Freshwater Road (28 page)

"Sissy, do you want to see Frederick Douglass?" Celeste called to her,
coaxing. Sissy stepped just inside the church door, her eyes like the wings
of hummingbirds fluttering back to the ominous road. Her thick hair was
braided tightly, Vaseline glistened on her scalp in the parts. Her face was
scrubbed, elbows and knees oiled every day.

"I do want to, Miss Celeste." Sissy's voice trembled. Her almond eyes
grew so large Celeste could read the fear in them all the way to the front of
the church. Then Sissy smiled, acknowledging their secret lesson in Mrs.
Owens's kitchen. Celeste nodded to her. If Sissy saw her father's Hudson
turn into the church road, her cotton dress metamorphosed into wings as
she took off flying through the long-needled pines and wax myrtles, plaited
hair coming undone as she navigated the back way to Freshwater Road.
From the church, running through the woods she arrived at her house
more than five minutes before her father. She'd already told Celeste that
she'd rather be punished by her mother for coming in with her socks and
shoes coated in orange dust, or even mud, than have her father find her at
the freedom school.

One time Sissy hadn't run. Mr. Tucker left the car idling in front of
the church, while he got out to grab Sissy's thin brown arm. He pushed
her roughly into the front seat of his big car, yelling the whole time in his
seething Mississippi drawl that women belonged at home. Celeste, helpless
to do anything about it, stood in the church door watching the maroon car disappear back down the church road, Sissy's little body bouncing in the
front seat next to him.

Later that day Mr. Tucker paid a visit to Mrs. Owens, who met him at
the front screened door and invited him in, but he stayed on the dirt path at
the foot of the leaning stairs looking up at her. He told her that no daughter
of his was going to be learning anything from a loose young woman like
that Celeste Tyree. He said that when Sissy left his house, she'd be leaving
with a man she was married to. Not like Celeste Tyree, unmarried and not
living in her parents' home. He called her that unbound woman, comingand
going, talking from pulpits like a man, taking long train rides alone, living like
she was a young widow woman ready for anything.

Celeste heard it all from inside the house. She marveled at his perception, having never had more than a one-minute conversation with him.
She walked to the front and stood behind Mrs. Owens like a child. Mrs.
Owens shushed her before she opened her mouth, waving her back with
her hand. Mr. Tucker said that he'd already warned his daughter to stay
away from that freedom school and Celeste Tyree. He must never find out
that Sissy was coming to the house having Freedom School lessons in Mrs.
Owens's kitchen.

When the Hudson took off down Freshwater Road, Mrs. Owens told
Celeste to be careful. Mr. Tucker made her think of the devil, and she
added in a low voice that she'd seen little pitchforks in the lights of his eyes.
Celeste said she needed to find a way to liberate that child from her own
father before her spirit shriveled. Mrs. Owens told her to stay out of it-that
Celeste would be gone at the end of the summer, but Sissy and Mrs. Tucker
would still be there, dealing with that hateful man. Mrs. Owens didn't say
a word about the kitchen lessons, but Celeste figured the old woman had
been feigning sleep on the afternoons when Sissy came to the back door.
That way, she was free to say she'd known nothing about it.

"Go, ahead, Labyrinth. Take the picture to Sissy, and thank you." Celeste thought of scenarios for Mr. Tucker's next trip to the church. She
wasn't sure that if he came again and caught his daughter at the church
door that she'd stay back like a helpless bystander. She saw herself standing
between Mr. Tucker and his daughter, having a full-out argument with
him about the value of the freedom school for Sissy's future, the value of
freedom, period. She'd put her heart and soul into trying to convince him
of the good of it all for Sissy.

Labyrinth marched down the center aisle of the church, her sun-dress
straps sliding off both shoulders, her blonde curls bobbing like a headful
of big yellow daisies. She stayed with Sissy while they both handled the
picture of Frederick Douglass. Sissy checked for any sign of Mr. Tucker on
the church road, then Labyrinth dragged a chair to hold the door open,
looking back to Celeste as if to say, "Why didn't you think of this?"

"Frederick Douglass eventually escaped in 1838 and went to live in New
York, starting a newspaper called the North Star." She'd already talked
to them about what newspapers were; she used the New Orleans TimesPicayune for reading exercises. She spoke loudly enough so that Labyrinth
and Sissy could hear her back at the door.

The children were respectful of her whether they were getting the point
or not. Just like the adults here, they treated her not quite like she was a
white person, but certainly not like one of them, gazing at her as if she were
on the other side of a plate glass window. In the first days of freedom school,
they didn't look at her at all. Except Labyrinth. Everything on her face was
a challenge. Dolly Johnson was training her child for what was coming. She
was rearing a half-white no-father child with a strong name like Labyrinth,
endowing her with an attitude strong enough to back people off of her. It
was working, because the child was strong, unbent but in a different way
than Sissy, who was a delicate dreamer. Labyrinth dug in her heels and
wouldn't take no for an answer for her life.

"He was like a movin' picture star." Sissy seemed to float herself inside
the color picture of Frederick Douglass, his wild, full head of hair and beard
making him look staunch and sturdy.

"They didn't have no movies in those days, girl." Labyrinth rolled her
eyes at Sissy.

"I know that." Sissy stood her ground.

Celeste heard the two of them sounding like grown women fussing over
a backyard fence.

"He named his newspaper the North Star because the slaves used the
North Star in the night sky to guide them to freedom," Celeste explained.
"Today, he'd be like a movie star because he was very famous. Only he was
famous for fighting for freedom."

"See." Sissy sucked her teeth at Labyrinth.

Labyrinth looked up at Celeste and shook her head. "Whatever you say,
Miss Celeste."

Say the word freedom over and over again until it becomes like the hair
on their heads and the brown in their skins. Say it for yourself. Say it for
yourself.

"So, it helped to move people, Sissy, to guide them from a bad place to
a better place. Like the star of Bethlehem at Christmas time."

While Celeste focused too much on Sissy back at the church door,
the other children grew restless. With dark flashing eyes and sun-brown
skin that was as smooth as Momma Bessie's gravy, the children played a
toned-down version of musical chairs to little stanzas of church songs that
they sang out in bursts. Their clothes were nearly tattered. Next to Sissy
and Labyrinth, Tony might be the one to make real strides in reading and
Negro history, in seeing the possibilities of life. He had curiosity. But it was
Labyrinth who was already feisty. Celeste wished they all had her spunk,
because they were going to need it.

The children perked up at the mention of Christmas with little pinches
and whispers. Their high-sounding voices sparked the front of the church.
Tony popped his head around towards Labyrinth and Sissy.

"I see you, Tony." Labyrinth stuck out her tongue then wiggled her hips.

"Okay, Labyrinth, come on back here and sit down." Celeste had to
keep a handle on Labyrinth. "Sissy, leave the chair in the door so you can
see from inside."

Sissy smiled her distant smile as if she'd been piloting a group of escapees by the light of the North Star herself. She checked for the maroon
car, caution clouding her face with the worried look of a grown woman.
Sissy seemed to dote on Frederick Douglass from the first time she saw his
picture on the book cover.

When she called to Sissy to take her turn reading from the Frederick
Douglass biography, Sissy was gone. Two men stood inside the door in
shadow, one holding the chair that had braced the door open. They disturbed every mote of dust, every wilted and solemn molecule of air in the
church as if the building itself held its breath. From the height and slight
thickness of one of them, Celeste thought that Shuck had found his way to
Pineyville to take her home.

It wasn't Shuck or anyone like him. They were too young, with short-cut
kinky hair, white T-shirts under their bibbed overalls lighting their dark,
sweat-shiny faces. No curls and waves pomaded to flatness with a stocking
cap, no diamonds sparkling, no stingy-brimmed hats, no suits and ties complementing pastel dress shirts. The men weren't like her brother Billy,
either, or his friends, the ones she called the work-hard, party-hard set from
Detroit. Nothing about them resembled the Negro boys who crept around
campus, the big-muscled athletes or the brainy types whose sports jackets
drooped off one shoulder and whose shoes were run down at the heels.

They were calm, standing in the shadows neither smiling nor frowning.
She saw now that the taller of the two wore wire-rimmed granny glasses.
She fumbled, shuffling papers, beginning to feel that she'd conjured a mirage in the afternoon heat. But the children had grown quiet, too, waiting
for a cue, eyes darting back and forth between the men and her. A child
should speak up, calling to an uncle, an older brother, someone they knew.
No one spoke. Instead, they left their seats to be closer to her. She put her
arms around them. Tony took a step towards the men. Labyrinth was right
behind him. Celeste grabbed the girl back to her.

"Miss Detroit. How you doing?" Matt Higgens's Kansas City twang
rang out in the still church. Matt and his friend came out of the shadows
down the church aisle.

"You checking on me?" Celeste said, smiling. She saw his friend was Ed
Jolivette, who she remembered had spoken at one of the orientation meetings
in Jackson. He'd quieted a packed church with a soft voice. She'd sat in the
back of the church that night with Margo and Ramona, and hadn't gotten a
clear view of him. In the One Man, One Vote office, everyone spoke of him
as "Jolivette" because the movement seemed to be so full of guys named "Ed."
Ed Jolivette was different-that night, his quiet speech had set him apart
from the other speakers, who beat you over the head with the obvious.

Their self-possession frightened the children because they intuited already that Negro men with that air died fast in Mississippi. They knew it
whether they could speak it or not. These two men were the strangers in
town, the threat to all that had been before, gunslingers with no guns. Their
eyes had no fear, no rancor, no need to please or displease.

Matt seemed older than he had just the few weeks before when Celeste
had last seen him. "It's okay." She said it to Tony. "Go on home. Be here
on time tomorrow."

Labyrinth pouted. "That your boyfriend, Miss Celeste?"

"Go on home now, Labyrinth." Celeste gave her a chiding look, wondering which man she was referring to. "And be careful." In Detroit, it
would've been, "be careful of the traffic crossing the street, be careful of bigger kids on the prowl to toy with little ones." In Mississippi, it was a
general be careful of everything.

The children walked out slowly. Tony lingered, eyeing the two men and
her as they started to straighten up the church. Tony studied Matt and Ed
like they were ebony carved statues.

Ed Jolivette smiled at Tony and said, "Hey now, where you at, little
man." Tony grinned.

She knew he'd never seen anything like them, not even Reverend
Singleton, but surely he'd heard stories and knew how those stories ended.
Negro man stands up to white man and is killed, disappears without notice.
These were the "stand up to" kinds of men. Even Reverend Singleton had
to do a lot of bending to keep a church going in this town. Finally, Tony
grabbed the hands of his two sisters and strolled out.

"Pick that up, could you?" She pointed to the portable chalkboard. "It
goes in the back office. You're Ed Jolivette. I heard you speak in Jackson.
You were good." He seemed to move in a cocoon of stillness, as though
there was some kind of seal around him, an invisible wrap with electricity
running through it. She felt the charge.

Matt took the front end of the chalkboard. "He's all right." Matt glanced
away from Ed when he spoke.

She led them to the back with the chalkboard balanced between them.

"I try not to do much of that." Ed sounded comfortable with his own
reluctance to be in the public eye at a time when new leaders were springing
up like weeds. His voice was low and smooth, with an accent she couldn't
trace. He had thin lips and dark red-brown skin. Everybody was dark
down here. Celeste couldn't figure out how the white people stayed so
white in all the sunshine. Maybe they had some secret balm they used to
keep themselves white and separated. Negroes soaked up the sun-but
not Wilamena, she remembered. Celeste wondered what she did in New
Mexico to hide from the desert sun.

"So you got five kids in here," Matt sounded like he wanted to say "only,"
but didn't. They came back into the church after leaning the chalkboard
against the wall in Reverend Singleton's office.

"Six, really, but one's got a daddy problem." Sissy must've seen Matt's car
turn in off the highway, thought it was her father's, and taken off running.
"He won't let her take the classes so she sneaks in and out. Some days, I
have as many as fifteen." She grabbed her book-bag and felt Ed watching her, the way her yellow cotton dress fit. She realized she'd been in a kind
of neuter zone since J.D., a place that quieted her sexuality in a way that
seemed readable to any man who might've shown interest. She'd wanted
time, and perhaps she got more than she'd bargained for. "What? That not
enough?"