Passing through Perfect (Wyattsville #3)(33)

Crying is a lot easier than not crying. Crying cleans out the misery in your soul and pulls loose the knife stuck in your heart. I ain’t strong enough to not cry, but leastwise I’m holding it on the inside. On the outside, I go day by day and do whatever I gotta do.

Loving Delia don’t stop me from hurting, but it gives me strength enough to move past it. I’m being strong for her ’cause she’s being strong for Isaac.

It’s easier for me ’cause I got work to do. A man don’t think about his misery when he’s hauling wood or cleaning out a chimney; but poor Delia, every day she’s gotta sit there and look at the empty places where Daddy used to be.

That surely ain’t an easy thing to do.





A Plan for the Future





In the year that followed Isaac turned eleven and grew five inches. He was tall enough and strong enough to help out, so Benjamin occasionally took him along when he needed a second pair of hands. It was always something lightweight: painting a fence, repairing a screen door, or trimming branches from an overgrown bush. Although Isaac enjoyed the work, Delia frowned at the idea and more often than not it brought on an argument.

“The boy’s gonna grow up thinking that’s the kind of work he’s expected to do,” she’d complain.

Benjamin generally laughed it off, saying the work was honest and there was no shame in it. Even though Delia never came back at him arguing otherwise, she never gave up hoping their son would go off to college and become a professional.

Sometimes she’d claim Isaac would make a fine pastor and maybe one day become a bishop. “You ever hear of Bishop William Decker Johnson?” she’d ask, and when Benjamin shook his head no she’d move on to telling all he’d done and how he came to be respected by even white folks.

“Daddy used to claim Bishop Johnson was a credit to mankind,” Delia said. Afterward she remembered the kind of person her daddy was and switched over to saying Isaac would make an even better lawyer.

“You heard about William Henry Hastie?” she asked.

Benjamin and Isaac both shook their heads.

“Well, it so happens,” Delia said, “Mister Hastie was a real good lawyer, and when everybody saw what a fine job he was doing defending people President Truman made him a United States judge.”

“I ain’t never heard of no colored judges,” Benjamin said skeptically.

“It’s true,” Delia insisted. “I read a story about him in one of them newspapers you brought home.”

“I’d jest as soon be a farmer,” Isaac said. “Farmers got a good life, and they grow stuff people can eat.”

“You like seeing signs telling how you can’t go in this place or that?” Delia asked. “You like going to people’s back door on account of you ain’t allowed to knock in the front?”

“What’s that got to do with—”

“Respect!” Delia cut in. “You ain’t never gonna get respect ’less you earns it!”

“I don’t care none about—”

“You will,” Delia said ruefully. “You will.”





That summer Delia visited Luella once or twice every week. She and Isaac would leave the house early in the morning before the sun got too hot and wouldn’t return until after the sun had dropped below the tree line. In the early spring the rain had been plentiful, so the pond near Luella’s house was deep and right for swimming. In the heat of the day they’d head over to the pond and cool their feet in the water as they watched the boys swing from a rope then let go and splash down. On just such a day the question of college came up.

It was the week before school was to start, and the boys were frolicking in the water when the echo of thunder sounded a warning. Seconds later a bolt of lightning flashed across the sky.

“Jerome,” Luella called, “get yourself outta the water, we got to get home.”

“Aw, Mama, it ain’t nothing but a bit of—”

Before he could finish complaining, Luella yelled, “Out!”

Still laughing and poking at each other, the boys scrambled out of the water and took off running toward the house. Luella and Delia walked behind at a slower pace.

“I think we is wasting our time setting aside college money,” Luella laughed. “That fool boy’s likely to get hisself killed ’fore he gets to high school.”

“You already saving up?” Delia asked.

Luella nodded. “We got six hundred and twenty-two dollars set aside.”

“Six hundred?” Delia gasped.

“And twenty-two,” Luella added.

“How’d you do it?”

“Not me. Will. He started saving the day Jerome was born, and he ain’t never stopped.”

“But,” Delia stammered, “don’t it take all you got for living?”

Luella nodded. “We can’t save nothing out of Will’s gas station pay, but he got a side business. That money’s for saving.”

“A side business?”

“Unh-huh. He buys ’n sells used stuff.”

“What kinda stuff?”

“Everything. Ice boxes, baby carriages, kerosene lamps. Just whatever people’s got a need for.”