Passing through Perfect (Wyattsville #3)(34)

“Where’s he get things like that?” Delia asked, and before there was time for an answer she added, “And how’s he find a body what needs it?”

“There ain’t but one gas station what serves coloreds, so everybody goes there. Will knows ’em all, what they got and what they need.”

Another flash of lightning streaked across the sky and Luella said, “We’d better hurry.” After that she yelled for the boys, who were now rolling in the grass, to get moving.





For the remainder of that afternoon Delia had a hard time focusing on the conversation. When Luella was talking about a lemon cake she’d baked, Delia was thinking through the possibilities of a side business. Benjamin did most of his work for white people and while they might occasionally give him some of their castoffs they weren’t likely to buy from a colored man, so that wasn’t a good business for him.

Working more jobs wasn’t much of an idea either since he already left at dawn and didn’t get back until dark. Thought after thought passed through Delia’s mind, but each idea turned into a dead end.

It was still early in the afternoon when Delia said she had to be going.

“So soon?” Luella asked.

Delia nodded. “I got a lot to do.”

What she didn’t say was that the thought of Luella having all that money for Jerome’s college was poking a jealous finger at her brain. Her desire for Isaac to go to college rocketed from a distant thought to an immediate need.





That night after Isaac was in bed Delia poured two cups of coffee and sat with Benjamin at the table. For several minutes nothing was said, but a thought had been running through her mind ever since she’d left Luella’s.

“Benjamin,” she finally said, “we got to start planning for Isaac’s college.”

He looked across with a puzzled expression. “At eleven years old? Don’t nobody go to college at eleven.”

“But if we don’t start saving right now, we won’t have the money he needs.”

Benjamin rubbed his big hand back and forth across his forehead several times before he looked over at Delia sorrowfully. “How? How we gonna save when we ain’t got an extra dime?”

What he said was true, and Delia knew it. There had been good years when the farm made a profit, but the last three years they’d barely scraped by. They’d already gone through what little bit they’d saved, and now they had to pay Sylvester Crane ten dollars just to stay on land that was too poor for farming.

“Maybe you could have a side business,” Delia suggested, trying to sound optimistic. “Will Jackson’s got one. Luella said they saved up six hundred and twenty-two dollars from him buying and selling used stuff.”

“It ain’t all used,” Benjamin replied. “A lot of that stuff Will sells is stolen. He buys stuff what supposedly fell off a truck, pays a dime on the dollar, then overcharges folks for things they gotta have. That what you’re wanting me to do?”

Delia sighed. “I guess not.” Her words were weary and thin as a piece of parchment.

Benjamin stretched his arm across the table and covered Delia’s hand with his. “Just ’cause we ain’t got money don’t mean Isaac can’t go to college. He’s just got to work a whole lot harder.”

“Work harder?”

Benjamin nodded. “If Isaac got the best grades in his class when he finishes up high school, it might be a college will leave him go for free.”

“Free?”

Benjamin nodded. “When I was in the army, I knew a pilot what did it.”

“A white man?”

“Unh-unh.” Benjamin shook his head. “Colored fella.”

“Get out,” Delia said, laughing.

Benjamin went on to explain how a scholarship worked.

“Isaac’s smart enough,” he said, “but he ain’t real dedicated.”

“Well, he’ll get dedicated!”





After that single conversation, Delia went from seeing Isaac as a boy to thinking of him as a man getting ready for college. Once school started there was no more visiting with Luella and Jerome. As soon as Isaac came in from school, Delia sat him at the kitchen table and made him start studying.

While she was mixing up a corn pudding or peeling a pile of potatoes she’d call out questions like how much is nine times nine or who was America’s sixteenth president. After two weeks of studying and any number of wrong answers, Delia told Benjamin to ask around Bakerstown and find some mending or ironing jobs he could bring home for her to do.

That year there was little time for anything other than working. Delia ironed and mended the baskets of clothes Benjamin brought home, and he began taking on more and more jobs. He’d leave the house long before dawn and wouldn’t return until well after dark. Some nights he’d come home too tired to eat supper or even peel the sweat-stained clothes from his body.

Isaac’s sole responsibility was studying.

As Delia stood at the ironing board pressing wrinkles from the shirt of a white man she’d never met, she continued to call out the questions and little by little Isaac began to get more of the answers right.

“That’s good,” she’d say, then move on to arithmetic or some other subject. Every session ended with the same statement.