Freedom's Just Another Word Read online

  “It was because she was so close to the forbidden tree that Satan could entice her into tasting the deadly fruit. It is his policy to send temptations through hands we do not suspect. Drinking and music make you more susceptible to the lies of the devil.”

  Steering with one hand, I riffled through the bags beside me to find the red licorice I’d brought along, and offered a piece to Marsha to shut her up. She and Sister Beatrice each took one, but it didn’t have the result that I’d hoped for. Although she chewed on every bite at least a hundred times, she still managed to tell me more about Jesus and more about the consequences of sin, as well as the last judgment, and fishes and vessels, and rewards for the faithful.

  It started to pour, which was good, because the sound of the rain combined with the shhh-shhh-shhh of the tires on the wet highway and the rhythm of the wipers drowned out Marsha’s attempt at exorcising me of my demons. I was soon lulled into a dream-like state where I no longer heard her voice and could think, instead, about my own life. My future as a blues musician.

  And Clarence. I started to think about him.

  I hated having to leave so soon, especially after what happened at The Beehive. He didn’t say anything, but I knew he was upset. I knew he couldn’t stand to have another person in his life leave him—first it was Johnny Foster, then Thelma, and now me. Everybody that mattered to him was gone.

  But I had no choice. I had no choice.

  I thought Clarence would be glad that I’d offered to take Johnny’s medals down to Amarillo, to Agnes Foster. He’d talked about doing it for years, but never made it back to Texas after Johnny died. I figured that since Albuquerque and Amarillo were both on Route 66, I could hit Agnes’s curio shop on my way to Austin. If I didn’t have time on the way down, I could go after. To me, it seemed like a good idea.

  “Oh, no, I don’t…I don’t think so,” said Clarence. It had been warm the night before, so we were outside on the deck that overlooked the lot behind the garage. He didn’t offer any kind of an explanation, just sipped his cola and stared at the stars.

  “It’s not far from where I’m going.”

  “Amarillo’s nowhere near Austin,” he protested. “Five hundred miles anyway.” He thought for a minute. “It’s up in the panhandle.”

  “Yeah, but I’ll be taking a bus from Albuquerque, and that’s on Route 66. Only a few hours to Amarillo.” I crushed ice between my teeth. “It’s no problem, Clarence. And I’ll be super careful with those medals, honest I will.”

  I could tell from the expression on his face that he wasn’t worried about me losing the medals, and he wasn’t concerned how far out of my way the trip might take me. No, Clarence didn’t want me to go to Agnes Foster’s curio shop, and I demanded to know why.

  “What’s going on, Clarence?” I said. “You’ve been wanting to get those medals back to Johnny’s mother for as long as I can remember.”

  “I think I will mail them—tomorrow.” He nodded his head as if to convince himself. “Yeah. Tomorrow.”

  “You told me you would never trust those medals to the postal service.” I looked him straight in the eye. “What is it, Clarence? Don’t you have faith in me?” I couldn’t figure out what his problem was, and gave up trying. “Okay, go ahead and mail the damn things.” I got up and went back inside. Then I opened the screen door and yelled to him. “I’ll check in with Agnes Foster when I’m down there. Make sure they arrived safely.”

  “No!” Clarence jumped out of his chair and into the kitchen.

  “What’s wrong? What is it?”

  He took a deep breath, then went to the sink and got himself a glass of water. He splashed some of it onto his face.

  “Do whatever you want, Easy. You’re eighteen now. You can do whatever you want. I can’t stop you.”

  Can’t stop me? What’s that supposed to mean?

  Just the thought of those war medals got Clarence so bent out of shape, I felt guilty for even mentioning them. I decided to take them with me anyway, since I knew he’d be relieved once Agnes had them in her possession.

  It was Sister Beatrice who drew me out of my thoughts, and back to the yellow submarine.

  “Why don’t you have a rest, Louisiana. Marsha can take over now.”

  “Please, call me Easy,” I said, pulling off to the side of the road to switch places with my Bible-thumping co-pilot.

  “Why were you named Louisiana?” asked Marsha, sliding out the car door.

  I shifted to the passenger side while she made her way around the station wagon. She smoothed out the front of her jumper, stretched her neck, then took her place at the wheel.

  “My parents are from there. From Vinton.” I reached over into the seat behind me and grabbed my purse to check for the medals. I’d wrapped them up in a remnant of fabric from Thelma’s sewing box, then put them inside a brown envelope.

  “Where’s Vinton?” asked Sister Beatrice.

  “It’s a Cajun town,” I replied, passing around more licorice. “Down in the bayou.” I smiled. “You know, Janis told me that she used to go there all the time. To listen to music.”

  Marsha started to hum a hymn, as if to drive out any evil forces I might have conjured up by mentioning Janis’s name. I gazed out the window and watched North Dakota go by in ribbons of greens and golds, clear and bright against the rainy gray sky and thought back to what Clarence had told me before I’d left.

  “Austin isn’t Saskatoon,” he said, watching me finish the last of my packing. I didn’t know if he was trying to talk me out of going, or simply warning me, but he didn’t look any too happy about my impending trip.

  “I know.”

  “No, Easy. You don’t know. Don’t be fooled by all the talk about civil rights. Things are just as bad as ever. Worse even, because the white folks resent us even more.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “You haven’t faced racism, Easy—”

  “Yes, I have,” I argued. “Remember Miss Poultice? And I took a lot of crap in school, too. And what about last night, Clarence? If I’d been a white girl, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  “Everything you’ve seen, everything you’ve experienced here in Saskatoon is nothing—nothing like you’re gonna see in Texas. A lot of white folks are all right, but a lot of them would like nothing more than to spit in your face, Easy. And the problem is, you can’t tell one from the other until it’s too late.” He opened the door that led downstairs. “Don’t forget to tell me when you’re leaving,” he added.

  “Clarence—wait!” I stopped him before he went to work. “I know what you’ve been through—you and Thelma. She told me about the Negro Motorist Green Book. She told me—”

  “Did she tell you what it was like to have to worry about driving through a sunset town—a town where they could arrest a black person simply for being there after dark? Did she tell you how humiliating it was to have to carry a guide to tell you what restaurants would accept you and what ones would throw you out?”

  “But Clarence,” I argued, “they stopped printing that book six years ago.”

  “I know, Easy. I know.” He shook his head back and forth. “But I have a feeling you’re gonna wish they hadn’t.”

  

  “Let’s stop for a meal,” said Sister Beatrice, and once again my focus was drawn back into the car. The rain was still coming down, but I liked it. It smelled fresh and clean when I let the mist blow in through the window.

  By this time, we’d passed through a good chunk of North Dakota, and were almost to the church in Belfield, where we’d be staying the night. The nuns planned on sleeping in a residence nearby; I brought along my sleeping bag and would be roughing it in the pews. But we all agreed that since we’d made better time than expected, it might not be a bad idea to stop for dinner.

  It was one of those family restaurants that you find on high
ways, with dishes already filled with rubbery Jell-O and congealed rice pudding and big thick pies behind glass. You have to point at what you want, and the person serving you never gets it right; so if you want lime Jell-O, you might end up with coconut cream pie. When we came through the door, everyone looked up and smiled reverently when they saw that two of us were nuns. Marsha sucked it all in, and floated a few inches off the ground. I walked stiffly, self-conscious of the fact that they likely reckoned I’d either run away from a mission, or was out on a day pass for good behavior.

  I had french fries and a Coke. It was all I could afford on my budget. (As much as I hated to admit it, I had to keep enough money for airfare home, in case things didn’t go as expected.) Sister Beatrice and Marsha had big shrimp platters with rolls and salad because the pope was picking up their tab. Marsha left more than half of it, though, so I finished it off.

  This was the first meal I’d ever eaten with nuns in my life, and I stupidly forgot about saying grace. So when the waitress put the plate in front of me, I grabbed the ketchup bottle, banged on it a few times, then dove into my food. Marsha pursed her lips, flared her thin nostrils, and gave me “the look.” Her eyes blazed, but her voice was unemotional when she finally observed, “We haven’t said grace.”

  “Oh, God. I mean…oh, dear. I’m sorry.” I pulled a half-eaten french fry out of my mouth and returned it to my plate. Then I folded my hands and hung my head.

  I’d hoped Sister Beatrice would say the grace, because I figured she’d be much quicker. But she deferred to Marsha, who carried on and on in her woebegone voice, praying so vigorously that it didn’t seem like we were giving thanks for our dinner. It was more like we were all in a leaky canoe and could hear the falls just ahead.

  Once she’d finished, I returned to my (cold) supper and watched her eat; from the corner of my eye, I followed the progress of each bite. I got to wondering why she wanted to be a nun. What turned her so sour in the first place? It was as if Marsha was encased in glass; there was no getting inside her mind, and that was what made her so boring. So insipid. And despite what I imagined were hundreds and hundreds of hours of long prayers every night on bony knees, I doubted very much that God was too interested in her either.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I was already thinking that this is what purgatory must be like when Marsha decided to embark on the painstaking process of choosing her new name. After forty-eight hours of travel and seven meals with her, plus two nights tossing and turning on a hard pew with Mother Mary and a choir of angels looking down on me in judgment, I was in no mood to listen. It was Sunday morning, and we were on our way to the western edge of Denver. Sister Beatrice had explained that we would be spending the day at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Convent. I declined, telling her I’d planned on taking in the sights. Actually, I’d planned on doing some busking, but since it was the Sabbath, I wasn’t sure if she’d approve. For me, Sunday was the day to do exactly what I would on any other day, but feel guilty doing it.

  Sister Beatrice was at the wheel, with Marsha beside her, and I was fidgeting in the backseat, when old sourpuss got this sudden urge to decide what she’d be called. I gathered from their conversation that when she became a novice and began to wear the full habit, she’d be given a new name by the Mother Superior. She was allowed to make suggestions, and from the sound of it, the church usually went with the choice of the individual. All of this was slated to happen in early October. By then she’d be back in Saskatoon—and, with any luck, I wouldn’t.

  “What about Ivanna?” she asked Sister Beatrice. “It means God is gracious.” Then, in a somber voice, she tried another one. “I could be called Sister Nastasiya.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Sister Beatrice politely. We were stopped at a red light, otherwise she might not have, and we’d have been spared the pietistic definition.

  “It means of the resurrection. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  Sister Beatrice gave a little nod. “So you will be taking a Ukrainian name, then?”

  “Perhaps. To reflect my heritage.” Although that was the only thing she’d said so far that made any sense to me, I had the feeling that if Marsha looked far enough into that ancestry of hers, she’d find more than lovers of cabbage rolls and perogies. She’d probably turn up a few judges, some jury members, and at least one executioner.

  Then she changed her mind. “Maybe I won’t take a Ukrainian name. Maybe it should be something universal, like Faith or Hope.”

  No mention of charity.

  By the time we’d parked the yellow submarine at the convent, and Marsha had returned to her heritage and finally penciled in her choice—Bohuslava, which meant God’s glory—I’d decided that it was a good thing to be named after a state. Less pretentious. Nothing to live up to. So while Sister Bohuslava spent the day with her fellow holier-than-thous, I took my accordion to the first park I could find in the hope of attracting a few listeners and maybe some cash.

  The Mile High City really is a mile above sea level, and the downtown district, being only a few miles east of the Rocky Mountain foothills, offered such a magnificent view, I wished I had a camera so I could take some shots to show Clarence and Larry. In fact, the mountains, visible in all of their snow-topped magnificence, looked just like mountains should. Against the backdrop of a cerulean sky, they offered such spectacular scenery that I almost hated to leave. Almost, but not quite, because even though Austin probably wouldn’t present itself quite as dramatically as Denver, it’d still have Janis Joplin in it.

  I’d barely started playing my accordion when a group of girls approached me and told me to stop.

  “I will not.”

  “Yes, you will, you disgusting—” She used the n word, but Thelma always told me that if anyone ever addressed me in so vile a way, I must erase it from my mind, like I’d never heard it in the first place.

  There were five of them. All of them were white. All but one of them were blonde, and she was a brunette with a temper. She tried to pull the frottoir off my neck.

  “What an ugly thing it is,” she hissed, tugging at the strap and almost choking me to death in the process.

  “Leave me alone!” I protested. “I’m not bothering you or anyone else. Mind your own—”

  “You horrible, smelly, dirty—” She used that word again.

  Smelly? I hadn’t had a bath for a couple of days, but my clothes were clean. Smelly?

  Two older women walked past carrying parcels. They watched as the gang of girls circled me, but they didn’t offer any help. They ignored the situation and went on their way.

  I was scared, but figured the best approach was to do nothing, and maybe they’d leave. It turned out to be the worst approach. Some guys—boyfriends of theirs—joined them. The biggest one, who looked like a football player, proudly sported a KKK symbol on his shirt, and the look in his eye told me that if I didn’t get out of their park voluntarily, he’d see to it that I did. Feet first.

  I pushed my accordion around to the front of my chest and was about to bolt, when I remembered something else Thelma said.

  If you meet up with bigots, Easy, you must protect yourself and walk away. But never run. Never run.

  So I walked away. They continued to put me down—their slurs hitting me in the back like arrows—but I kept going. Through the park. Back to the yellow submarine. Back to the safety of the convent. Back to Marsha, even if I’d have to admit to conducting business on a Sunday. Maybe that was why this happened to me. I went around the back of the convent to where the nuns were all having tea in the garden and found Sister Beatrice first.

  “I never thought it would happen in Denver,” I said.

  “What is it? What happened?”

  “I knew that I’d have to face it in the deep South—”

  “Face what?”

  “Did you know the Ku Klux Klan was here in Denver?” I asked
her.

  She turned down her mouth and nodded. “I did. They’ve been gunning for us Catholics too.” She put an arm around my back. “Tell me what they did to you, Louisiana.”

  She sat me down and brought me something to drink. Marsha was still trying out Bohuslava on the other Sisters, but when she finally joined us, and listened to my story, her face actually softened a bit. I detected a small but definite chink in her armor.

  She didn’t say a word. In fact, it was almost as if she couldn’t say a word. As if she didn’t know how to show emotion, or relate to my pain. Instead of giving me a hug, or reminding me that people like those girls are sickos with problems of their own, or screaming out loud about the injustices of the world, she stood in stony silence. And by the time she did say something, she’d managed to replace that one brick I’d knocked from the wall around her heart.

  “I will pray for you,” she said solemnly.

  “Pray for me?”

  “I’ll pray that it doesn’t happen again.”

  Gee, thanks, Marsha. That ought to help.

  Luckily, Sister Beatrice decided to cut her stay at the convent short and get back on the road the next morning. And while I was wise enough to realize that the jerks I’d had the misfortune of meeting in the park were not a representative sample of the otherwise decent citizens of Denver, I was still relieved when we finally crossed the state line, and left “Kolorado” behind us forever.

  

  I’d heard a lot about Route 66, not only the stories about Johnny Foster’s mother and her curio shop, but also reminiscences from people I’d met who had traveled it from end to end. I’d read Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath in high school, about the dust bowl in the 1930s and the farm workers that went west to California in search of work. And I knew from Clarence that the towns along Route 66 would soon be bypassed by the new Interstate highway.