Free Glory Be by Augusta Scattergood Page B

Emma. I looked at the big plate wrapped in tinfoil. “Who are they?”
    “I got four or five folks sleeping on my sofa and in the back room.”
    “Who?” I asked again.
    Emma sat at the kitchen table like she was plum worn out. She pulled her chair close to me. “Young folks from up north, like your friend Laura’s mother. Your daddy knows,” she said. “Some white people have fired maids for keeping civil rights workers, Freedom Workers, at their houses. But Brother Joe don’t mind.”
    “Laura’s mother’s a Freedom Worker. Least that’s what Frankie called her. He says it like freedom’s something bad.” I picked at a scab on my arm. I couldn’t look at Emma. “Wonder if they’ll try to get the pool opened up. Frankie says it’s closed because of all the Yankees like Laura in town.”
    “Civil rights people here got a heap of things need doing besides that pool. Important things, like helping us figure out how to vote, teaching children to read,” Emma said. “It’s good you and Laura are friends. I suspect she’s lonely sitting at the library, what with hermama gone over to the new clinic.”
    “Frankie’s mad about me being friends with Laura. His daddy says for him not to play with me.” I looked right at Emma and took a deep breath. “And now the pool’s closed,” I said. “And you’ve got Yankees visiting. Lots of stuff is happening here, Emma.”
    Emma took my hand and held it up next to hers.
    “Praying hands,” I whispered.
    “Praying hands. We got a lot to pray over, baby.” She pushed herself up from the table, finished wrapping up the fudge to take home.
    I went to the porch to think. Fireflies blinked on and off in the front yard, and the crickets chirped so loud it was hard to get my thoughts straight. Maybe I could just write another letter to that newspaper. Say how mean it was for a policeman to accuse any old boy out just riding on the highway of causing trouble. My daddy wouldn’t need to know who wrote it. None of his church people would ever find out. A whole lot of those letters didn’t have names signed to them. I could be Anonymous like they were.
    When I peered down the sidewalk, Emma was waiting for her friend Mr. Miles’s Liberty taxicab that picked her up some nights. I looked again, and finally,here came Jesslyn holding her sandals in one hand, fanning herself with a magazine with the other.
    “Jesslyn’s home!” I started down to meet her. “Did you have fun in Memphis with Mary Louise?” I yelled.
    Emma mumbled something about Jesslyn not having the brains the good Lord gave a flea. Then she juggled the tinfoil-wrapped fudge and her giant pocketbook and eased herself into the backseat of the taxi. Lucky for Jesslyn, they drove off before Emma had a chance to ask anything about the so-called trip to Memphis.
    Pretty soon, our daddy crossed the street and stood on the front porch. When we followed him inside, he carefully lined up his sermon and his Bible on the front hall table. “You and Mary Louise get what you needed?” he asked. “The fire baton and all?”
    “We had fun, but I didn’t buy anything ’cept some new magazines.” She held up her movie magazine, which I knew she’d had all summer. “I’m tired, Daddy. Think I’ll go upstairs to bed.” Jesslyn gave me a keep your mouth shut look, and so I did. She walked in the kitchen, poured some iced tea, and took her glass upstairs. She pulled the hall phone into the bathroom and shut the door tight, with the extra-long cordsquished underneath the door.
    I sat on my bed, real quiet so I could hear her.
    Jesslyn was whispering. “We took a drive to Elvis’s house in Tupelo — and got stopped by the police on the way home.”
    It had to be Mary Louise on the phone. I lay down on my bed and opened The Witch Tree Symbol . When Jesslyn stopped talking, I marked my place with a bookmark made out of a magnolia leaf I’d pressed in Bible School. Jesslyn waltzed into our room wearing pink