FREEDOM HOUSE

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  v

It was late and I was still awake. I still lay wake up most nights haunted by nightmare visions of Daddy’s body floating in the air, pressed up against the window like a sinister, limp, shadow. Usually, it’s just a branch from the tree outside scratching itself against my window, and I’ll roll over and bury my face in my pillow and try to suppress the rising horror that chokes me like a foul tasting bile. It’s a memory I’ve always thought I could control--(maybe I should say accept?)--because it’s not something that might happen, or can happen, but something that has happened. That’s why I work as hard as I do; that’s why I throw myself into whatever task is at hand--whether I’m lobbying for a committee, a cause, or trying to collect and register voters in those few remaining states where Voter turn-out has always been low. I do it so that my mind doesn’t wander into the past, or my memories wash over me and bring to the brink of another anxiety attack.

I suppose seeing Momma earlier was what brought it all back, so I pulled myself out of my dream, and huddled my legs to my chest while I stared out at the darkness. I fumbled for a cigarette. You can never really escape the past the way you think you can; you might be able to control your thoughts and feelings when you’re awake, but when you go to sleep you leave yourself open to all the convictions and promises you try to hide from when you’re awake.

* * *

I still remember that day like it was yesterday; I remember how Root came out the next day and cut Daddy down--but not before he called out to everyone standing below him. There were at least a dozen men and boys staring up at him, looking like they were carved out of the dusty, clay packed earth they were standing on. They looked about as grim as the tombstones in the cemetery behind what was left of the Church. They stood as unmoving as their own shadows while Root stepped down the ladder with deliberate steps, carrying Daddy’s body on his shoulder; Reverend stepped out and held the ladder steady for Root, and I wondered how long they would have left poor Daddy up there if Root hadn’t come by to take care of him.

Momma tried holding us in her arms like she was refusing to let the outside world be a part of our lives anymore. I wondered why she thought she had the right to make decisions like that for me. I don’t think it ever occurred to me that maybe Momma couldn’t bare to be alone. She was still hysterical with tears, while I refused to cry anymore. I told myself we had to go on for the sake of the Movement Daddy believed in. I told myself I was stronger than that; stronger than the Movement; stronger than Momma. I was stronger than all of them, and I would never cry for myself again.

I pulled away from Momma and distanced myself from her on purpose. Momma let me go. I guess she was thinking I needed to be alone. I don’t know. It was the wrong decision for me to make--the wrong choice for anyone to make--but I was not about to change my mind once I’d made it up. I walked to the window and watched Root as he climbed down the ladder. Was I was being vengeful I asked myself; was I punishing Momma for her insensitivity toward Daddy’s beliefs, like I could pick and choose which catastrophic event in my young life I’d be willing to let her share with me?

Could I distance myself from Momma that much, I wondered, that I would refuse to let her into my life when she needed to be with me now more than ever? At least she still had Maggie, I told myself, and Momma needed her more than I wanted to admit. I realized that I hated Maggie for being there for her; I hated Maggie for all of the wrong reasons. I could see how Momma had clasped on to her during the last year like she was wrapping her up in a protective cocoon, and I wondered if that was because Maggie was simply worth loving more than I was, or if Momma felt I was lost to both Daddy and the Cause he believed in so much?

  The Church stood out in the distance, still smouldering, the burned out timbers of the walls standing up like the ribs of some dead carcass; the tombstones sticking up out of the grass like teeth.

Someone called up to Root and said he shouldn’t be cutting Daddy down so soon after what happened. Root yelled down at the man to shut his Nigger mouth before he came down there and shut it for him, and then he spat and came near to hitting him. He threw his knife into the ground, where it stuck in the hard packed clay at the man’s feet, and there was a silence that felt overwhelming as it came over the group. I don’t know if he meant to throw the knife as close to the man as he did, but I could see Root staring down at him like he was daring the man to say something to him.

“I can’t believe y’all just stood by an’ let ‘em do this,” Root said as he struggled to get Daddy on to his shoulder. I watched the ladder bend under him with the weight he was carrying.

“Ain’t not one of y’all can call yerself a right proper man, sittin’ by an’ watchin’ somethin’ like this happen,” he said as he made his way down the ladder with small, deliberate steps.

“Ain’t no one ‘bout to stand up to a lynch mob Root, an’ you know it,” someone called out. The man sounded angry, and I saw Root pause as he searched the crowd below him. “Ye’d be cuttin’ more’n just one man down today, if’n that’s the way ye’re thinkin’.”

“If ya’ll’d just stand up for what’s right in the first place, none o’ this’d ever happen again.”

“For what’s right?” one of the other man laughed. “Ain’t that why this happened, Root? Registerin’ voters? Ain’t that what Ramsey was tryin’ to do? Register voters? An’ you say ain’t nothin’ like this ever gonna happen again? Ha! Soon’s a Nigger steps in t’ vote how he wants, they’s gonna be waitin’ to make sure he votes how they want--if’n they let him vote at all. We stand up against the Clan, an’ they be burnin’ our house down aroun’ us.”

“A man died tryin’ t’ show ya it doan have t’ be that way,” Root said.

“Well, I guess he was wrong, weren’t he? But he’s dead, an’ we’re still here, an’ near as I can see, ain’t nothin’ changed for the better.”

“In the Good Book,” Reverend said as he picked up Root’s knife and folded the blade closed, “it says: ‘The man what walks with a wise man shall be wise, but a companion of fools will be destroyed.’ Ramsey was a good man, Root, a good man. But ya have to admit he was a fool for thinkin’ he could come down here an’ tame this hard hearted land hisself. He din’t unnerstan’ how things work down here--an’ how could he, bein’ so full of big city ideas like he was?” he added.

“What d’ya know ‘bout it, ya old fool? Quotin’ Scripture like yer some ordained Minister, instead of some fool old man what only learned t’ read but one book!”  Root said.

“I know he come here wid his wife an’ chil’ren, din’t he?” Reverend called up at him. “Now, his wife’s a widow, an’ his chil’ren have no Daddy. Was he thinkin’ we’d take to ‘im like some God-sent angel offerin’ t’ lead us out of temptation? Like he was Moses leadin’ us t’ de Promised Lan’? The Spirit’s willin’, Root--it truly is--but the flesh is too weak t’ suffer the pity of fools. Are we fools t’ stand aside an’ save ourselves? I just don’t think no one thought it’d come t’ this.”

“It woulda done just as much t’ give ‘im a whuppin’,” a voice from the crowd said.

Root gave out one of those quick, disbelieving laughs. “What’d ya’ll think he was gonna do? A preachin’ man has a way of thinkin’ God won’t let anythin’ happen to ‘im -- ‘specially when someone sends a rock through the window tellin’ ‘im t’ stand back. A man’s gotta keep his pride, don’t he?”

“And what did you do to stop him?” Reverend asked as Root stepped to the ground.

Reverend was older than anyone I’d ever seen before; no one knew how old he really was, and probably the only thing they knew about him was that he wasn’t a real Reverend. People just called him Reverend, seeing how he was always quoting the Scriptures and dressing like a preacher in that same black suit he always wore. His hair was nearly white--what little of it he had--and he had soft wrinkled skin, with milky eyes that looked like they were gonna spill over themselves with tears. He was a soft spoken man--he had a gentle voice--and pulling a rag out of his back pocket, he wiped off his wire glasses, and the sweat off his cheeks and neck.

“I was over in Niggertown workin’ my har, an’ you know it,” Root said. “A man’s gotta right to work his har an’ make a livin’, ain’t he--I mean since those bastards busted my guitar?” Root added, trying to catch his breath. “Were ya thinkin’ I shoulda stayed here an’ watched over him like some damned fool Steppin’ Fetchit Nigger? I tol’ him not t’ do it--but all he said was that it was his God-given duty t’ help us. Ever’ man has a right t’ vote, he said, an’ that was that as far as he was concerned. How ya gonna tell a man like that any different?”

Root stood for a moment with Daddy laying over his shoulder like a bundled up sack of cotton, and leaning against the ladder, he reached into his shirt pocket for a cigarette he had tucked inside somewhere.

Reverend followed Root to the side of the house, and I ran to the far window, following them as near I could. “You knows we have one manner of law for all of us Root--an’ it works just as well for strangers, as it does for ever’one of us.”

“You don’t think I tol’ him where it’d lead to?”

“But you didn’t really believe they’d lynch a White man near as quick as they’d lynch a Nigger, did ya?”

“I guess I din’t wanna believe it.”

“They doan need a reason to lynch a man,” Reverend added as Root laid Daddy’s body down on the canvas tarp he’d brought with him. Root searched in his other pockets for a match as Reverend struggled to pull Daddy’s body close to the coffin Root had waiting. That’s when I saw Root go through Daddy’s pockets, throwing his belongings to the side.

I slammed the window down and sank to the floor. I stopped up my ears, and pulled my knees up to my heaving chest, trying not to listen to what they were saying. I could see the reflection of the old horse and wagon rig that Root rode in on from the Niggertown standing in the window like a ghostly painting. Momma and Maggie came and sat with me, hugging themselves to me, and I let them.

It wasn’t too long before we heard hammering, and Root telling Reverend to pick up one end of the coffin and help him load it into the wagon. It was the same time I realized there were tears in my eyes, and that I didn’t know how long they’d been there.

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