Passing Through Perfect

by Bette Lee Crosby

  Outside there was the sound of chickens squawking and Otis sawing firewood, but inside there was only the muffled sound of sobs and Delia’s heart breaking.

  Delia

  You can say a thousand times from Sunday Mama dying ain’t my fault, but I know better. Me asking her to sneak around Daddy to come and see Isaac broke her heart. Broke it the same as if I stomped on it with my two bare feet. Mama loved me; I know she did. How can any mama not love her own child? Long as I was happy with just getting letters Mama could be happy for me, but when I started wanting more than she could give, her heart started fighting against itself. Mama’s heart wanted to come see her grandson, but her body had to do what Daddy said.

  The sorry truth is Mama’s never been a strong-willed woman. I ain’t laying no blame, ’cause I seen the mean-spirited side of Daddy and it’s enough to make anybody fearful. He’d be sweet as pie long as Mama was doing what he wanted, but the minute she went up against him he’d start in saying the Lord would smite her dead for such a thing. It didn’t matter what she was doing, Daddy’d come up with a Bible verse claiming it was a sin. Even for a woman staunch as a brick wall, it’s impossible to go up against a man who claims he’s got the Lord on his side.

  Losing your mama leaves a hole in your heart that’s never gonna be healed. You got one mama, and once she’s gone you ain’t never gonna get another one. I want to be forgiving of Daddy, but the truth is it’s real hard. I keep arguing inside myself. One minute I’m ready to crawl on my hands and knees asking him for forgiveness, then the next minute I’m hating him all over again ’cause of the heartache he’s given Mama and me.

  The saddest part of all this is that I keep wishing I could talk to Mama one last time. I’d ask her how I’m supposed to get over all this hurt. Knowing Mama, she’d have just the right words for answering.

  I know I’m a growed-up woman with a child of my own, but Lord God how I do miss Mama.

  Revisiting Twin Pines

  Delia remained on the verge of tears for a full two weeks after she heard the news of her mother’s death. She went about her household chores, cooked dinner every night and set it on the table, but would do little more than pick at the food on her plate. One question after another popped into her mind, and she prodded Benjamin for details of her mama’s death.

  “When did it happen?” she’d ask. “How can you say for sure it’s true?”

  Benjamin answered the questions with little more than a shrug. “All I know is what the woman next door said, and I done told you that word for word.”

  Delia would give an understanding nod, but less than an hour later she’d think of another question and start in again.

  “Why don’t you go with me to Twin Pines,” Benjamin finally suggested. “By now your daddy might be willing to let bygones be bygones. After all that’s happened…”

  He left the rest of his words unsaid. It hardly seemed necessary to remind Delia that her daddy’s loss was as great as hers.

  Delia shook her head. “No,” she said sadly, “it’s too late for mending fences with Daddy.”

  At the time it seemed she turned away from the idea, but the suggestion took root in her mind. Before the week was out she told Benjamin going to Twin Pines was a fine idea.

  On the following Saturday Delia rose early and dressed in the flowered dress she usually saved for church. She applied a thin coat of rose-colored lipstick and looked back at the mirror. It was good. There was nothing trashy about her appearance, nothing her daddy could find to pick at or criticize. Before anyone else was up, Delia cooked a pot of grits and set a stew to bubbling. If things went as she hoped, they might be late in returning.

  It was almost nine when they finally left. Delia toyed with the thought of bringing Isaac to meet his granddaddy, but the fear of what could possibly happen stopped her. She wanted to believe enough time had passed, enough time for forgiveness to set in and soften her daddy’s heart, but George Finch was a hard and unrelenting man. Still, even a stone could be worn away by time so there was always a chance. After all, she was his daughter. His only daughter. Surely that counted for something.

  When Benjamin turned onto Cross Corner Road Delia said, “I’m not taking no for an answer.” The thought was powerful, but her words were small and wobbly at the edges. “It’s not gonna be easy,” she added, “but I’ll tell Daddy it’s what Mama would have wanted.”

  As Benjamin drove, Delia spoke of her childhood. She searched her memory and pulled out stories that pictured the good side of her daddy: the Christmas Eve he carried her home from church on his shoulders; the morning he made her pancakes; the shiny locket he’d given her on her tenth birthday. She said nothing about the all-too-familiar scowl he wore, the demands he made, or the reason why she’d had to sneak out to meet Benjamin. The truth was if you could open up Delia’s box of memories, you’d see she was picking at a skimpy handful of good ones and closing a blind eye to all the others.

  When they passed through a narrow section of the road where dense thickets of pines changed daylight to dark, Delia gave a wistful sigh.

  “If Daddy can keep an open mind I think he’d come to love Isaac.” She sat silent for a moment then added, “I brought a picture to show what a fine boy he is.”

  “That’s a real good idea,” Benjamin said, but when he looked across to smile at Delia he saw her turned away. A tear slid from her cheek and dropped into her lap.

  As they moved past the thicket Benjamin stretched his arm across the seat and covered her hand with his. “You gotta stop crying, or your daddy ain’t gonna see nothing but red swelled-up eyes.”

  They drove the rest of the way in silence.

  When they arrived in Twin Pines, Benjamin parked directly in front of the Finch house. Three weeks earlier he’d parked a few doors down, trying not to be obvious. Now he no longer cared whether George Finch recognized his car; his thoughts were only of Delia.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” he asked for probably the fifth time.

  “I’m sure,” she answered. “Even if Daddy’s forgiving of me, he for sure ain’t gonna allow you to step foot in the house.”

  Benjamin sighed reluctantly. “Okay. But if he raises a hand…”

  Delia got out of the car then leaned back in. “Don’t worry,” she said, then closed the door and started up the walkway.

  The first thing she noticed was that the wicker rocking chair her mama sat in was gone from the front porch. Although it had been just six years, it seemed a lifetime ago. Everything felt strange; different in a way she couldn’t put a finger to. She rapped on the door and waited.

  After nearly twenty minutes of knocking on the door and tapping at the window, Delia decided her daddy was not at home. She returned to the car and said, “I guess we ought to drive over to the church; Daddy must be there.”

  It was a short drive to the New Unity Church, and when Delia climbed from the car a second time Benjamin repeated his warning. “Be careful.”

  She didn’t answer but moved toward the building with slow deliberate steps. A few seconds after she knocked at the door it swung open. The man standing there was tall and years younger than her daddy.

  “I’m looking for Pastor Finch,” Delia said.

  “Pastor Finch is no longer here,” he answered. “I’m Brother Anders. Is there something I can do for you?”

  “No longer here?” Delia echoed. “He’s the preacher, how could he not be…”

  Brother Anders gave a soft smile. “Pastor Finch left Unity two months back.”

  “Left?” A look of disbelief took hold of Delia’s face. “Where’d he go?”

  Anders shrugged. “I’m afraid I don’t know. He left before I was assigned to the church.”

  “You’re the pastor?”

  “Yes.” Anders nodded. “If there’s anything I can do—”

  Delia gave a sad shake of her head. “There’s nothing,” she said, then turned and walked away. When she got back in
to the car a stream of tears rolled down her face. It was several minutes before she could pull herself together enough to tell Benjamin what had transpired.

  “It’s bad enough to not know what happened to Mama,” she said, sobbing, “but now Daddy’s gone too.”

  “Maybe one of his friends can say where he is,” Benjamin suggested.

  “Daddy didn’t have friends.”

  “What about your mama, she have friends?”

  Delia pulled a hankie from her purse, wiped back the flow of tears, then blew her nose and nodded.

  That afternoon they visited the woman Delia had for many years called Auntie.

  Tilly Jessup was a woman with an ample bosom and a face made for smiling. When she saw Delia standing on her doorstep, she pulled the girl into her arms and squealed. “Land’s sakes, girl, where you been?”

  Before there was time for an answer, Tilly swung the door wide open and motioned the two of them into the house.

  “Come on in here,” she said. “Sit yourself down, and I’ll fetch us some lemonade.”

  If Tilly knew the circumstances of Delia’s marriage to Benjamin, she never let on. She spoke only of how much she’d missed her and how Mary had eagerly shared the news of Delia’s baby boy.

  “Isaac ain’t exactly a baby no more,” Delia said. “He’s six years old.”

  Tilly laughed. “Don’t you think I know that? Why, your mama read me every letter you wrote. The very same day she got a letter she’d hurry over and read it to me line by line.”

  “I sent pictures too,” Delia said.

  “I seen every one of them,” Tilly chuckled. “Your mama sure did brag on that boy.”

  “Then why didn’t she want to meet him?”

  “What you talking about?”

  “I wrote and asked Mama about bringing Isaac to visit, but she never answered.”

  Tilly wrinkled her brow. “That don’t sound right. Mary never mentioned no letter about you wanting to come visit.”

  “It was early October, not long after Isaac started school. I sent a picture of him showing off his new lunchbox.”

  “Ah, well.” Tilly sighed. “That was after…” She hesitated a moment then said, “Your mama never got that letter.”

  Tilly left the chair she’d been sitting in and squeezed herself onto the sofa between Benjamin and Delia.

  “Sugar,” she said, wrapping her arms around Delia, “your mama passed on in September.”

  Delia buried her face in Tilly’s shoulder and cried.

  It was several minutes before Tilly spoke again. “I know you got a lot of sorrows inside your heart, but dying is part of living. Sure as a body’s born they’re gonna die. It’s God’s plan.”

  “But why now?” Delia sobbed. “She never even got to know Isaac.”

  Tilly pulled Delia closer and rubbed her back with gentle strokes. “Your mama surely did know Isaac. She knew him and loved him. All those pictures you sent was the same as coming for a visit. Why, Mary showed me those pictures a hundred or more times and bragged on that boy like he was the smartest ever born.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” Tilly answered and continued to rub her back.

  The dusk of evening was settling in the sky when they finally left. Although Delia had wanted to know the circumstances of her mama’s death, it brought little comfort to learn she’d collapsed in the backyard and lay there in the scorching hot sun until that evening when George got hungry and went in search of his wife. He found her behind the honeysuckle bush, but by then she was gone. There was no autopsy and no definitive cause of death. Mary Finch was simply a Negro woman who was dead. It was what it was.

  According to Tilly, George left town two days after Mary was laid to rest. He took only his clothes, said goodbye to no one, and left no forwarding address.

  The following Sunday morning when the parishioners came for church service the pulpit was empty. Brother John led the congregation in the Lord’s Prayer and the singing of three hymns; after that everyone went home. No explanation was ever given for George’s sudden disappearance. Some said he went back to Ohio where he supposedly had a sister; others said a man’s wife dying as she did was reason enough for leaving town and it made no never-mind where he went.

  Brother Anders arrived two weeks later. That’s when the parsonage house was cleaned and readied for him. Any personal leftovers were removed and passed on to needy families.

  As Benjamin drove by what had once been her family’s house, Delia buried her face in her hands and tried not to see. Before they’d reached the corner she spread her fingers and took one last look back.

  A light lit the room that was once her bedroom.

  Delia

  Sometimes I think I haven’t got another tear left inside of me. I cried an ocean over these past six years, and now I’ve come to a point where I’m dried out. I’ve got no more tears to give. I tell myself, You done cried over everything there is to cry about, and I get to believing I’m never gonna shed another tear.

  The thing is that ain’t true. I still got a lot of hurt inside, and it’s the kind of hurt that don’t go away easy. It ain’t your head what causes the crying, it’s your heart. Heart hurts is something a body can’t do a damn thing about.

  When we went back to Twin Pines, I figured for sure Daddy would be big enough to forgive and forget. What good can come of carrying a grudge against your own daughter? As we was driving in I pictured him sitting all alone in that big chair, nobody to cook him supper, nobody to give him a goodnight kiss. I was thinking maybe, just maybe, Daddy would ask us to come and live in that nice house the church gave him. Never in a million years did I think he’d leave without so much as a goodbye.

  Daddy’s supposed to be a godly man, but the truth is Benjamin’s ten times more godly than Daddy. He got a heart filled with love and he got a soul filled with kindness. Even when he’s so tired his legs could fall off, he still got strength enough to do a kindness for Daddy Church. It ain’t the preaching what makes a man godly, it’s the doing.

  I thank the good Lord for Benjamin. This ain’t an easy life, but one thing I know for sure: he ain’t never gonna turn his back on our boy. Knowing that makes up for a whole lot of doing without.

  The Sadness of Bakerstown

  Once they returned home from Twin Pines Delia became as dry and sorrowful as a dead tree. She seldom gave voice to her thoughts but kept picturing her mama lying dead in the hot sun.

  “This Alabama heat is too much for anyone,” she’d say. “It’s likely Mama died of sunstroke.”

  In February a cold spell came through, and even though there was a morning frost on the windowpanes Delia still complained about the heat of the sun.

  “We ought to think about moving north,” she said, then slid into stories of the time when her family had lived in Ohio. “They got nice cool evenings in Ohio and winters where a person can see real snow!”

  “Yeah,” Benjamin answered, “and they also got a short growing season.”

  For the past five years Benjamin had made a good living with year-round crops, so Delia couldn’t argue the point. Still, that didn’t lessen her growing dislike of Alabama.

  A few days later she began talking about how the schools were better.

  “There’s places where coloreds go to school same as whites,” she said. “Whites in the morning, coloreds in the afternoon. Same school, same exact seats.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” Benjamin said and turned away.

  When Delia persisted, he flat out said that he and Otis had gotten the farm to where it was earning a good living and he wasn’t leaving—not for weather, not for schools, and certainly not because Delia now had a suspicion her daddy may have gone back to Ohio.

  “He ain’t a man worth chasing after,” Benjamin said, and that was the end of it.

  On the Saturday after Valentine’s Day Benjamin and Otis took Isaac with them when they went to work in the north field, but a rainstorm came up
and Benjamin told the boy to get back to the house. When Isaac slammed through the door, Delia was sitting on the sofa dabbing tears from her eyes.

  “What’s the matter, Mama?” he asked.

  Startled, she looked up and sniffed the tears to a stop. “It’s nothing. I was just crying over old times.”

  He slid onto the sofa and wriggled his way under her arm. “Why? Is old times bad?”

  “Sometimes,” Delia answered, “but sometimes it was good. Back in the days when me and Mama could talk and laugh together, it was real good.”

  “If it was good then why you crying?”

  “’Cause with Mama gone and Daddy gone, I feel like an orphan.”

  “What’s an orphan?”

  “Somebody who got nobody, no family.”

  “You got me,” Isaac said. “Ain’t I family?”

  Delia looked down at the earnestness in his six-year-old face and smiled. She hugged him to her chest and laughed out loud. It was the first time in months she’d laughed, and the sound seemed to ricochet off the walls and grow bigger in size.

  “Yes, Isaac, you surely are family,” she said. “I got you and I got your daddy and Grandpa Church.” She squeezed him a bit closer and whispered, “Thank you for reminding me.”

  By the time Benjamin and Otis came from the fields cold and soaked to the skin, Delia had a tray of hot biscuits sitting on the stove and chicken frying in a pan. She’d also scattered pictures of Isaac throughout every room of the house.

  From that day forward whenever the image of her mama came to mind, she’d grab a picture of Isaac and go back to counting her blessings instead of her losses.

  ~ ~ ~

  The winter of 1953 brought forth a bountiful harvest, and in the spring when they sold a cartload of cabbage and turnips Benjamin claimed they had enough money to replace the car with a pickup truck.