FREEDOM HOUSE

vi

When we got home it was past five o’clock and there were two cars parked in front of the Church. I asked Daddy if he knew who it was, but he just shook his head slowly, not saying anything. I didn’t think it was anything good, and thought about what Root had said just before we let him out of the car. I think Daddy might’ve been thinking the same thing.

“I don’t think it would be a good time to bring up what happened out there,” Daddy said as we pulled into the long driveway. He drove all the way up the driveway and stopped in front of the little garage behind the Church.

“Why don’t you two wait out here?” Daddy  looked at me with a forced smile. “You know what Momma can get like when she has unexpected company dropping in on her. She likes a bit of a warning, and if she’s been sitting here all afternoon with some Woman’s Auxiliary Committee, well, I don’t think she’ll be in a good mood, no matter what she might pretend to say.”

“But there’s nothin’ to do here,” Maggie said.

“Then you’ll just have to find something to do, won’t you? Maybe you can find some friends?”

“My friends are in Illinois,” I said.

“That’s too bad. I suppose the world will be at a loss now that you’re here in Mississippi. And of all the people here in Gaines, I suppose none of them are worth your time as far as friendships are concerned? You two are going to be pretty lonely if that’s how you plan to spend the rest of your lives here.”

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life here.”

“You don’t have to spend the rest of your life here, just the rest of your time here before you leave for college—or University.”

“Do I have to go to college?”

“Just long enough to get married.”

Daddy opened the door and stepped out. He walked to the other side of the car and opened the door for us, holding the seat forward and waiting patiently until we climbed out. He took the picnic basket with him and walked around the corner of the garage. He came back almost as soon as he left.

“There’s some kids in the back yard looking about as forlorn as the two of you. Maybe you’d like to see if they need help feeling sorry for themselves?”

“What kids?”

“I don’t know who they are. You’ll have to find that out for yourselves. Right now, I have to go in and rescue your mother. I can hear a baby crying, and that can’t be making her too comfortable.”

“Can I come in an’ see the baby?” Maggie asked, abandoning me.

“Only for a moment,” Daddy said. I watched Maggie run ahead of Daddy and storm into the house without even giving those other kids a second thought. I stood at the corner of the house watching them, and it was some time before they noticed me.

The Church itself sat on the front part of the property. The garage and the house we lived in were out back, along with the old cemetery, and an open field I suppose was there for the cemetery’s growing future. There were large willows along the border of the cemetery, with their branches almost hanging on the grass — almost looking like they were feeling sorry for themselves. There was a solid oak tree that spread up tall and wide in the middle of the yard, its roots twisting like writhing snakes across a worn out patch of muddied grass underneath it. There was a tire swing hanging from a tree branch overhead, and that’s where the kids were playing.

There were three of them. Two boys and a girl. One of the boys was wearing a worn out pair of blue jeans that were too small for him, and a tattered shirt. He looked to be about as old as I was. His pants were tied up with a length of rope because he couldn’t do them up in the front, and his shirt didn’t have any buttons. He wasn’t wearing shoes. He had a cowlick of hair that stood up on the back of his head like a rooster’s tail — he looked like a bandied bantam the way he strutted about the rope swing — and he had freckles on his face that made it look almost muddy from a distance. His eyes were a steel grey colour, and it looked like you could see right through them, even though there was nothing to see on the other side.

The second boy was about the same age, and dressed in a clean pair of grey shorts, and had a white shirt on. I could see the white Tee-shirt he was wearing under it, and thought he must be hot, considering how hot I was — and I was practically wearing nothing under my dress. He had red suspenders holding his shorts up, and thick black socks with open-toed sandals on his feet. His hair was combed neatly, and he kept rubbing a hand across it, like he was trying to keep it plastered down. He was a pretty boy, but he sat on the tire swing without moving, and stared at his feet without looking up at me.

  It was obvious he was mad about the girl, and in competition for her attention with the other boy — although it was obvious she was having nothing to do with either boy. She was wearing a dress just like the one I was wearing, and we both laughed when we saw each other. Her hair was tied in two neat little braids that curled at the bottom where they were pinned to her hair near the nape of her neck. She was about my age — just like the freckle-faced boy — but she was a pretty girl, a lot prettier than me. It was clear the first boy was trying to get her to pay attention to him, but she was ignoring him.

“Whadda ya want?” the freckle-faced boy asked.

“I live here.”

“You one of ‘em two girls I saw movin’ in last couple weeks gone by?”

“Would I say I lived here if I didn’t?” I secretly wondered where he could have been watching us from.

“Ya doan have t’ get sassy.”

“Don’t you pay Lloyd no never mind,” the girl said with a laugh. “He’s an Edgerton. No one pays no never mind to them. You see the way he’s dressed? He’s always dressed like that. He ain’t got no other clothes.”

“Is that true?” I asked the other boy. He just looked down at the ground and ignored me.

“That’s Roy Bannington. His Momma an’ mine are close friends.”

“Don’t bother askin’ him no questions,” Lloyd said quickly. “He’s a dummy. He don’t talk to no one ‘cept Louise there. He’s got somethin’ wrong in his head when it comes to her,” he added, touching his forehead and giving me a wink at the same time.

“There ain’t nothin’ wrong with him,” Louise said in Roy’s defence.

“No? Then how come he don’t talk?”

“He can talk. He just don’t talk to you, Lloyd.”

“He can’t talk. He’s an idiot, an’ ever’body knows it.”

“The only idiot here is you.”

“You been here long?” I asked Louise, trying to avoid wherever the conversation was going.

“My Momma wanted to come an’ welcome your Momma, an’ tol’ Roy’s Momma about it, an’ they made us come with ‘em. They said there were two girls we could play with when we got here. But you were gone.”

“Daddy took us out to the swimmin’ hole.”

“Swimmin’ hole? There ain’t no place t’ go swimmin’ round here, ‘ceptin’ maybe the Nigger Hole.”

“The what?”

“That’s where all the Niggers used t’ go back in the slave days. No White man’d swim in there.”

“Why not?”

“I said, that’s where Niggers swim, dummy,” he said with a laugh, as if that was explanation enough. “Can’t ya hear right? Ya don’t wanna be swimmin’ in there ‘cause ya never know what ya might be catchin’. Anyway, ya wanna be knowed as a Nigger lover?”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Girl? Where you from?”

“Merriweather, Illinois.”

“Merriweather? What kinda name is that for a town?”

“I think it’s a nice name,” Louise said quickly.

“It was named after Lewis an’ Clark. Ain’t ya never heard of ‘em? They were famous explorers. They went all the way to the Great Plains.”

“Then where’d the name Merriweather come from?”

“That was one of their names. Merriweather Clark.”

“His Mamma named him Merriweather? An’ you don’t see how that’s a girl’s name? Jesus Christ in a handcart girl, you gotta be a Nigger lover." He shook his head slowly, like he felt sorry that I didn’t know any better.

“I don’t think I like you,” I said.

“You don’t like me? Well, gee, that hurts me real bad. B’tween you an’ the dummy there, I ain’t doin’ so good am I? How ‘bout you Louise? You like me don’t ya?”

“Nobody likes you Lloyd.”

“What? I got friends what like me. We can’t all be Miss Priss like you Louise,” he said with a laugh. “Or your dummy boyfriend, here.” He punched Roy in the arm as he walked past.

“He’s not my boyfriend!”

Louise was off the ground where she’d been sitting, and jumped on Lloyd’s back before he had a chance to react. He fell to the ground awkwardly though, and I thought I heard something crack, like a muffled branch snapping underfoot, but didn’t know what it could be. Lloyd screamed out in pain as Louise pushed his face into the ground. She rolled him over, and he grabbed his limp arm, screaming loudly.

“You broke my arm!”

I looked at the big twisted root he’d fallen on, and knew he wasn’t lying. But Louise didn’t care. She slapped his face; I saw blood at the corner of his lip — the same corner where his lip curled up into the sneer I’d noticed earlier. I pulled her off of him.

Lloyd sat up moaning, and hunched down on himself. I looked at his arm, and it was bent in a strange way, sort of backwards and sideways.

I could see Roy on the tire swing smiling to himself.

“It’s broken. I gotta get Daddy. He’ll know what to do.”

“An’ tell ‘im a girl broke my arm?”

“No. Just that you fell on it, an’ it broke. Louise didn’t break your arm. You just fell on it, is all. Coulda happened t’ anyone.”

“Is that what yer gonna tell yer daddy?” Louise asked.

“You want I should tell him somethin’ else?”

“No.”

Lloyd was in pain. I could see that just looking at him. As much as I knew I didn’t like him, I felt sorry for him — like someone might feel sorry for an animal caught up in a trap, I guess.

“I’m gonna go get my Daddy then.” I was telling him like I was asking him if it was all right.

He nodded his head and tried not to cry. Louise ran up behind me.

“Don’t tell ‘im what happened.”

“I said I wouldn’t, didn’t I?”

“I mean, don’t tell anyone.”

“Who’s anyone?”

“Like, say, a brother of Lloyd’s. Or his daddy.”

“Tell ‘em what? That you jumped on him, an’ he fell down? I won’t tell anyone the real truth, if that’s what you want, but I don’t see why not.”

“His daddy’ll beat on him if he finds out.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because that’s what he does. I’ve seen it. Lloyd’s come to school all beat up before.”

*

Daddy came running out behind me with Momma and four other ladies. I guess Maggie asked if she could stay inside and take care of the baby because she wasn’t with us. I think Momma was so relieved to hear Maggie ask if she could stay inside, that she never even thought twice about it. Momma looked panicked all the same though, like she always did whenever there was an emergency, or someone hurt themselves. She wasn’t as practical with things the way Daddy was, and was usually one of those women who stood off to the side weeping for no reason if it was one of us, or wringing her hands nervously if she had to stand by as a witness. She hated the sight of blood, and absolutely refused to help in anyway — which was probably a blessing seeing how she’d just get in everyone’s way if she tried to help. But as the Preacher’s wife, I suppose she felt she had to be there.