Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County (18 page)

Now, this was the part Ted really wanted to know about: What happened after the Civil War? To his surprise, he found that black Floridians endured decades of intimidation and violence by whites that rivaled—
and even surpassed
—other Southern states. Ted was appalled that in one particularly heinous act, an NAACP leader named Harry T. Moore and his wife were murdered on Christmas Day 1951 in their home in the small town of Mims in Brevard County.

One thing Ted was trying to figure out was whether he should use the term colored, Negro, Afro-American, or black.
After thinking it through, he started habitually using the latter since it seemed to have been the term preferred by the Massachusetts-born Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, a black scholar and one of the founders of the NAACP who had died the previous year.

Anger and anxiety was not about race only, Ted was discovering. Longtime Floridians both black and white were increasingly at odds with the tourist industry. How could Old Florida hang onto its proud past as part of the Confederacy and remain a place that tolerated the KKK while attracting Northern tourists? By downplaying the true identity of the state and painting a lovely portrait of endless beaches, golf, and fishing. That was the truth that Ted was beginning to understand.

Meanwhile, his children, most unfortunately, were starting to speak like the local rednecks. This was worrisome. How would they ever get ahead in life? The twins insisted that if they spoke in their native tongue—that is, a Northern dialect—they would never be accepted, never get a date, and simply die of boredom. They picked up the far-south accent almost immediately, probably, Ted thought, because they were so young. Judd, too, sounded like he belonged on that TV show
The Beverly Hillbillies
. But Judd and the twins could turn it on and off with a natural ease, depending on who they were talking to. To Ted, it was the darndest thing. He couldn't even say “y'all” without the word sounding like a chicken bone were stuck in his throat.

On one hurtful day, all three kids announced that they felt humiliated by their parents, who sounded like the Kennedys. Those Boston accents, the kids insisted, had become grating to their ears. The kids pointed out that Jackie, when she'd had her radio show, had learned from the station manager that by speaking
very slowly, and dragging out the syllables, she could hide it. She was aghast that they would ask her to try to adapt her radio technique to everyday speech. No way, she said. As for Ted, he was a hopeless case. He didn't seem to be able to drop the accent even when he tried.

Jackie ended the family quarrel with a linguistic triumph: A Boston accent, she noted, was not that dissimilar from a Charleston accent. “And, heck,” she said, “Charleston is in
South Carolina,
which, by anyone's definition, is a Rebel state.” (“Tell
that
to your friends next time they make fun of the way your mother talks,” she added.)

These were the issues Ted hadn't foreseen when they moved here. When he was in the Army twenty years earlier, there was some teasing about accents but mostly it was good-natured. Then again, it was wartime and they were all facing a common enemy. It didn't matter if you were the son of a factory worker from Massachusetts or the son of a wealthy landowner from Tennessee. You could be a ranch hand from Texas or a college boy from Milwaukee, but when each of you was wearing a U.S. Army uniform fighting side by side against the Axis forces, you were American, that's all.

Now, for the first time in his life, Ted was self-conscious about his Northern background. In the tight smile of a waitress or the cool, perfunctory nod of a gas station attendant, he felt a wall descend the second he spoke. Sometimes he wondered if he was reliving the exact dynamics of the Civil War era, a deeply troubling thought for a man who had lived with the assumption that he would always be welcome anywhere in the USA. He had noticed more and more people calling him “Yankee,” and not in a playful way. Someone leaving a bar in Tallahassee had even called him “carpetbagger,” which shocked him. He trudged
back to his hotel, thinking,
They'd rather live in the past and be left behind.
But he was an interloper, a harbinger of change in the same way that a mackerel sky indicates rain. If there was one thing that Southerners found disturbing, it was change. Especially, Ted had learned, when it wasn't their idea.

Y
ou know, you and me, we got a lot in common,” Dolores said in the direction of the heron's nest. “Say, are you even in there? Can't see you.”

A small tuft of yellow feathers slowly rose into view.

“Oh, now I see you there,” Dolores said. “Out late last night, huh? I used to be like that, too.”

The small head slowly sank back out of sight.

“So what I was saying,” Dolores continued, “was that we have a lot in common. For one thing, I don't believe you have the slightest idea what you're doing. You shoulda had them babies earlier in the year, not now.
Hmmm
, maybe it's a second clutch of eggs. Or maybe you're just out of kilter with everyone else.

“But I have to tell you, girl,” Dolores added. “I ain't seen no man around your nest. Where'd he go? Saw him here for the first few days, when y'all were building it, but he's gone scarce on you now. Ha! What did I tell you! I never had no luck with men, neither! Ha!

“I hope you don't mind, but I've decided to call you Peggy Sue. You know why? Because it reminds me of a song my son used to sing when he'd come home from school. Yes, that son. Robbie-Lee. The one who up and left me. Went to New York City and all. Well, when he was a teenager there was this song, and it was sung by a fella named Buddy Holly. Poor Buddy Holly got hisself killed in a plane crash. Anyway, he had this song called ‘Peggy Sue,' and my son loved to sing it. I'd hear him coming down the path singing that song. It was kind of a silly song but awful fun to sing. Anyway, that right there is the best memory of my life. The one I turn to when I'm feeling bad. Robbie-Lee, singing that song. Always made me laugh.

“I'll tell you what, if you'd told me twenty years ago that I'd be sitting here talking to a night heron, I wouldn't have believed you. No sir. I only wish you could talk back. I'd be mighty curious to hear what you had to say.”

Peggy Sue stretched her wings either by coincidence or in response. “You sure put up with a lot from me.” Dolores laughed. “Crazy old woman, worn out by the world, talking to a bird. Ain't that something. And I'd swear on a stack of Bibles that you are listening to me.

“I hate to be the one to tell you this, but we have something else in common besides men who love us and leave us,” Dolores said. “You and me, we be average. That's right, average. I ain't nothin' special and neither are you. I was nice lookin' in my day but never spectacular. Girl, if you don't mind me saying so, you got the same problem. You're not one of them special birds, like a spoonbill. Nope, ain't nobody gonna come down here from the Audubon Society and try to take
yer picture. Mine, neither. Fact is, we're just average folk in a world that don't care none for average. This world only cares about special. But you just go on sittin' on your eggs. Do your job. I surely hope things work out better for you than they has for me.”

S
ix weeks had passed since I left Mississippi and I was now so broke that I considered raiding my childhood piggy bank that still sat on a bookshelf in my old room at the cottage.

I guess I could have asked for a loan from Mrs. Bailey White, who was independently wealthy; Jackie, who was married to a man who had a good salary; or Plain Jane, whose work as a writer probably didn't pay especially well but she seemed to be a good saver. I knew they were helping Priscilla, however, so I was very reluctant to ask. I wanted them to keep their focus on her and the baby. Somehow, I'd manage.

But it did make me nervous. Money was always an issue for me. The hardest part of going to Mississippi had been taking my hard-time money out of the bank. It just about killed me to do it. The way I was raised, spending your savings was a guaranteed way to provoke the devil. If you wasted your emergency funds on something frivolous then something terrible was bound to happen. Appendicitis, for example. That's what happened to Miss Caraway, who wanted a better handheld mixer than she
could buy in Naples, so she took money out of her savings and went up to Fort Myers to buy a special edition General Electric four-speed deluxe cake mixer. Next thing we knew, her appendix burst—right there in the appliance store in Fort Myers! She survived, but she had to have a big operation, and after that, all of us who knew her story were afraid to spend any money at all.

Jackie, being a Yankee, did not believe in any of that stuff. She called this “swamp logic.” She gave me a pep talk about how I should be “living my life to the fullest” and that I was “limiting myself” with my various fears and superstitions. I told her, heck, that was easy for her to say. She grew up in Massachusetts, a place that is tidy and civilized. I grew up in a place where one minute you could be washed away by a hurricane and the next you could be eaten by swamp critters.

I was managing pretty well in Mississippi, but the unexpected trip home to Naples was costing me. I couldn't imagine leaving now, but what could I do? I needed to get back to my job shelving books at the Jackson Library. It was now mid-October. I'd written several letters to my landlady, the ever-anxious Mrs. Conroy, and the head librarian, a woman named Geneva LaCroix who was kind of like the Mother Superior of the library. Both were quite gracious considering that I didn't provide any details, only that there had been a family emergency in Naples that needed my attention. There's a point, though, when even nice people grow weary, and I sensed that day was close. I had maybe two or three weeks left, and that was definitely pushing my luck.

I tried to settle my restlessness by digging a new pond to give my turtles a little change of scenery. I was up to my thighs in “mush,” the word Mama used to describe the wet, sandy Collier County soil that comprised our yard, when Judd appeared on
his bicycle at my backyard fence, hauling another melon he had absconded from his mother's kitchen to feed Norma Jean and the others.

“Whatcha doing, Miss Witherspoon?” he called to me, a little alarmed. Judd had grown a little proprietary about my yard and my turtles. I couldn't blame him. That can happen when you leave someone in charge.

“I'm just digging a new place for them to play,” I said, adding, “You want to help?”

Now he was all smiles, and I noticed the gap between his front teeth had grown larger. Jackie had said something about Judd getting braces but it hadn't happened yet.

“Before I forget, Mom said to tell you that Priscilla's bus came in last night,” he said cheerfully.

This was a surprise. Priscilla surely had come home in a hurry.

“The bus came in around seven o'clock,” Judd continued, “and she—Mom, I mean—is going to pick you up later to take you over to Mrs. Bailey White's to see her. To see Priscilla, I mean.”

Judd had a way of talking that made it seem like he thought he had to translate himself. Not being accustomed to boys his age, I wasn't sure if they all did that or if it was just Judd's habit.

“What did she mean by ‘later'?” I asked, looking down at my crud-encrusted clothes. At least I had remembered to wear work gloves so my hands would clean up easy.

“Well, she didn't say,” Judd said, frowning. “But I know she has to take my sisters somewhere really stupid, maybe the beauty parlor. And then they were going to take some old books and drop them off at the library for the book sale. And then they're supposed to go to Winn-Dixie. But I betcha they have a fight
at the beauty parlor and Mom will end up taking them directly home. And then Mom will have one of her headaches, so she won't end up going to the library or Winn-Dixie, either. Which means she'll probably be here in about an hour.”

I tried not to smile. I never could get a short answer out of that boy, but his reasoning was sound.

An hour was just enough time for me to get cleaned up. Judd happily took over the digging project while I went inside. I had never gone through Mama's closet and I took a peek in there, thinking it would be nice to wear one of her dresses. But I wasn't ready to do that yet.

Maybe I never would be.

•  •  •

PRISCILLA WAS SITTING OUTSIDE ON
Mrs. Bailey White's porch swing with Dream sitting on her lap, waiting for me.

She hopped up and gave me a one-armed hug with the baby being sort of squashed between us. I was afraid that maybe Dream would cry, or at least protest, but she giggled instead.

“Dream doesn't know me too well,” I said, stepping back a little.

“She doesn't know me that well, either,” Priscilla remarked.

“Aw, now, I can see that ain't true!” I said with all the cheerfulness I could muster, trying to soothe the heaviness in my heart and hers. Priscilla was one of my favorite persons in the world. I really wanted her to be happy.

Jackie was unloading bags from the trunk of the Buick. She left the car radio on and “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” drifted cheerfully through the air. “Hey, doesn't Priscilla look good?” she called out.

“She always looks good! She is the cat's meow,” I hollered
back. I sounded like a hillbilly, even to myself. Conversing with Jackie was the only time I noticed how country I sounded.

Priscilla smiled modestly. She looked so prim in her light-blue dress. I wondered if she'd made it herself and was about to ask when she said, “There's a sewing machine at my rooming house. We take turns using it. Took me two months to make this because of all the pleats. And 'cause I didn't want to hog the machine. Jackie, do you need help with your packages?”