Passing through Perfect (Wyattsville #3)(68)
As they walked home Martha’s shoulders were slumped and her head bent. Darlene put her arm around her mama’s shoulders and gave a soft squeeze.
“Don’t worry, Mama,” she said. “We’ll get the rest of them tomorrow.”
Ugly Anger
It took nearly two weeks for Darlene to get to every house on Bloom Street and present her petition. She knocked on the Millers’ door nine times before she finally caught them at home on a Sunday morning. After a week of working night shifts at the hospital Pamela Miller was in no mood for conversation when the doorbell rang at seven o’clock that morning. She listened to the first half of Darlene’s speech about saving the neighborhood then told her to stick that petition where the sun don’t shine and slammed the door so quickly it hit the tip of Darlene’s nose.
For a moment Darlene stood there too stunned to move; eventually she grumbled, “There’s no need to get snippy.” But by then Pamela was back under the blanket.
For the first week Martha trudged along arm-in-arm with Darlene, but when it began to seem that half the people she counted as friends weren’t willing to sign such a petition she lost her enthusiasm for the project and said she didn’t think she could continue. Wearily lowering herself into a chair, Martha gave a sorrowful sigh.
“They just don’t understand how different Negros are,” she said, “I guess you’ve got to come face to face with their meanness before you understand it.”
“That’s why you’ve got to come with me, Mama,” Darlene begged. “You can make them understand. You can tell them about Tommy, about how awful—”
“You do it, Darlene,” Martha replied. “It’s too much for a woman my age.”
Knocking on the doors by herself, Darlene got a much cooler reception. On the day that it poured rain, she went to five houses and didn’t come back with a single signature. Alfred Spence said he wasn’t in favor of colored folks moving into the neighborhood, but since Darlene didn’t actually live on the block he wasn’t signing anything.
“Send your mama back,” he said. “If she asks, I might be willing to sign it.”
As the days passed, a strange hush settled over Bloom Street. Just weeks earlier there were residents coming and going, placing pumpkins on their doorsteps, sweeping leaves from the walkway. Now there seemed to be no one. Neighbors passed one another with little more than a nod. Those who’d signed Darlene’s petition spoke to the others who had, but those whose names were missing from the petition were tagged “Bleeding Heart Liberals” and avoided. That single sheet of paper created a divide in the community as palpable as a string of burning crosses stretched across the lawns. On a drizzly morning when Martha stepped outside to fetch the newspaper, Sidney saw her and waved but she ducked her head and scurried back inside as if she hadn’t seen him.
~
Things began falling apart that second week. One night the Klaussners’ garbage can was overturned and the trash strewn across the side lawn. That Carmella blamed on a raccoon.
“They’re just foraging for food,” she said and suggested maybe Sidney bring home one of those heavyweight galvanized cans with a tight fitting lid.
Two days later they were sitting down to supper when they heard something hit the front of the house. When Sidney went to investigate, he found a splatter of raw egg running down the door. At that point he had his suspicions, but it was simply that: suspicions.
Carmella insisted it was teenage boys pulling some leftover Halloween pranks.
“Remember last year,” she said, laughing. “They had toilet paper hanging from all the oak trees.”
Sidney pretended to chuckle at the thought, but the truth was he’d seen the look in Benjamin’s eyes.
The following evening Archie Dodd knocked on the door with the pretense of needing to borrow a screwdriver. Before he had both feet inside the door he mentioned that he smelled coffee and wouldn’t mind having a cup. He followed Sid into the kitchen and plopped down in a chair. Carmella filled two mugs, then set a dish of chocolate chip cookies in the center of the table.
For a long while the two men sat there chatting about everything and nothing: the weather, business, the football season.
“Unitas looks good,” Archie said.
Sid nodded. “If his arm hold out the Colts could go to the championship.”
It was bits and spurts of conversation, things that were of no consequence and offered little to talk about. When Carmella finished wiping the counter and left the room, Archie leaned in and spoke in a hushed voice.
“There’s something you should know,” he said and began to tell of how Darlene was going from house to house with her petition.
Sid listened intently but remained silent.
“You’ve got a lot of friends here,” Archie said. “Friends who aren’t willing to sign that thing, but the truth is they’re all running scared.”
“Scared of Benjamin?” Sid asked. “How can they be scared of someone they don’t even know?”
Archie shrugged. “Maybe they’re not scared of Benjamin; maybe they’re just scared of change.”
As Archie continued to speak of the violence rearing its ugly head in cities across the country and how it had affected people’s way of looking at things, Sid sat there and thought. He’d known something was afoot but had not realized it had gone this far. Tomorrow he would have to call Martin. He’d sent a letter a week earlier, but the mail could be slow. A letter could even get lost.