Freshwater Road (35 page)

When Shuck and I were married, things grew difficult between us.
I had your brother, Billy, and a husband who was never home or helpful in the least, and in-laws who never seemed to notice I was there.
It wasn't easy. I was lonely and isolated. I found work, which gave me
some relieffrom the dreariness of my daily life.

At any rate, I met a man. We struck up a conversation at Hudson's
department store, of all places. He asked me to lunch, and I surprised
myself by going. Before long, it turned into an affair.

Her next sentences swooped against Celeste like headwinds lifting off
the page, pushing her back on the bed.

Perhaps I was looking for someone to assuage my loneliness,
or maybe it just happened. A bit of serendipity. Hard to think of
Detroit and the possibility of anything serendipitous, to say nothing
of romantic. And it was that. Romantic. Secret meetings, lies to cover
my whereabouts. Imagine that! Windsor was our favorite place. He knew that I was married, and so was he. Igotpregnant and broke off
the relationship. I was terrified of the consequences. Shuck and I were
still together during that time, you see.

That November, you were born. I don't think Shuck knew about
my affair. I certainly never told him. There was nothing to discuss
really. We were married, if troubled, and I was pregnant. At some
point, much later, he may have had suspicions because you don't really
look like him. But of course that happens in families, especially in
Negro families. His suspicions went away in time. You do, my dear,
have something of this other man's looks, minus that hair ofyours
which has a mind of its own.

It was long ago. The man never knew I was pregnant, and I never
allowed him to know where I lived. I was the mystery woman. I
don't know if it would be wise to search for him, if that's what you're
thinking. What would be thepoint? Shuck has been your father, so
why upset the apple cart? Shuck has street smarts. He may well know
the truth. But it's too late now for me to broach the subject with him.
That I'll leave to you, since you're so close.

Had she opened some stranger's mail? With her mouth dry as ash, she
checked the forwarding address written by someone in the Jackson office of
One Man, One Vote. Yes. Celeste Tyree, C/o Mrs. Geneva Owens, Freshwater
Road, Pineyville.

After that, I couldn't wait to get out ofDetroit. I imagined walking
into him on a street with you and Billy in tow. Imagined a thousand
things. I may never go back to that city for as long as I live.

Please take good care ofyourself. You'll give and you'll give and
it'll still be crabs in a barrel. I pray you'll be safe. Shuck should never
have allowed this. I always thought him too permissive.

Love from your mother,

Wilamena

Celeste paced around her room like a caged cat, sat again, her neck in
a painful crick. She reread the words feeling like naked prey in a ghostly
field, her body hairs spiked for danger. Search for this man? Her eyes had not
failed her. Had Wilamena gone crazy? She held the pieces of stationery, pine trees and mountains etched across the top, faint blue sky behind. Calm. She
shoved the letter under her pillow, caught an escaping breath in her throat
when Mrs. Owens moved about in her room.

It was in the spring, not that long ago, after Easter break from school,
that she'd last called her mother. Celeste kidded her about her husband,
Cyril, not allowing music in their house, said she couldn't imagine that
much quiet. Shuck couldn't live two minutes without music. I couldn't either.
"Music's not everything," Wilamena'd answered. The air crackled through
the phone. She told her she was only joking. In truth, she hadn't been
joking. Now she understood her mother's taut response. It had as much
to do with her identifying her tastes with Shuck's as anything. A Shuck
who was not her father? But she'd said nothing in the letter that could
be taken as conclusive proof of anything, except that she'd had an affair
and got pregnant at the same time. Had she been sleeping with the both
of them? During that phone call, Celeste had asked her what had really
happened between her and Shuck all those years ago, why they hadn't
made it. Wilamena dodged the question with something about Shuck never
being home, always in the streets. Celeste had heard the frantic energy
underneath her last words. She hung up with a curt goodbye.

Celeste grabbed the photo of Wilamena and Cyril Atwood from her
dresser. He more than likely was passing for white-but if he was, why did
Wilamena invite her and Billy to New Mexico to visit? They'd surely gum
up the works. Maybe he wasn't. But one thing was for sure. Cyril Atwood
had the kind of fair looks Wilamena adored. Even that was a stretch because
Wilamena married Shuck, and Shuck was definitely brown. Celeste tore the
photo out of the frame and ripped it into pieces. But Mrs. Owens would
notice it not being there in its spot. She dug around in her book-bag for the
tape she used to put up the children's drawings on the wall of the church.
She taped the photograph back together. It looked a sight, the cactus plant
not quite on the level of the people standing in front of it. She put it back
on the dresser and camouflaged it with her toiletries. She'd have to look
at it every time she looked at the photo of Shuck and Billy, every time she
brushed her teeth and combed her hair, changed her clothes.

She stood by the dresser, staring at Billy and Shuck like she'd never
looked at them before. Billy favored Shuck and she Wilamena. There was
no secret in that. She stared at her own face in the mirror. Wilamena's
family ran the gamut from dark-skinned to white. It was crazy. Grandma Pauline told her that whole branches of the family tree had disappeared,
gone forever. Nobody seemed particularly interested in seeking them out.

Maybe Wilamena's letter was just a horrid strike, a blow in an ongoing
fight. What did she want from her? What if her mother was lying? What if
she'd just gotten angry at not being able to find her, at having to always go
through Shuck? This was a way to disengage her from Shuck, push Shuck
out of the picture. Create a question of paternity, then walk off into the
sunset as if it meant nothing at all. Wilamena'd always bristled at the closeness Shuck had with his children, especially with Celeste. Was it possible?
She couldn't contain the thoughts in her head. Wilamena had lost her mind
out there in New Mexico.

The reek of sweat and mold oozed through the room's air like nitrous
oxide. Celeste felt a tickle in her chest, thought she might laugh. She left
the letter on her bed and stood at her side window holding the lace curtain.
Not a car passed on Freshwater Road or on the two-lane. The quiet roared
like rolling thunderclaps in her head. There was no place to run, no person
to help her ferret through the morass Wilamena had dumped on her. Did
Shuck know anything of this? He hadn't warned her. Not one inkling that
this could be true. She searched her mind, went through Shuck's presence
in her life, found no holes, no pretense, no warnings. He was there. But in
some small alcove of her mind, something sank into place. Some distant
memory of a feeling of otherness, of a hidden something that lurked behind
doors, in shadowy corners. The unspoken. What would possess Wilamena
to do this? What kind of jealousy and loneliness in her own life would
encourage her to try to destroy Celeste's closeness to Shuck? The weight of
it began scuttling her life as she knew it and finally grounded itself inside
her, attached to her like roots. This woman who took herself out of the lives
of her children now tried to remove one child's only anchor. It was more
than cruel.

She'd never speak to Wilamena again. She'd never say a word about
it. Do like the people in Mississippi do. It never happened. She'd throw
the letter in the outhouse hole in the morning. For now, she put it back in
its envelope and stuffed it into the pocket of her suitcase as if otherwise it
might gather strength and run out into the world screaming.

Ed Jolivette drove Celeste to New Orleans the day after the memorial
service for Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner in Meridian. She took the
chance on going with him, figured they both needed to get out of Mississippi for a break, though Louisiana didn't seem far enough away. Volunteers
and local people from all over the state had convened for the service. People
had come from New York, Washington, and even California. The speakers
brought the truth home, wrapped the congregants' anger and desolation
in words that mourned and honored the dead young men. Celeste reunited
with Ramona and Margo and they sat under a tree together to share their
grief and, like all the volunteers, to compare notes on their projects. The
volunteers understood their jobs still had to be completed, that they'd have
to carry their sorrow back to their projects and try to find a way to weave
it into the work.

Ed's car-another dusty, cigarette-smelling Dodge, a contribution from
some car company up north-was quiet but for the heavy breeze whooshing in the opened windows. Celeste eyed him in his mauve and white
pullover shirt and denim pants, a burnished prince from some unknown
tribe, as they drove south on Highway Eleven. Spanish moss hung from the
cypress trees like tangled hair.

Celeste slouched down, head back, arms in a lethargic fold across her
chest, seeing through slits as they passed the turn-off to Sophie Lewis's in
Carriere. She imagined being alone in the big empty house, the cool of the
rooms, the shadows of the potted palms on the walls and floors. Sophie Lewis toured during most of the summer, Reverend Singleton said. Her
voice lifted her up and away from the humdrum of normal life in southern
Mississippi, kept her on the move, no settling in here or there to deal with
the quagmires of the day to day. She probably never even read her mail, had
someone to filter it, to throw the bad mail away. She surely couldn't step out
onto a stage to sing a soaring aria if the mire of life weighed on her mind.
Protected. Sophie Lewis lived a ratified life.

Celeste didn't read Wilamena's letter again, but she thought about it
plenty, debated how much of it was true and how much was just Wilamena's
destructive jealousy. In truth, her mother couldn't possibly be sure of
Celeste's paternity if she was still living with Shuck when she'd had the
affair. If she'd had it at all. Celeste continued to stare into her cracked
mirror and into the photographs of Shuck and Billy. Had she imagined the
similarity into being? Was that her love speaking and not the facts? And
so what if it was?

"Your thoughts so deep, chere, they weighing down the car." Ed glanced
over and smiled, with that little-boy space between his front teeth belying
the seriousness in his eyes. "Better spread those stones before they take us
both under."

She heard him, acknowledged what he'd said with a half smile, then
went back to staring out the window.

She hadn't earned this trip, not really. Civil rights workers got rest and
relaxation days after big events, arrests, beatings. She, by movement standards, didn't really deserve the R & R in New Orleans. She thought about
how, as bad as she'd felt when the cops beat Matt, she'd surely not be able
to contain herself if the same happened to Ed. It had been long weeks since
her nonviolence training in Jackson.

Celeste counted down the miles to go on the road signs. She thought
again of Mary Evans in the train station singing her way out of that bathroom on her way to New Orleans. It's a good-time place. They crawled
through faceless little Ozona and headed on toward Picayune, passing more
tung tree orchards. She steeled her mind against seeing one more Negro
person doing backbreaking menial work while a white man sat on a horse
or stood around in the shade shouting orders. That was an image that had
stood the test of time.

"I got strong shoulders." Ed's quiet voice broke through her reverie.

"They're all right." She imagined them pulling over under the willows and making love in the daylight, but she said nothing. The need for life tried
to push all the death out of her mind. Something was dying in the world,
in her world, and she had no way to stop it.

"Anytime you want 'em, you can have 'em, sugar." He smiled the slightest bit.

Words might open her cellar doors. No telling what would fly out.
Mr. Heywood warned Mrs. Owens about keeping her in her home. The
gunshots fired, the warning of worse things to come. The boys were dead.
And, Wilamena. What in God's name would be next? "I can drive too, you
know." She took the rubber band off her ponytail, unbuttoned her blouse
down two buttons, rested her arm on the window opening, the air beating
her face and hair, drying the sweat on her scalp.

He ignored that. "At night, we take the back roads, flyin'." He shifted
in the seat, moved his dark hands on the steering wheel.

"I thought we weren't supposed to drive at night in Mississippi." Celeste
didn't want to be on any back roads, day or night. Fear just from thinking
about it charged through her stomach. She closed her eyes, head back, teeth
tight, jaw set hearing the voices from the memorial service, thinking of the
utter senselessness of the deaths of those three-as if that would stop this
movement forward, as if those deaths would end the march of time. But
still, they were so young.