I can’t help but laugh.
In a moment, the yard is filled with firemen and medics, with Ellie literally at their heels, her arm around her mother, who is walking with a cane. “What happened?” Ellie yells. “Oh my God, Buddy! Are you all right?” She lets go of her mother and is quickly on her knees next to her brother, along with the medic who is examining the flesh of Buddy’s forearm. The burn is second-degree, the medic says. I think I smell the burned skin, but it’s probably only the wooden frame of the porch. I feel a little dizzy.
“She saved my life.” Buddy nods toward me between coughing attacks.
“I had help from those two—” I look around, but the construction workers have disappeared, gone back to their jobs. Just another day’s work. Mrs. Hockley leans against the side of the house, watching us with a frown. I tell Ellie and the firefighters what happened, how I saw the fire, how the construction workers saved the Hockley house. Ellie hugs Buddy the same time she’s chewing him out. “This is not the way I plan to lose you, you fool!” she says, with such affection that I’m touched. She hugs him again, then leans over to hug the medic treating him. She stands to hug the two firefighters, a man and a woman, who are closest. By then, I’m standing up myself, and I’m not surprised when she hugs me, too.
“You tell me when you want to practice yoga,” she says. “Any time you want.”
Chapter 20
ELLIE
1965
In the morning, I helped dress the four youngest Dawes children. I was determined to help out, however I could. GiGi and Sally, the two youngest, were still in diapers, but Gail and May—six and four—were proud to show me that they could dress themselves and use the outhouse on their own. They were better at using it than I was. I kept thinking, I can’t believe people have to live this way in the United States of America, but I knew that sort of thinking wasn’t helpful. Getting people engaged in politics to make their lives better; that’s what would help.
Mr. Dawes and the boys had eaten and left the house by the time I helped Mrs. Dawes make grits and eggs for the younger children. She wore a flour-sack apron over a faded yellow housedress and a blue scarf tied over her hair. Aside from giving me a few instructions, she was her usual quiet self, while the children giggled and bickered with one another across the wobbly wooden table.
“Do you know that you’ll be able to register to vote soon?” I asked as we cleaned up after breakfast. I felt ridiculously awkward, asking her out of the blue like that. I seemed to have forgotten all the icebreaking tips I’d learned during the role-playing workshops in Atlanta, and Mrs. Dawes didn’t look up from the basin where she was starting to wash the dishes. “Once President Johnson signs the voting rights bill, you can register,” I said.
“So I hear.” She glanced up from her task, her eyes tired. “And when’s that gonna be? The twelve of never, I s’pose?”
I couldn’t blame her for doubting that something good might be on the horizon. “I know,” I said. “It should have happened by now. It should have happened long before now. But it’s going to happen very soon.” I told her about the peaceful protest we were planning to hold in front of the courthouse Friday evening, but I could tell that there was no way Mrs. Dawes, with her six children, was going to make it to that protest.
“Maybe my husband can go,” she said.
“I’ll arrange a ride for him,” I said, as though the decision had been made.
I cleaned GiGi’s face with a cloth, then lifted her from her high chair. She immediately climbed into my lap and started playing with my hair, which seemed to be a draw for the little girls.
Mrs. Dawes glanced at me. “They ain’t never seen hair like yours,” she said. A few of GiGi’s little braids were coming loose from colored barrettes, and I began to rebraid them as she gently stroked my own hair.
“They tol’ us all you kids was from the North,” Mrs. Dawes said as she dried a bowl. “New York or someplace up there. You ain’t from New York, though.”
“I’m from Round Hill,” I admitted.
Our conversation, such as it was, was interrupted by a knock at the front door and I knew it was probably Win, ready to start canvassing with me. Mrs. Dawes left the kitchen to go to the door and by the time she returned to the room with Win, they were laughing. Mrs. Dawes lit up in the first big, genuine smile I’d seen from her.
“Oh, yes,” she said to Win. “He was the funniest preacher I done ever seen! And don’t you know he kept that camel in his mama’s yard?”
“No!” Win laughed like this was the most amusing thing he’d ever heard. The laughter seemed out of character for him, but I liked hearing it. I liked knowing that he had that side to him.
“You two know each other?” I said. I lowered GiGi gently to the floor as I got to my feet.
“Uh-uh,” Mrs. Dawes said. “Never laid eyes on this child before.”
“Did Ellie tell you we gonna have a protest at the courthouse in Carlisle Friday night?” Win asked her. “And then soon we’ll have a mass gatherin’ outside the school in Flint? They’ll be food and games for the kids and we’ll talk about the changes y’all need here in Flint.”
“She made mention of that protest,” Mrs. Dawes said. They both looked at me.
“I told her we could provide transportation Friday night,” I said, for something to say.
“That’s right, Miz Dawes,” Win said. “We can get you there and back, so you talk to Mr. Dawes about it. I want to meet him. I wanna know if that camel story is true.”
Mrs. Dawes laughed again. “Oh, it’s true, all right,” she said.
Win looked at me. “Got your walkin’ shoes on?” He looked down at my sandals. “You gonna have some mighty dirty feet by the end of the day.”
I shrugged. “I know how to wash them,” I said with a smile. I’d walked all over campus in these sandals. I’d be fine.
* * *
“Okay,” I said, when Win and I were out of hearing range of the Daweses’ house, “you do know her, right? Mrs. Dawes?”
“Never met her before in my life.”
“Then how did you have her laughing and talking in the two seconds between when she opened the door and you walked in the kitchen with her? I haven’t been able to get more than a couple of words out of her or her husband.”
“That’s why we’re doing it this way. White and Black together,” he said, his gaze up ahead on the nasty rutted road. “I know how to break the ice and I know the preacher at their church and everybody knows the rumor about their old preacher having a camel. So they trust me. They won’t trust you, not right off.” He glanced at me. “It’s not your fault. They just won’t. Some of these folks have never met a white person who cared a lick about them. A lot of them have never met a white person, period. Once they see you and I are okay with each other, they’ll let you in.”
“Why do you say ‘black’ instead of ‘Negro’?” I asked.
He squinted against the sunlight. “It’s a strong word,” he said after a moment, as if that was all the explanation that was needed.