The Last House on the Street(30)

“Less alone?” Ellie offers.

“Exactly,” I said.

“I’m glad,” she said. “You let me know if you ever want to practice some yoga. No charge, of course. It’s always nice to have a partner.”

“I will,” I say, wondering if I could fit that in.

“I hope I haven’t made you late picking up your daughter.”

“Oh no. My father just lives over on Painter Lane.”

Her smile grows uncertain. “What’s his name?” she asks. “Your father?”

I suddenly remember Daddy saying something about hanging out with the Hockley kids in a tree house. “I think you knew him,” I say. “Reed Miller.”

She hesitates a moment. I can’t read her expression. It’s flat, but there’s something brewing behind it. “Ah,” she says finally. Then she turns away from me, abruptly. Over her shoulder she calls, “Have a nice afternoon, now.”

I stare after her, confused by such an awkward ending to a comfortable visit. One thing I know for sure, though: she knew my father.





Chapter 14



ELLIE


1965

I’d been dozing on the van’s long middle seat for a couple of hours when Chip called out, “We’re here, you guys! Wake up.”

I sat up as we bounced along a potholed driveway onto the campus of Morris Brown College in Atlanta, where our orientation would be held. The buildings looked old and weather-beaten, some of them brick, some wood. We checked in in one of the main buildings, where a woman handed each of us a folder, a black and white SCOPE button, and our dorm room assignment. Peggy was ahead of me in line and I could tell that she was not at all happy to discover that, of the hundreds of students at the orientation, I’d been assigned as her roommate. I heard her actually groan at the news. I didn’t like her any more than she liked me. My attempts at conversation with her and David in the van were often left hanging in the air. Chip, while not exactly warm, had at least made some small talk with me, but I had a bad feeling. If four white students couldn’t connect any better than this, how could we expect white and Negro to get along?

Together, Peggy and I lugged our belongings out the door and across the campus to the ancient girls’ dorm, Gaines Hall, where a sign on the door read NO SMOKING, NO DRINKING, NO MEN.

“Oh, this mattress!” Peggy said, once she’d dropped her suitcase on the floor of our tiny room and sat down on the squeaky bed.

I sat on my own mattress and felt the springs give way under my weight. “I think these mattresses have been here since the place was built,” I said.

I set my suitcase on the bed and began hanging up my skirts and blouses, while Peggy headed for the door. “Where are you going?” I asked.

“To find David,” she said without a glance in my direction.

She left and I stared at the door as it closed behind her. I felt very alone. Here I was, on a campus where I knew no one, with a roommate who didn’t like me. Would all the students treat me so coolly? There wasn’t much I could do about my accent or my heritage. I missed Brenda, whom I knew I was losing to Garner and a baby. I missed Aunt Carol, who would have cheered me on. And I missed Reed, who loved me more than I deserved. In that moment I would have given just about anything to feel his arms around me.

I wanted to go outside to explore a bit but thought I’d better read over the orientation material instead. Tonight was a welcoming session. Monday through Friday looked like very long days filled with speeches and training sessions and workshops. We’d learn about the history of Negroes in America and there would be a lot of sessions about the South with a capital “S.” I wondered what I had yet to learn about the land I’d lived in my whole life. The words began to swim in my vision and before I knew it, Peggy was waking me up to go to dinner and the welcoming session.



* * *



We filled the metal folding chairs in the sweltering gymnasium and listened to a number of speakers warn us of the danger in the weeks ahead. The head of SCOPE, Reverend Hosea Williams, whose name was familiar to me after all the reading I’d been doing, introduced what felt like dozens of other folks who had various roles in the program. Everyone who spoke gave us the same message: our work was important but dangerous. We needed to keep our wits about us, be sure to let someone know where we were at all times, and always be mature representatives of the program. And we had to produce. I knew that meant we needed to persuade people to register to vote. I looked around me at the serious faces—all those white students from up north and out west, as well as a good number of Negro volunteers who would help us connect with distrustful residents. I listened to the speakers and thought to myself, What am I doing here? I’d never felt so out of place in my entire life.

At the end of the evening, a gray-haired woman named Mrs. Clark taught us “freedom songs.” “You’ll know ’em all by heart by the end of the week,” she promised, handing out the mimeographed lyrics. I liked singing, but in that cavernous space, with unfamiliar melodies, my voice sounded as small and inconsequential as I felt. When we sang “We Shall Overcome,” our last song of the night and the only one slightly familiar to me, I felt so false. I had nothing to overcome. It wasn’t until I was lying, hot and exhausted, on my sagging mattress later that night, that I realized I carried a huge burden of my own creation—a burden it would take a miracle for me to overcome.