wilamena
never seemed to be able to do. Wilamena might've tried when she and Billy
were very small, but she never seemed to have the will to carry it through.
If you pushed against Wilamena, she fell. Celeste pushed. Wilamena didn't
want to be bothered with the day to day. She had glamor days left and two
children were stealing them from her. Mrs. Owens had drawn a line that
said, I'll do this with you but you'll do it my way.

They went out, closing the doors quietly behind them. When they got to
the mailbox, Celeste stopped. The arm wasn't up, but she figured the post
office workers wouldn't put the arm up anyway even if they did deposit mail
in the box, especially mail with her name on it.

"Go 'head, child." Mrs. Owens had a kindness in her voice now as if she
understood how lonely Celeste felt, how cut off.

Celeste opened the oblong mailbox, wishing now she'd finished her
letter to J.D. to put in it, and that by putting something in, maybe she'd get
something out. She reached her hand and half her arm inside, scraping her
fingernails on the back wall, then slid her hand along the bottom in case
she'd missed something. There was a thin envelope. She pulled it out, and
it was addressed to her. Even in the dark of night, she knew Wilamena's
elegant swirl. The Jackson office had forwarded it to Pineyville.

"It's from my mother." She hoped Mrs. Owens didn't hear the distance
she felt when she said "mother," a person she rarely mentioned. The older
woman just nodded and adjusted herself for the trek.

Celeste shoved the letter in her pants pocket. Wilamena and her cool
words, reserved and formal, that always sounded and felt like obligation.
No doubt it was another invitation to New Mexico. She'd read it later.

"Guess you right about them post workers not wanting you to get your
mail. They didn't even put that arm up. That's not right." Mrs. Owens
sighed with exasperation.

"No, it's not, Mrs. Owens, and it's probably against the law." Celeste saw
it as a part of the grand cover-up going all the way back to slavery times. It
happened, but let's pretend it didn't. Let's pretend those Negroes aren't even
here unless we need them to do some menial back-breaking work.

They took off, two women walking through the night darkness on the
side of the road with crickets crying and dogs barking and the loneliest new
moon Celeste had seen in her life. No beaming headlights. She thought
of nightriders, flaming crosses, and panel trucks with loaded shotguns.
Mrs. Owens breathed steady, her eyes straight ahead. Celeste sensed the
woman heard every sound, from the soft scratchy thuds of their feet on the
dirt and gravel shoulder to the siren barks of dogs tied, she hoped, behind
fences.

Their mission to reach the pay phone, make the call, and return home
safely propelled them along the road. Celeste heard the sound of a car
behind them and turned to see two globes of light coming their way. Mrs.
Owens moved over on the shoulder and walked behind her. Celeste held
her breath as the car drew closer. The sound of it moving on the uneven
road drowned out all other night sounds. She didn't know if they should
duck into the trees and let it pass. The car was near now, could see them for
sure, and in seconds had passed them by without so much as a blare of its
horn. Mrs. Owens sighed deeply. Celeste did the same. They didn't speak,
just kept hiking along at a good clip.