Ellie is looking down the road as though she can see straight through my house and the forest behind it to the lake. “Once upon a time, it was a pretty little lake,” she says. “There was a path that went right by it and I would walk that way to school every day.”
“What school?” I frown. There is no school in that area that I know of.
“There used to be a school a quarter mile or so past the lake,” she says. “Grade school. They tore it down when they built the new one when I was twelve or thirteen.”
“Wow,” I say, trying to picture how different my backyard must have looked then. “It’s got to be strange for you to be back here after so long.”
She turns and looks squarely at me as if she’s coming back from wherever her memories had taken her. “Stranger than you can imagine,” she says. “And if I could control my own life, I wouldn’t be here at all. But here I am.” She holds up the bag of za’atar. “Thanks again.” She reaches for the door, my cue to leave.
“Enjoy it,” I say as I start down the porch steps. Ellie doesn’t go into the house right away and I feel her eyes on me.
When I reach the sidewalk, she calls out, “Kayla?”
I turn to look at her. She has one hand on the door handle, the other clutching the bag of herbs. “Take the tree house down,” she says, and then she adds, “Please,” and I know there is more that concerns her about that tree house than just a few old rotting boards.
Chapter 18
ELLIE
1965
Dear Brenda,
I’ve thought about you every day since I left, hoping you’re feeling better and that you and Garner are as happy as you were on your wedding day. I miss you so much already!
I’m only about twenty miles from home but I might as well be on another planet. I also don’t feel quite like Ellie Hockley any longer. During my week in Atlanta, I think I went through a sort of metamorphosis, one that I’m still experiencing. It was phenomenal! Martin Luther King actually spoke to us! I was so close to him. I know you don’t share my excitement about that sort of thing; I wouldn’t have been all that excited about it a month ago myself, but it’s part of the change in me I’m talking about. I understand now how important it is for Negroes to be able to vote. I won’t go on about all that. I just wish I could sit down and talk to you about it.
So, I arrived in Flint Sunday morning. We spent the night in a run-down special education school. Then today we were driven to the homes we’ll be staying in while we’re working in the area. I’m the only white girl working “in the field,” as the other one, Jocelyn, decided to stay in the school building and do office work. I’ll be canvassing out in the boonies. Remember when we went to Turner’s Bend to meet Reverend Filburn? Well, that was like New York City compared to where I am now. It’s very rural. The houses are mostly spread out from one another, some a half mile apart! I will definitely be getting my exercise as I walk from house to house. Only one of the students has a car here, but he’s not allowed to use it in his assignment. He has to walk like the rest of us. Most of the people in this part of Derby County are sharecroppers. They are so poor and they live in terrible conditions. Honestly, it’s so much worse than I imagined.
Curry Barnes is a local man who is helping our leader, Greg （Reverend Filburn）， drive us around. He’s twenty-five or so and a serious chain-smoker. He’s the one who drove me to my assignment today, taking me way out into the country. He turned onto this “road” that is more of a path, full of ruts from the last rain. I was certain we were going to get stuck or blow a tire. Then he just dropped me off in front of this tiny old shack, winked at me, and said “Take care of yourself,” and I can tell you, I never felt so alone. There wasn’t another house anywhere that I could see, though there were tobacco barns and fields all around me. I took pictures and I’ll send some when I get them developed. You won’t believe what it’s like.
The whole house is about the size of your bedroom. I went up the rickety steps and knocked on the door. An old dog laid there on the porch and it was so hot, he didn’t even bother getting up to see who I was. All of a sudden, four little girls ran out the door and onto the porch and they were all over me! They knocked me down with their exuberance. I didn’t bother getting up. I just sat there, a sweaty mess, with these kids laughing and climbing on me and running their hands over my hair and my face and then the littlest one—GiGi—settled herself in my arms. She smiled up at me and I felt—it’s hard to describe—I wanted to cry. The children were so cute and so happy, but they live in such a sad place.