Passing through Perfect (Wyattsville #3)(27)

“But Daddy Church, it ain’t fair.”

“It sure ain’t.”

“The money we got is the same as white folks’ money, so why those stores gotta have signs saying we can’t go in?”

“Plenty of them folks in Bakerstown is getting through by the skin of their teeth. They is like a small toad sitting in a small pond. They ain’t none too crazy about being a small toad, so looking down their nose at us makes ’em feel like they is a bigger toad”

“That’s silly,” Delia said. “If we was to go in the store and spend money they’d be richer, and ain’t that like being bigger?”

Otis laughed. “That ain’t their way of thinking. They is happy being a look-down-your-nose small toad.”





Delia sat and talked with Otis for nearly two hours, but when Benjamin came in nothing more was said. From that point on Delia weighed her words as she told stories of what could be. She held off promising Isaac he’d be treated exactly like a white man and focused on saying how there were plenty of Negro doctors, teachers, and even entertainers.

“Being a Negro ain’t a bad thing,” she told him, “it’s just different.”





More than once Benjamin overheard her say Isaac shouldn’t go through life expecting too much. Hearing such advice gladdened his heart, but he never knew how it came about. Otis said nothing about their conversation, and neither did Delia

As that year rolled into the next, Delia began staying at home whenever Benjamin had to go into Bakerstown. She’d claim she had washing to do, or she’d pull out the quilt she was working on and start stitching another patch. On occasion Isaac went along, but Delia tried to discourage it. He was still a boy, she reasoned; there’d be time enough to discover the ugliness of life.





Delia





It’s funny how you think you know a man clear down to his soul, when the God’s honest truth is you don’t know a bean about what’s inside his head. I always figured Benjamin was an easy sort because of how he didn’t fight my daddy back and didn’t get riled over them damn signs. I never dreamed there was a time he was different.

I can see now, Benjamin’s a lot like Daddy Church. They’s both proud men. Too proud, maybe, to show their heartache.

Daddy Church don’t never talk about missing Benjamin’s mama, but he got a little picture sitting alongside his bed and every night I see him whispering stuff to that picture. The thing is he don’t look sad when he’s talking to the picture; it looks almost like he’s saying how much he still loves her. You can bet my daddy didn’t do that when Mama died.

Sometimes I feel bad because Isaac don’t have the things I had when I was growing up, but when I see all the love Daddy Church has for Benjamin and Benjamin has for Isaac, I know he’s way better off. Having a daddy who loves you is a lot more important than having schoolbooks with no ripped pages.

Benjamin is a good daddy and when poor Miss Lila was alive, he was a good son.

He cared enough to send his mama a letter most every day, and there ain’t many who can say that. The truth is if I had to choose for Isaac to be more like my daddy or his I’d choose his, even if it means being a farmer.





Hard Times





For two years the land Benjamin farmed produced a bountiful harvest in both summer and winter. During the years of plenty they came to believe it would always be that way, and Delia seldom voiced her thoughts of moving north. When she did it was little more than a passing comment.

Otis, now fifty-nine, had developed a limp that caused him to lean heavily on his right leg. On good days he could work two, maybe three hours in the field, but by then he’d have a sharp pain shooting up his leg and crossing into his back. When Benjamin saw his daddy wincing, he’d insist Otis go back to the house.

“I don’t like the thought of Delia being alone all the time,” he’d say, making the request seem more a favor than pity. When that ploy didn’t work he’d find a dozen different reasons why Otis was needed at the house—the screen door needed fixing, the pump was leaky, the smokehouse fire was too low.

That’s how it was; Benjamin fabricated excuses and Otis pretended to believe them regardless of how thin or frail they were. It was an arrangement that gave each a measure of pride without one taking from the other.

Most days when Otis limped back to the house, Delia would spot him coming and have a steaming cup of coffee waiting. For hours on end they’d sit side by side on the porch and talk. They never again spoke of Benjamin’s days in the army, but they spoke of everything else and Delia came to love Daddy Church in much the same way she loved Benjamin and Isaac. He was family and in a softer, less sandpapery way he filled the empty spot left by her own daddy.





A bitter cold frost hit Alabama in January of 1954, and it lasted until early March. That spring the harvest was small enough to be considered puny. The cabbages grew to the size of a baseball and never got any larger. The turnips survived the frost but brought in barely enough money to buy seed for the summer planting.

“We got nothing to worry about,” Benjamin said and assured Delia that the summer harvest would more than make up for what was lost.