Passing through Perfect (Wyattsville #3)(23)

It was several minutes before Tilly spoke again. “I know you got a lot of sorrows inside your heart, but dying is part of living. Sure as a body’s born they’re gonna die. It’s God’s plan.”

“But why now?” Delia sobbed. “She never even got to know Isaac.”

Tilly pulled Delia closer and rubbed her back with gentle strokes. “Your mama surely did know Isaac. She knew him and loved him. All those pictures you sent was the same as coming for a visit. Why, Mary showed me those pictures a hundred or more times and bragged on that boy like he was the smartest ever born.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Tilly answered and continued to rub her back.





The dusk of evening was settling in the sky when they finally left. Although Delia had wanted to know the circumstances of her mama’s death, it brought little comfort to learn she’d collapsed in the backyard and lay there in the scorching hot sun until that evening when George got hungry and went in search of his wife. He found her behind the honeysuckle bush, but by then she was gone. There was no autopsy and no definitive cause of death. Mary Finch was simply a Negro woman who was dead. It was what it was.

According to Tilly, George left town two days after Mary was laid to rest. He took only his clothes, said goodbye to no one, and left no forwarding address.

The following Sunday morning when the parishioners came for church service the pulpit was empty. Brother John led the congregation in the Lord’s Prayer and the singing of three hymns; after that everyone went home. No explanation was ever given for George’s sudden disappearance. Some said he went back to Ohio where he supposedly had a sister; others said a man’s wife dying as she did was reason enough for leaving town and it made no never-mind where he went.

Brother Anders arrived two weeks later. That’s when the parsonage house was cleaned and readied for him. Any personal leftovers were removed and passed on to needy families.

As Benjamin drove by what had once been her family’s house, Delia buried her face in her hands and tried not to see. Before they’d reached the corner she spread her fingers and took one last look back.

A light lit the room that was once her bedroom.





Delia





Sometimes I think I haven’t got another tear left inside of me. I cried an ocean over these past six years, and now I’ve come to a point where I’m dried out. I’ve got no more tears to give. I tell myself, You done cried over everything there is to cry about, and I get to believing I’m never gonna shed another tear.

The thing is that ain’t true. I still got a lot of hurt inside, and it’s the kind of hurt that don’t go away easy. It ain’t your head what causes the crying, it’s your heart. Heart hurts is something a body can’t do a damn thing about.

When we went back to Twin Pines, I figured for sure Daddy would be big enough to forgive and forget. What good can come of carrying a grudge against your own daughter? As we was driving in I pictured him sitting all alone in that big chair, nobody to cook him supper, nobody to give him a goodnight kiss. I was thinking maybe, just maybe, Daddy would ask us to come and live in that nice house the church gave him. Never in a million years did I think he’d leave without so much as a goodbye.

Daddy’s supposed to be a godly man, but the truth is Benjamin’s ten times more godly than Daddy. He got a heart filled with love and he got a soul filled with kindness. Even when he’s so tired his legs could fall off, he still got strength enough to do a kindness for Daddy Church. It ain’t the preaching what makes a man godly, it’s the doing.

I thank the good Lord for Benjamin. This ain’t an easy life, but one thing I know for sure: he ain’t never gonna turn his back on our boy. Knowing that makes up for a whole lot of doing without.





The Sadness of Bakerstown





Once they returned home from Twin Pines Delia became as dry and sorrowful as a dead tree. She seldom gave voice to her thoughts but kept picturing her mama lying dead in the hot sun.

“This Alabama heat is too much for anyone,” she’d say. “It’s likely Mama died of sunstroke.”

In February a cold spell came through, and even though there was a morning frost on the windowpanes Delia still complained about the heat of the sun.

“We ought to think about moving north,” she said, then slid into stories of the time when her family had lived in Ohio. “They got nice cool evenings in Ohio and winters where a person can see real snow!”

“Yeah,” Benjamin answered, “and they also got a short growing season.”

For the past five years Benjamin had made a good living with year-round crops, so Delia couldn’t argue the point. Still, that didn’t lessen her growing dislike of Alabama.

A few days later she began talking about how the schools were better.

“There’s places where coloreds go to school same as whites,” she said. “Whites in the morning, coloreds in the afternoon. Same school, same exact seats.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Benjamin said and turned away.

When Delia persisted, he flat out said that he and Otis had gotten the farm to where it was earning a good living and he wasn’t leaving—not for weather, not for schools, and certainly not because Delia now had a suspicion her daddy may have gone back to Ohio.