Freshwater Road (21 page)

"I'll find a picture show with movie stars, and I'll take you." She said
movie slowly so the child could hear the word, the letters.

"Give those glasses to Miss Celeste, Sissy." Mr. Tucker glanced in his
mirror. "Aint no movin' picture round here. No movie stars neither."

Celeste stopped herself from telling Sissy to keep the glasses, then took
them and put them back on to hide the narrowing of her eyes as she glared
into Mr. Tucker's tight, kinky hair nobbling down his head to his stiff,
starched shirt collar. He needed a shape-up.

"They got a picture show over in Gulfport." Mrs. Owens invaded the
parched silence.

"They got one in Hattiesburg, too. Don't mean Sissy's goin' to it." Mr.
Tucker's hard eyes in the mirror warned Celeste.

She held Sissy's hand; the girl's high smooth forehead slowly tilted
down, her eyes glassy with tears. Celeste had an urge to wrap her hands
around Mr. Tucker's neck and squeeze. He took the air right out of the car.
Mrs. Tucker's hat looked clownish now, its autumn-colored flowers jiggling
in the hellish heat.

They rode silently through the town center, the big Hudson engine
humming, the tires rumbling over seams in the concrete and black top.
Mr. Tucker made a left and within minutes turned into the rutty road
leading to the St. James A.M.E. Church. She'd been coming here every day
with Reverend Singleton, but this was Sunday. They joined a near-parade
of people walking or jostling over the bumps in old trucks, dilapidated
cars, even a horse and wagon. Women carried large lidded pots and bowls
covered with white cloths and waxed paper. More than one balanced containers on their heads. It was the day of the church picnic, a celebration.
The maroon Hudson stood out like a slickly dressed visitor from the big
city come to lord it over a bunch of country kin.

Women wore hats over braided kinky hair. Others wore their hair
straightened and flattened on their heads with a spike sticking out here or
there, no fancy curls like the Detroit Sunday-go-to-church women. Some
wore lacy white handkerchiefs on their heads, others makeshift straw hats
with flowers dangling off the brims. A few carried umbrellas against the sun. Parasols in Pineyville. Their pastel dresses were bright against the
mahogany tones of their skins. Only when you drew closer did you see that
some of the dresses were threadbare and patched. The men's suits were too
large or too small, wrist bones poking out. The older ones walked slowly,
some bent, others proud and upright. They grubbed an existence in the
weather-beaten, no-industry towns of Southern Mississippi all week long.
This church was theirs and they came to it for rest and reprieve. All Celeste
could think was God bless Sophie Lewis.

She reminded herself that it was 1964, that she wasn't watching a film
based on a history often distorted and mostly forgotten. This obsolete place
lived, and it was like a movie. What might have been quaint looked dispossessed up close with living, breathing people. This wasn't some anonymous
village in Africa or South America where people washed their clothes in
a stream, emptied their bowels just yards away, and drank the water from
the same stream a few yards in the other direction. It was too close. She
remembered Wilamena years ago fussing against the way Negro people
were portrayed in films. She refused to go see them, said she would not
support some "catfish row" rendition of Negro life. Maybe the realities and
the images became too overwhelming, too close to the truth for her. This is
what Wilamena ran from and once she got going, she couldn't stop. Jettison
the whole thing. Too much lacking, run. But Detroit had scores of well-off
Negroes. Celeste knew what drove Wilamena was deeper than money.

"That bell given to us by a gentleman from New Orleans." Mrs. Owens
spoke with the clanging of the church bell.

Celeste wanted to bolt from the car and find a spot in the forest, lie
down on a bed of pine needles and see sky slivers and sun dots, only what
the thick green branches allowed. Instead, she and Mrs. Owens carried the
bread pudding and the pot of collards to the shady side of the whitewashed
building, where tables of all sorts had been set up to hold the food, shaded
by rain umbrellas propped up by food containers, rocks, bricks. A small
group of women hovered around the tables with fans-homemade of giant
plant leaves attached to spindles of thin wood. There was one small electric
fan with its cord running into a church window. Celeste wished she could
stay outside with them, be a food fanner. Anything but sitting in the hot
church at close quarters with well over a hundred other sweating people.
But she dutifully followed Mrs. Owens inside.

Reverend Singleton nodded to the two women as they took seats mid way back on the left side, the last two openings on the smooth wood pews,
as close to the open windows as they could get. The shades on the tall thin
windows were pulled halfway down to block the sun, the windows open in
hopes of a breeze. The church was a perpetual work in progress-though
the floor was carpeted on the center aisle and in the entire pulpit area, the
side aisles were bare wood. The Tuckers had gone on toward the front and
seated themselves on the opposite side. Mr. Tucker probably wanted to
get his children as far away from her as he could, afraid her northern ways
might rub off on them. Probably afraid they'd end up running from him
yelling "free at last" at the tops of their lungs.

The churchgoers took up their balsa wood-handled cardboard fans advertising the Morris Family Mortuary in Hattiesburg just as soon as they
were seated. There was enough fanning going on in the church to create a
windstorm, but nothing cool came of it. Celeste moved hers with a sultry
motion, as she'd learned in Detroit churches that any fast fanning would
only make you hotter. Before one complete pass of her hand, her entire
body broke out in a second wave of sweat. Her cotton dress would soon be
soaked. It was already sticking to her skin.

The small choir sang and swayed through "Rock of Ages" and "Old Rugged Cross" with Mrs. Singleton leading on the organ, her hair wound up into
a mound on the top of her head, her small body laying into her instrument.
Reverend Singleton respected women who made music, Celeste thought.

With his eyes focused on his flock and his mustache glistening, Reverend Singleton launched into the sermon of "people get ready, there's a train
a'coming." Celeste had heard similar messages at the nightly orientation
meetings in Jackson. Exhilarating calls to action, cheerleading lifts meant
to rouse the doubtful, fire people up for the task at hand and maybe the
beatings and arrests they might suffer in the process. The sermons stoked
the burn and led the way, and the way was nonviolence. The road was
steep and hard, but no other road offered redemption to the oppressed and
epiphany to the oppressors. The old way reiterated bad treatment, deception, and deprivation.

Reverend Singleton paced, stomped his feet, his electric-blue preacher's
robe open down the front, flying behind and around him like a celestial
cape. His dress shirt collar absorbed perspiration that dripped down his
face and sprayed off in all directions when he made quick turns. He kept
a handkerchief at the ready to keep his eyes clear of the pour. Reverend Singleton yoked a kind of rural earthy drama to his well-honed intellect.
He appealed to the people's hearts and souls and pricked at their brains.
And it all had rhythm. He wanted the Negro people of his town to get on
board, to stop standing around studying the dirt. His congregation called
back to him, urging him on, clapping, speaking to God directly on their
own behalf. Celeste thought he was too good at the big sermon to stay long
in this town. He was right up there with the best she'd ever heard, not far
from the range of Martin Luther King Jr. himself.

There was urgency in the calls to action. She heard a cleaving in the
voices and stood up with her hands thrown into the air as she had never
done in Momma Bessie's church at home; she'd never felt so bound to a
moment in church as she did to this one. This was her moment, and she
threw herself into it with energy. Wilamena would've had a heart attack
seeing her standing there waving her hands to the heavens. The music so
profound it brought tears to her eyes. Mrs. Singleton was to the music what
Reverend Singleton was to the word. It all cut to the heart of the matter. He
bound the old lessons to a new message and his listeners followed. Celeste
was swaying with the Negro citizens of Pineyville, felt she was becoming
one of them.

"Sister Celeste Tyree." She heard her name called from the pulpit. Reverend Singleton beckoned her forward.

He hadn't warned her. Maybe he hadn't decided to bring her up before
he saw her standing, her arms reaching to Heaven. With her sweat-soaked
dress clinging to her body and the straps of her bra slipping off her sweaty
shoulders, she walked toward the pulpit, focusing on Reverend Singleton's
beaming face, then on the color painting of Jesus on the wall behind him.
Mrs. Singleton played chords to cover her walk. Celeste hadn't been in the
pulpit of a church since she was baptized.

Across the center aisle, Sissy leaned forward, her mouth open, caught
in surprise. Mr. Tucker's eyes were locked in a straight-ahead stare. Mrs.
Tucker's chin lifted, haughty and disapproving. Darby and Henry looked
confused. The white railing across the pulpit area had entrances on each
side and one in the middle. It seemed to not be getting any closer. People
coughed and shifted in their seats. The sounds rebounded in Celeste's ears,
made her feel as if something in her life was about to change forever. She
was walking down the aisle alone. Finally, she stepped up into the pulpit
area. Reverend Singleton received her with a two-handed handshake and guided her to the podium to face the congregation as Mrs. Singleton played
a chord of presentation. Her mouth went completely dry.

It all looked different from up here. She'd held freedom school in the
church for a few days now, but this was an entirely new experience. During
freedom school she stayed down front, never so much as referring to the pulpit
area. In her mind it was off-limits. It was Reverend Singleton's domain. The
choir and Mrs. Singleton seemed squeezed in behind the preaching area. No
stained-glass windows, no vaulted ceilings, and only a few rows of polished
hardwood pews. She cleared her throat softly and clutched the podium with
both hands. The body of the church came into clear focus. A sea of sweatglossed country Negro people stared up at her.

"Thank you, Reverend Singleton, for inviting the movement into your
church." Her voice sounded puny and distant, disconnected from who she
thought she was. She'd practiced selling the idea of voter registration in
front of small groups during orientation, but that was nothing like this.
She pushed her voice out. "And thank you, Mrs. Owens, for allowing me
to come into your home to do this work."

The words lay like rocks. She regretted saying Mrs. Owens'name, for
though she figured by now most everyone knew where she was living, she
didn't want to call unnecessary attention to it. She didn't yet know who
was with them and who wasn't. She had no idea how far anyone might go
against them.

"I hope you will visit the freedom school." Celeste paused to clear a
nervous tickle from her throat. "We meet here every morning from nine
o'clock until noon. Voter registration classes are held here, too." She didn't
want to hem and haw, tried to keep the flow of her sentences even and clear,
but the endings kept diving down into near inaudibility. "In the evenings
as close to 6:3o as we can get. We want to present the lists of new registered
voters at the Democratic Convention in August." Her fingers dug into the
sides of the podium.

Celeste prayed Reverend Singleton would rescue her. He stood, chest
out, nodding his head in agreement. "Does anyone have any questions?"
Her clipped speech and college girl manner weren't translating well. All was
quiet but for the hand fans waving through the heavy air, small coughs and
grunts. Everyone sat there staring up at her like she was a ghost-or worse,
a Negro ghost who didn't look quite Negro enough to be accepted into the
ranks. She had a lot of work to do. Reverend Singleton stepped closer.

"We got a distance to travel 'fore we get to the eating." He'd dropped
his voice an octave and grinned. "If that's what's on your mind."

It was nearly noon and just about time for the daily rain. The food was
on tables under the eaves of the church with umbrellas placed strategically
to protect it. Celeste knew she'd have to eat or risk offending the women of
the church who, just like Mrs. Owens, had spent the early morning frying,
baking, and boiling all that hot food.

A wiry, light-skinned woman stood up in the back. "Sister Mobley,"
Reverend Singleton introduced her. He called the people Sister this and
Brother that, corralled them in his own brotherhood, hoped it would steel
them against some of the fear and deprivation in their lives. At least they
belonged to each other. Celeste remembered that kind of calling at Momma
Bessie's church in Detroit. She was Sister Tyree.

"I don't wanna cause no trouble. My chirren wants to come to learn
with you, but I'm afraid for 'em." The whooshing fans nearly drowned her
out. Three children sat close to her, a boy and two tiny girls. Sister Mobley
sat down and fanned.

Reverend Singleton gave Celeste a prodding nod.

"So far, we've been okay." She shied away from revealing that nearly a
week into her project only two children had come to freedom school, and no
adults at all had shown up for voter registration classes. She searched for the
faces of her two students, Labyrinth and Georgie. Hard to miss Labyrinth's
head of blond curls and brown skin, Georgie there beside her with his eyes
glowing like a cat's in the dark. And beside them, the woman who had to be
their mother, Dolly Johnson, young and strong looking, sitting up straight
and tall, the woman who sent her children to freedom school first. She wanted
to wave to Labyrinth and Georgie, their eyes piercing, searching for recognition. J.. D. 's child would have been a Labyrinth. Shuck would've laid down and
died. She thought that, too. The children smiled at her as if they recognized
something in her face, something of themselves in her. She held onto the
podium so tightly her hands seemed to be leaving impressions there.