Reverend Filburn nodded as though he’d been asked the question a dozen times before. “Do y’all remember the three civil rights workers who were killed in Mississippi last summer?” he asked.
I nodded. Beside me, Brenda gave a noncommittal shrug. The pictures of the three young men had been everywhere after it happened. There was so much on the news about them that I even recalled their names: Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner. I remembered how Aunt Carol wept about their fate.
“You wouldn’t remember them at all if they’d all been Negro,” Reverend Filburn said. “Two were white. That’s why it made the news. That’s … unfortunately … why so many people cared. White SCOPE workers … they’ll get the attention from the press. But Negro folk won’t trust Southern whites, so we’ll bring these bright, motivated students down from up north.”
“I understand,” I said.
He tilted his head, looking at me from behind his thick glasses. “Why do you feel so strongly about this?” he asked.
“I know it’s unjust that so many people—have a hard time registering,” I said. “I can sit home and gripe about it or I can … act on my convictions.” I imagined Aunt Carol sitting beside me on the pew. “I … I see the dirt road we drove in on.” I gestured toward the road. “The awful condition of some of the houses and buildings. The fact that your pharmacy can’t get everything it needs. And I know voting makes a difference in getting those things taken care of.”
He looked at me wordlessly for a moment. “Yes, it does,” he said finally, getting to his feet. “Leave me your address. I’ll make a call.”
* * *
Back in my car, Brenda turned to look at me. “You’re not seriously thinking of doing this, are you?” she asked.
“I am,” I said, turning the key in the ignition.
“It’s crazy, Ellie! You’d have to sleep in colored homes! Do you really want to do that?”
I hesitated. “It’s hard to picture sleeping in any stranger’s home,” I admitted. I turned onto the dirt road, my car bouncing in and out of a deep rut. “But sounds like it comes with the job. I’d want to be treated like the other students.”
“If God had meant us all to live together, he wouldn’t have made us different colors,” Brenda said.
I looked at her in exasperation. “That’s the most ignorant comment I’ve ever heard you make,” I said. But I suddenly remembered back to the year before, when two Negro girls moved into our dorm. We all had to share one large bathroom, and Brenda suggested we put a COLORED sign on one of the stalls so Dora and Midge would only use that one. I thought she’d been making a bad joke. Right now I wondered. We rarely talked about race. We were white girls who’d grown up in a mostly white town. Race didn’t come up much in our conversations.
Even if it came up often in my thoughts.
Chapter 5
KAYLA
2010
The drive from Bader and Duke Design to my father’s home in Round Hill takes thirty-five minutes and I usually listen to pop music to lift my mood as I drive, but I’m so anxious right now that I forget to turn on the radio. I can’t get “Ann Smith” out of my head. I keep glancing in my rearview mirror to see if I’m being followed. Maybe I returned to work too soon. Took on too much. Maybe the woman is no threat at all and it’s simply that I’ve come to see life itself as a threat. I never feel safe anymore. Worse, I never feel as though the people I love are safe. My dreams, when I can sleep, are filled with blood and death. I know tonight’s dream will be even worse. How am I going to get that bizarre woman out of my head? I shudder when I think of her mentioning Rainie. I can’t bear the thought of anything happening to my daughter.
The police hadn’t seemed all that concerned about “Ann Smith,” but they hadn’t been in the room with the woman. They hadn’t felt her malignant presence, how she seemed to study me from behind her mirrored glasses as though she wanted to memorize every detail of my face. How she knew about Jackson’s death. It would be one thing if she were just some nut threatening to kill someone. Somehow, though, she knew about my life. Did she mention Rainie by name? I don’t think so. I’d remember if she had. But she knows that my daughter and I live in Round Hill and that we’ll soon be moving into the new house at the end of Shadow Ridge Lane. And as if she’d crawled inside my head, she even knew how I feel about the new neighborhood these days: All those trees suck the breath out of you, she said. Yes, that’s exactly right.