As the Trailways bus rambled toward Naples, Priscilla yawned politely and stretched, taking care not to bump into the older woman sitting next to her. She reminded Priscilla a little of her grandma—tiny and hunched over, with hands swollen and disfigured from a lifetime of working in the fields. Priscilla had been trying to read on the long bus ride from Daytona, with some success on the Sanford to Tampa stretch, but then began dozing off, tired from working late in the college laundry. One employee went home sick, so she’d been doing the job of two people but complaining was unthinkable. Working until midnight—even in a hot and humid laundry— was easy compared to what her grandma did, day after day. The older woman suddenly elbowed her and cried out, pointing to something outside the bus window. Even wedged as they were in the farback seat of the colored section, it was hard to miss: a brand-new, oversized billboard with lime-green lettering. Welcome to Dreamsville! the sign hollered. What in the world? Priscilla thought. And then they passed another, identical to the first. This time, Priscilla got more than a glimpse. Accompanying the astonishing words was a stylized illustration of an idealized American couple. A white gal was tastefully reclined in a lounge chair with a long cigarette in one hand and a cute little mixed drink—the kind with an umbrella in it—beside her on a small table. A white fellow, presumably her husband, loomed in the foreground with an expensive-looking fishing pole in one hand and a golf club in the other, grinning so broadly it was scary. Lord, Priscilla thought, you’d think God himself had just handed him the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. Imagine going through life with that amount of self-assurance. The couple, to Priscilla’s eyes, looked vaguely Northern. For one thing, they were tan. With the exc eption of men who worked outdoors—a farmer with his red neck from driving a tractor, or a fisherman with de ep crows’-feet wrinkles acquired from squinting at the water—local white folks protected their skin from the sun. In fact, it was said among black folks that the Caucasians of Collier County were so white that looking at them hurt your eyes. Priscilla tried not to join in when others joked like that. White folks couldn’t help being white any more than she could help the fact that she was not. Besides, she’d been treated exc eptionally well by white folks. Most of them, anyway. The other indication that the folks d epicted in the sign were supposed to be Yankees was, in a word, jewelry. The gal on the lounge chair had a ring on one hand that would have made Elizabeth Taylor pass out, plus ropes of gold, pearls, and who-knows-what hanging heavily around her neck. All this, and wearing a bathing suit, too. The man, who wore a polo shirt with some kind of insignia like a family crest or college logo, sported an oversized watch on one wrist. In sociology class, Priscilla had learned that these folks were called “the Northern Leisure Class.” But why would they come to Naples? Who was putting out the welcome mat? And why were there so many? Unlike the South, where there were a handful of rich folks in every small town—with everyone else poor as dirt— there seemed to be a surplus of people with money to burn in Yankeeland. She couldn’t imagine being able to afford one house, let alone one up north and a second one in Florida just for vacations. Vacations! That was a conc ept she couldn’t grasp, either. Life was not a cakewalk for anyone, her granny used to counsel, but sometimes it sure seemed that way from the outside looking in. When the bus passed a third, identical billboard, this time Priscilla noticed the words “Coming Soon!” on a banner that stretched across the lower right corner. Well, whatever was going on, it probably wasn’t good, and Priscilla felt a cool chill move down her spine like someone had just walked over an unsettled grave. Jackie had not said a word on the tel ephone about any of this. Did she not know? Or did she not care? No, Jackie would care. She would be angry, unless she was
in volved in it in some way. But why would she be in volved? Jackie wouldn’t like the idea of someone using “Dreamsville” without her permission, and Priscilla couldn’t imagine Jackie acc epting payment for it, or endorsing a development of some sort, either. That didn’t seem like Jackie’s style. Of course, maybe Jackie hadn’t mentioned it because long-distance calls cost a pretty penny. More than that, though, was a lack of privacy on Priscilla’s end. With more than fifteen girls sharing one phone at the rooming house that was Priscilla’s home-away-from-home at Bethune- Cookman College, someone always seemed to be lurking in the hallway awaiting her turn. Opportunities were ripe for eavesdropping. The other complication was that Priscilla, working in the laundry and attending classes, often missed Jackie’s calls. It was remarkable how much information a nosy floor-mate could glean from a simple phone message, so Jackie quickly learned to avoid chit-chat and to leave a message saying only that Priscilla needed to call home. Whenever Priscilla found one of these messages stuck in the doorjamb of her little room, she felt a little faint. Without fail, she was at first convinced that something had happened to her baby. Maybe Dream was sick and desperately needed her mama. A negligent, selfish, fool-hearted mama who was clear across the state, and almost as far north as the Georgia border, studying English and sociology at a black college where no one knew her secret. The hallway was silent, thanks to the late hour, so Priscilla dropped her book bag and purse and dashed to the phone to call Jackie back. As always she asked the long-distance operator to reverse charges, which made her feel wretched until she forced herself to remember her baby daughter. She was doing this for her child. She would do anything for her child. That was why she was away, to build a better life for herself and, in turn, for Dream. She felt the same way the next morning when she sat in the back of the Trailways bus. She was doing that for Dream, too. Nine years after Mrs. Parks refused to move from the white section of a bus in Birmingham, the colored section was business as usual in Florida. Here it was 1964, the Civil Rights Act had just been signed by President Johnson, and the yellow line that designated the “back of the bus” was as bright and menacing as ever. There were times when Priscilla could sit wherever she wanted, especially if the bus was nearly empty. But if a bus driver was a bigot, he’d tell you to go to the back of the bus. Or, if there were mean-looking white passengers— and you could never tell, really, just from a glance—it was better to go sit in the back of the bus and live to talk about it. This stuck in Priscilla’s craw and she felt that familiar flash of soul-crushing shame, but again, just like those collect calls, they could be tolerated if she was doing it for her child. Jackie had declared that Priscilla should sit wherever she wanted when she rode the bus, but Jackie was a Northerner. More to the point, Jackie was white. What did she know of such things? It was Plain Jane, the poet who paid her bills by writing for strange magazines, who made Priscilla promise to be cautious. Plain Jane, a progressive-minded Southerner although she didn’t look it with her conservative clothes and steel-gray hair that matched her eyes. “Don’t listen to Jackie on this,” she had told Priscilla in a hushed voice on one of her visits home. “You do what you have to.” Old Mrs. Bailey White had overheard and quickly agreed. “Get yourself through college,” she counseled. “That’s your job right now. Ke ep your focus, and don’t get in no fusses.” These words of advice made all the difference. It was still hard. Hard to acc ept their charity for those bus tickets home and for taking care of Dream. But Priscilla was what her granny called “an old soul,” meaning that from the day of her birth she seemed wise beyond her years, as if she’d lived one long life already. She didn’t have all the answers, and she made mistakes, but God had given her the gift of resilience. That, and a very unyouthful tendency to be a good listener when it came to advice, made her seem
much older than her nineteen-and-a-half years. This was an odd arrangement. Unheard of, as a matter of fact, and yet it seemed to be working. There’d been a rough patch a few months earlier when Priscilla learned that her friends had endured some abusive remarks when they were out and about with Dream. At that point, Priscilla was pr epared to come home for good. She would live with her grandma and do her best to raise Dream. Plain Jane and Mrs. Bailey White had straightened out the situation, however. They understood that most Southerners would look the other way unless provoked. Privacy and minding your own business trumped speaking up and interfering. The problem was Jackie, who was in the habit of driving around town with Dream in that crazy convertible. She would take Dream with her into the Winn-Dixie and when people stared she’d say, “What’s the matter, haven’t your ever seen a black child with a white nanny before?” And then she’d laugh out loud. Naturally, that got folks stirred up. And it wasn’t necessary. So on one of Priscilla’s trips home, the remnants of the little book club had a discussion. There was a whole lot of finger-pointing, with Plain Jane and Mrs. Bailey White taking sides against Jackie. Poor Jackie had this harebrained idea that she was somehow helping the civil rights movement. Finally, after hearing them out, Priscilla spoke her mind. It was hard to think of the right words. She prayed to God to help her find them. “Jackie,” she began slowly. Having been in the book club together, they all knew what it meant when Priscilla spoke cautiously. It meant she was trying to think of a way to say something powerful without hurting too many feelings. “Jackie,” she began again, “you know I love you and that I am indebted to you for making it possible for me to go to college. And I know that your heart is in the right place when it comes to helping my people. But you are endangering my child.” There it was, like a bomb had gone off. You are endangering my child. Those were words harsh but true. Of course, Jackie had reacted like someone had dumped a bucket of wet collard greens over her head. Priscilla couldn’t even bear to look at her. But she had said what needed to be said. Plain Jane, who quarreled with Jackie on a fairly regular basis, could not resist adding her two cents. “I told you so,” she said to Jackie. “You were flaunting that baby around like that, just to make a point—” “Ladies, please,” Mrs. Bailey White interrupted. “Let’s all calm down and remember we are friends. We are all in this together. Jackie didn’t mean any harm. She just don’t understand sometimes, that’s all.” Jackie said nothing for the next hour, maybe longer, and avoided eye contact with all of them. Priscilla, meanwhile, had been consumed with despair, thinking she had been rude and ungrateful, and had pushed too far. Plain Jane and Mrs. Bailey White talked about the baby, how much she had grown, about her sle ep habits, and how cute she was, in far more d epth than was necessary. Finally, Plain Jane addressed Jackie. “Didn’t you say that Dream was the smartest little thing you ever saw?” she prompted. Jackie cleared her throat. “Yes, I think she is very advanced. And since I’m the only one here—other than Priscilla, of course—who is a mother, I do think I know what I’m talking about.” “Of course you do,” Priscilla had said quickly. “No one is questioning your instincts or experience,” Plain Jane said. “It’s just that you’re a foreigner here, you don’t understand how to behave—” “A foreigner! Why, excuse me, but I thought we were all citizens of the United States of America. I didn’t realize I needed a passport to live in the Confederate State of Florida.” This was getting nasty but at least it signaled to Priscilla that Jackie was not upset or angry with her. Just the entire South. No one, even Jackie, wanted to take this conversation any further. “Priscilla,” she said bluntly, “I will reign in my boorish Yankee behavior but I will do it for your sake, and for Dream’s. Not for any other reason. And not because I’m wrong.” Six
or seven months had passed and Jackie had held to her promise. No more driving around town with Dream. The baby was transported, and taken out in public, only when necessary. And, no more comments about being a white nanny. As Plain Jane and Mrs. Bailey White predicted, the rumor mill ground to a halt. People didn’t really care as long as they didn’t have their noses rubbed in it. Their attention was focused elsewhere, on some other unlucky target. But now the problem had suddenly flared up again. That was the gist of the conversation when Jackie made the latest phone call. When Priscilla got the message and called back, Jackie seemed to be waiting by the tel ephone. “There is a new problem with us taking care of Dream,” she whispered into the phone. Specifically, she said, that the baby was “residing” at Mrs. Bailey White’s house. And so Priscilla had asked the college’s dean of women students for an emergency leave. Eyebrows were raised, but Priscilla managed to convey in the vaguest of terms that there was a family emergency without providing details that would get her expelled. As the bus pulled away from Daytona Beach, Priscilla said her silent good-bye to the little city on the Atlantic coast where people drove cars on the beach, and to the college where all the students looked like her, and no one thought it delusional to dream of becoming an English teacher or anthropologist. Each time she left, she wrestled with the feeling that perhaps she might never be back.