Free Till You Hear From Me: A Novel by Pearl Cleage Page B

so myself.” Aretha grinned, looking around for a place to put down the portfolio.
    “Great,” Lu said, disappearing down the hallway. “I can’t wait to see.”
    “Put it here,” I said, moving the ice tea tray to a smaller table in the corner that was full of small sweetgrass baskets that I slid over to one side.
    “Thanks,” she said, laying the portfolio down gently and taking the seat Lu had just vacated. “You’re the Rev’s daughter, right?”
    West End was a small town in the middle of a big city. Everybody knew the Rev and even the people who had arrived after I went away to school and then to work knew he had a daughter.
    “That’s me,” I said. “Are you a photographer?”
    She nodded. “I’m a painter mostly, but I do a lot of photography, too. Some video.”
    “Is that some of your work?”
    Her hand fluttered over it protectively, although I don’t think she was even conscious of the gesture. “Yeah, I’ve been documenting the garden project at Washington ever since Mr. Eddie started it two years ago. They’re giving him an award for Black History Month, so I made a set of prints for them to hang in the main hallway right beside the basketball trophies.”
    This neighborhood has always been big on backyard gardens. A couple of years ago, after Blue Hamilton became the godfather around here, he started encouraging people to plant community gardens on any vacant lot he owned and now the West End Grower’s Association had plots all over the place, growing everything from juicy jumbo tomatoes to giant sunflowers. The Rev never liked to work in the dirt and my mother never had time, so Mr. Eddie taught me everything I know about making things grow. He had a real flair for it and the patience to show a young person how to do it right.
    “I think it’s great Mr. Eddie is getting an award.”
    “Yes,” she said, “but you know how he hates anybody to make a fuss over him. He’s threatening to boycott the ceremony.”
    That sounded about right. Mr. Eddie was notoriously shy. If the Rev craved the spotlight, Mr. Eddie was content to bask in reflected glory.
    “Can I see them?”
    “Sure,” she said, carefully untying the black grosgrain ribbon that held the thing together. I moved my glass out of the way to avoid even the possibility of a spill as she opened it.
    Aretha was a wonderful photographer. The very first image caught your eye and your heart and held you right where she wanted you. There was Mr. Eddie with a serious look on his face, standingin the center of a group of high school kids who were clustered around him wearing overalls and the sheepish, hopeful grins of people about to embark on a journey together. Some of them were holding shovels, and off to the right, you could see a pile of bagged manure from Lowe’s Garden Shop. Two girls were holding a sign that said “Booker T. Washington High School Garden Project,” and behind them, you could see the statue for which the school is famous, Dr. Washington himself pulling back the veil of ignorance from the face of a newly liberated bondsman.
    “That was the first day,” Aretha said. “There’s Lu right there next to Mr. Eddie.”
    Lu had linked her arm through his affectionately and I could see a great big Obama button pinned to the bib of her overalls.
    “She’s the one who got him to do it in the first place. They had a perfect plot of land to work with, but nobody had ever done a garden there, so when Lu asked about getting some other kids together to grow stuff, they told her she needed an adult volunteer to make sure they did it right, and a budget they could raise themselves since the school didn’t have any funds to support them.”
    There was loud laughter from the kitchen.
    “But you know Lu, right? She didn’t let that stop her for a minute. With the parents she’s got, she came out of the womb organizing people.”
    We could hear the group from down the hall coming our way. Princess Joyce Ann came first,