Every Sunday afternoon in July, Bea has sat down at her desk to write to Gerald. He’s been sending her long letters from Mississippi, once a week since he’s been there, filling her in on everything he’s doing. She has loved reading them. His descriptions of his classroom, the children, and the other volunteers are alive with excitement and passion. Freedom School, it’s called. She’s glad that he seems safer than those who are working on voter registration. Bea was worried when she learned of the men who had been killed, but Gerald promised her that he was in no danger. Everything I’ve learned and experienced, he wrote in his most recent letter, means that I will be a better counselor. I can’t wait to bring all I’ve learned back to school.
Bea reads each letter several times and has kept them all in her desk, in order. It’s almost the end of the month, and he’ll be heading home soon. The letter she’s writing today will be the last one she sends to Mississippi. She has struggled with writing him back because her life seems so tame. All she wants to do is ask questions, to learn more about what he’s doing. Who would have thought, she thinks again and again, that Gerald would be the one to live the exciting life. William, for all his talk, would never have done something like this. She wonders whether Gerald would have done this if William was still alive. She understands now that death has a way of providing freedom.
Dear G, she writes, I’m sad to think that your time there is coming to an end. I have so enjoyed reading these letters. I feel as though I’m there. What an amazing opportunity this has been for you. She remembers writing to her parents all those years ago, deciding what she could write about and what she couldn’t. What might make them happy and what might make them sad. Constructing a life out of the raw pieces. She wonders what Gerald is leaving out, what he is not telling her. There is rarely news about Linda, even though she knows Linda is there, too. Are they living together? Has he proposed to her? Picking up the framed photograph on her desk, the one that Gerald gave her when she went over for the funeral, she smiles at the three young faces. How safe she felt then, with them on either side.