Freshwater Road by Denise Nicholas Read Free Book Online

fall.
Waiting for her life to begin. Now she'd begin her own journey with no
clue as to how it would end.
    "Your name better be Celeste." The voice wavered, followed by the padding
of bare feet on wood. "Otherwise, I'm going out the bedroom window."
    "It is," Celeste called in a whisper. She had hoped the other volunteer
would be sleeping, giving her time to just sit there and mull over the possibilities of what lay ahead.
    "Good." A door closed and in seconds there was the sound of a flushing
toilet. A young woman crept into the living room, walking squatted down.
"Ramona Clark."
    Ramona sat down on the floor and leaned back against the door frame.
Her hair was a mass of wooly kinks, round like an upside down bowl.
Celeste could make out a small brown face, big oval eyes. "Haven't slept
since I got here."
    "Celeste Tyree." She felt her dirty, frizzled, humidity-inflated curls and
waves, every strand symbolic of a contorted family tree. "That car across
the street might keep anybody from sleeping."
    "Amen to that." Ramona said. "Where're you from?"
    "Michigan. Detroit. Actually, I'm in school in Ann Arbor." She tried to
see more of Ramona's face in the dim light.
    Ramona's head moved back and forth, her big bowl of kinky hair swaying. "Ooo wee. Not many black folks up there."
    "Not many." Celeste heard the "black." Speakers from the movement
who came to campus said it too. She hoped Ramona wasn't excluding her, tossing her in the "other" pile-the "good hair" pile, the light-eyed Negro
pile. Negroes used to be "colored." Kids used to fight over being called
black. It was the new title, the new calling. Black folks. She wanted to be
in it. Shuck would be. Wilamena wouldn't. Celeste herself hadn't gotten
comfortable saying "black."

    "I'm at Howard with the black intelligentsia, the so called `high-yellow
first line of defense,' no offense intended." Ramona's voice eased out, consonants hit then released very quickly, sliding softly off the edges of her
words.
    Celeste bristled and lied. "None taken." Shuck was in her head telling
her there was no high yellow, no low yellow, or anything else. There were
just Negroes. Now, just black folks. Period. Celeste gave herself a point.
Shuck was always ahead of the pack, in the vanguard. And she always
trying to catch up.
    "Where're they sending you?" Ramona stretched her legs out on the
wood floor.
    "Someplace called Pineyville." All she could see was the bowl of hair and
flashes of the whites of Ramona's eyes. "I never even heard of it."
    "Boy, you hit the jackpot." Ramona's eyes flared wide. "That's where
they lynched Leroy Boyd James."
    "Jesus." Celeste's train-weary mouth dried like dusty bones. She'd never
heard of Leroy Boyd James, either.
    "It was in the fifties. I did a paper on lynching in three deep-south states
since World War II. I'm a sociology major." Ramona leaned her head back
against the door jamb.
    Every Negro in America was a sociology major, like it or not, college or
not. You had to be. "What happened to him?" Celeste knew before Ramona
said a word.
    "They say he raped a white woman. Never got to court. Got kidnapped
from the jail down there, beaten, shot, and dumped into the Pearl River.
The sheriff said it never happened. A fisherman pulled him out. Body got
caught on some tree roots or something. Otherwise, he'd have been swept
down to the Gulf by the currents. Disappeared. A prisoner told the FBI
that the sheriff there opened the door to some men. Nobody was charged
with his murder."
    All the air sighed out of Celeste's body. This wanting to know could
definitely give you nightmares. Maybe Ramona exaggerated. Maybe there was more to the story, but she couldn't fathom what that might be. She'd
seen the photos of Emmett Till. She'd seen the range of horror when it came
to white women and Negro men. She tried to stir up enough saliva in her
mouth to swallow. "Where're they sending you?"

    "Indianola. In the Delta." Ramona