Passing through Perfect (Wyattsville #3)(72)

One by one they tromped down the basement stairs, across the playroom, and out the door into the backyard. With the chill of winter already in the air the cushioned wicker furniture was gone, stored for the winter. There was one green metal chair, cold to the touch, but better than the ground; Sidney lowered himself into it. Benjamin sat on the low wall of a planting bed, and Paul leaned his back against a support post.

Sidney was the first to speak. “For God’s sake, have these people gone mad?”

It was a long time before anyone answered Sidney’s question, and the silence settled in like a heavy fog.

“They ain’t gone mad,” Benjamin finally said. “They’re just feeling what a whole lot of other folks feel.”

“And what’s that?” Paul said sharply. “A hatred of anybody who’s different?”

“That’s exactly what it is!” Sidney snapped. “And this is how it starts.” He went on to tell the story of his cousin, Ezra.

“This past week I’ve been thinking about Ezra a lot. I think about him and that beautiful family he had. Gone. All of them gone.” Sidney lifted his hands to his face and rubbed his eyes. There were no tears to be brushed away, just a sharp pain poking at the back of his eyelids.

“How do we fight evils such as this?” he asked sorrowfully.

“For some leaving is the only way to fight,” Benjamin said. “If Ezra left Germany, he might a’ saved his family.”

Paul hesitated, torn between wanting Benjamin to stay and wondering what was best.

“To stay or leave isn’t always an easy decision,” he finally said. “If not for that promise to Daddy, I might not have left West Virginia.” He told of the day he’d carried Jubilee down the mountain on his back.

“I was more scared than I let on,” he said. “We had no home, nobody to turn to, very little money, and I didn’t even know whether or not I’d find work.”

Benjamin gave an understanding nod. “There’s times when you see a place bleeding the soul right out of your body, and still you stay. Not ’cause you wanna be there, just ’cause you’re scared of leaving.”

Sidney turned to Benjamin and asked, “What finally made you decide to leave Alabama?”

“Isaac,” he answered. “I want him to grow up being proud of hisself. Delia used to say there’s no hope in Grinder’s Corner.”

As Benjamin sat there talking, her words came back as clearly as if she was whispering them in his ear. “Grinder’s Corner is a place where colored people don’t do nothing but live and die, that’s what she’d say.”

With a melancholy look tugging at the edge of his mouth, he finished the thought. “I wish I’d seen the truth of them words sooner.”

As they sat and talked, a gray squirrel jumped from the oak tree and scampered off in a swirl of dry leaves. The evening grew colder, but no one left. Benjamin spoke of things he’d never before given voice to. He told of the night Delia died and how he’d searched for hours before finding her and Isaac lying alongside the road.

“They was lying in the rain for hours ’fore I found ’em,” he said. He lowered his head into his hands and sobbed. It was a cry that could barely be heard, but Martha Pillard heard it.

~

It was eight-thirty when Martha first discovered Sissy missing.

“Darlene,” she said, “have you seen Sissy?”

Busy making a list of lawyers she’d be contacting, Darlene answered, “No, Mama, I ain’t seen the damn cat, and I got other things to be thinking about.”

“There’s no need to get snippy,” Martha answered.

Going from room to room, she bent down to check beneath the furniture and in closets. Once she’d looked in every imaginable place downstairs, she climbed the steps and started searching the bedrooms. She lifted the bed skirts and looked in every cubby, but Sissy was nowhere to be found.

“Darlene,” she hollered down. “Did one of the twins let Sissy out?”

“Nobody let Sissy out. Check under the bed.”

With a worried look stretched across her face, Martha hobbled down the stairs calling Sissy’s name. She looked in the kitchen and under the sofa, then turned back to Darlene. “You sure the kids didn’t let her out?”

Paying no attention to the concern in Martha’s voice, Darlene said, “Mama, I’m trying to get some work done here. The kids don’t give a damn about that cat. If she got out, she got out on her own.” She angrily scratched a line through the name she’d just written and started over again.

Martha opened the front door just far enough to stick her head out and called for the cat, but there was nothing. It wasn’t like Sissy to disappear that way. She was declawed, a house cat. She didn’t belong outside. Martha turned back, shrugged on a black wool sweater, and stepped onto the porch. Leaning heavily on her cane, she maneuvered her way down the three steps and began poking at the bushes.

Once when she heard the rustle of dry leaves she stopped to check, but there was nothing.

“Maybe a chipmunk,” she reasoned and began working her way around to the side yard. It was darker there, more difficult to get a firm footing. Martha, who was edgy to begin with, moved slowly and quietly. From time to time she whispered the cat’s name, but when there was no response she moved on.