Passing Through Perfect

by Bette Lee Crosby

  “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.

  “People can accept you having him work in the store,” Archie said, “but the bottom line is they don’t want coloreds living in their neighborhood.”

  “Well, I guess they’ll do what they have to do,” Sid replied. “But I’m not going to ask Benjamin to leave. He’s had enough hardships and—”

  “He’s in for more if he stays,” Archie cut in. “The anger Darlene is stirring up is ugly. Yesterday she was bringing around the newspaper clipping that shows Tommy with a knife sticking out of his chest.”

  “Is that true?”

  Archie nodded. “It isn’t like you can’t fix this,” he suggested. “I know for a fact Willie Schumann has a furnished room over the garage and needs a man for the night shift. If Benjamin’s handy as you’ve been telling me, I bet Willie would let him stay there just for helping out a few hours in the evening.”

  “That garage is on the far side of town, right next to the highway.”

  “Yeah.” Archie nodded. “That’s why nobody’s gonna object to him living there.”

  “Benjamin’s got a son, an eleven-year-old boy. There’s no place to play, no school—”

  Archie gave another shrug. “He could go to Claremont.”

  “That school’s over twenty miles away!”

  “But Willie’s place is safer than here.”

  “We’ve got sixteen houses on Bloom Street,” Sid said. “How much danger can there be from a handful of working people and a few widows?”

  “Maybe not much from these people, but anger spreads. Sometimes people get mad at life, and they start looking for something to take their mad out on.”

  The mugs of coffee sat there and grew cold as they continued to talk in that same hushed voice. It was near eleven when Archie stood to leave.

  “Whatever you decide,” he said, “I’ll be there to back you up; the decision is yours.”

  Archie, a bear of a man with a bald head and round belly, reached out and wrapped his arms around Sid. “Call if you need me,” he said and walked out.

  There was no mention of the screwdriver he’d come to borrow.

  Long after everyone else had gone to bed, Sidney sat in the darkened living room wondering what to do, wondering whether this was this how it started. He thought back on the last time he’d seen his cousin, Ezra Klaussner. It was in 1920, almost forty years ago. Ezra, his mama, papa, and a baby sister they called Tootie crossed the Atlantic in a steamship to come for a month-long visit. Ezra was fourteen at the time, two years younger than Sidney. They’d played together, tossed a football back and forth, swam in the river, and eyed the pretty girls down on Main Street.

  At the end of their month-long stay Ezra and his family returned to Germany, but for nearly twenty years they had remained in touch. Just a letter now and then; an announcement of Ezra’s marriage to Margot, and then the birth of their daughters along with black and white snapshots showing the happy family.

  Now they were all dead. Or supposedly dead. No one ever knew exactly what became of all those people. They were whooshed away in the dark of night and never heard from again. Ezra’s letters stopped coming in 1941.

  Sidney thought about that last letter he’d received. It was in the early years of Hitler’s regime. “A bit of ugliness, certain to pass,” Ezra wrote. “Nothing to be concerned over. The people of this town are our friends; no harm can come to us here. I am certain it is safe to stay.”

  He closed his eyes and could still see the slant of Ezra’s handwriting. Had he not seen the danger when he wrote those words?

  Sidney’s eyes filled with tears. Did each man have to make his own decision, or were we in fact our brother’s keeper? Perhaps, Sidney thought, it’s a bit of both.

  It was nearing dawn when he crawled into bed and snuggled close to Carmella, feeling the warmth of her body and breathing in the sweetness of her scent.

  In the coming days he would warn Benjamin, but first he had to talk to Martin.

  Sidney

  You think you know people; you think these are your friends, they can’t possibly turn against you. And then something like this happens.

  I can’t help believing this is how it was with Ezra. I know for a fact he felt safe in Fulda. He knew of the hatred but didn’t see the danger. If he had he would have taken his family and fled. Any man would. What good are possessions if you lose those you love?

  The shittiest part of all this is that I truly like Benjamin. He’s a man I’d be proud to have as a neighbor. But the bottom line is that this isn’t about what I want, it’s about what’s best for Benjamin and Isaac. Like it or not, I’ve got to consider their safety. People you might normally think sane do crazy things when they get riled up.

  Personally I don’t give a rat’s ass what these neighbors think, and I’m certainly not going to ask Benjamin to leave. I couldn’t do it. He deserves better.

  What I want to do is help him find a better life somewhere else. Hopefully a place where a bunch of opinionated idiots don’t have a ramrod stuck up their butt. I’m counting on Marty to make it happen.

  After hearing what Archie said, it honestly makes me wonder if I want my own family to live here on Bloom Street.

  This kind of hatred is a terrible thing. It corrupts people from the inside out. Boils on the skin are better than bigotry. At least you can lance a boil and get the poison out. With bigotry there’s nothing you can do.

  The Petitioners

  The next morning Sidney pulled an old address book from the drawer in his nightstand and dialed Martin Hin
ckley’s telephone number. It had been two, maybe three years since they’d spoken, but in some ways it seemed like yesterday. He placed the first call before they left for the store. When there was no answer, he slid the address book in his pocket with plans to call later.

  For three days he carried that address book in his pocket. Sometimes he called in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, and twice after supper in the evening. It was nine o’clock Wednesday evening when Elsie Hinckley finally answered the telephone.

  “I’ve been calling for days,” Sidney said. “Is everything okay?”

  “No.” She sniffed. “It’s terrible. Marty had a heart attack. Sunday night I was sitting there laughing at the Jack Benny show and all the while I thought Marty was asleep but when I went to wake him—”

  “Is he okay?” Sid asked anxiously.

  “He’s in the hospital.” Elsie gave a long sad sigh. “I told him. A thousand times I told him, ‘Marty, you work too hard’.”

  “He’s always been that way,” Sid said.

  “He’s not getting any younger you know. He’s fifty-eight next June.”

  Once Sid learned that Marty was on the mend and due to be released later in the week, he asked if there was anything he could do, any way to help.

  “You could stay in touch,” Elsie said fondly. “And you can tell Marty not to be working so hard. He might listen to you,” she added. “He never listens to me.”

  Sid replaced the receiver and smiled. Same old Marty, he thought.

  Exactly one week after he’d spoken with Elsie, all hell broke loose. It started on Wednesday evening at seven-thirty. Sid knew the precise time because with the clock chiming for the half hour, he’d not heard the doorbell the first time. It was only after a fist started pounding on the door that he came to answer it. When he snapped on the porch light and opened the door, he came face to face with a crowd of people. Darlene stood smack in the middle of the pack.

  She waved a copy of the signed petition in the air. “Mama don’t want niggers living next door,” she yelled. “Nobody else does neither!”

  There was a low grumble going through the crowd, but it was the sound of Darlene’s voice that brought Carmella scurrying to the door. She came up behind Sid and spotted Martha standing next to her daughter.

  “Martha,” she exclaimed, “what in the world is going—”

  “You don’t need to be talking to my mama,” Darlene snarled. “She’s not one bit interested in anything you have to say!”

  “Martha?” Carmella looked toward the woman she’d known for so many years, but Martha lowered her face and took a step back into the crowd.

  Sid looked at the crowd and called out the names of his neighbors as he scanned the faces. “Tom, is this what you want to do? And Henry, you too?”

  “It ain’t what we want to do,” somebody in the back yelled. “It’s what we’ve got to do!”

  In a booming voice weighted with anger and resentment, Sid said, “Well, then, where are your hoods? Where’s the burning cross? Isn’t that the way this is supposed to be done?”

  “It ain’t like that,” Henry Jacobs answered. “We’re just trying to keep the neighborhood safe for our families.”

  “And you think I’m a threat?” Sid asked.

  “Not you but that colored fella—”

  “That colored fella,” Sid echoed cynically, “saved Paul’s life. He didn’t stop to check if he was black or white, he just pulled him out of a burning car and brought him home.”

  “Bullshit,” a gruff voice yelled. “I heard they was friends from a bar.”

  “Yeah,” a woman added, “I figure the nigger gave him that broken arm in a fight!”

  A guffaw came from the back, but before anything more could be said Paul pushed past Sid and stepped out onto the porch, forcing some of the crowd to back down a step or two. In the glow of the porch light the white plaster cast looked yellowish and considerably larger.

  “Benjamin is not a nigger,” Paul said angrily. “He’s a Negro man who’s a daddy just like most of you. He didn’t ask to come here, and he didn’t ask to stay here. He’s here because I asked him to help us out in the store.”

  “Bullshit,” the gruff voice repeated.

  Sid stepped out onto the porch and stood beside Paul. He recognized the voice and nodded in the direction it came from. “Bob, I didn’t hear you yelling ‘bullshit’ when you had that broken leg and Paul mowed your grass all summer.”

  “I said I’d pay him.”

  “You never did and he never asked you for a dime, did he?”

  In a considerably smaller voice, Bob Paley answered, “No, but—”

  “But nothing,” Sid cut in. “That’s what decent people do, help each other, lend a hand when it’s needed.” He took a step sideways and peered around Darlene so that he was looking straight at Martha.

  “What about you, Martha?” he said. “Did you forget all those nights Carmella sat with you after Tommy’s death?”

  “I didn’t forget,” Martha answered flatly. “But don’t you forget it was a nigger who killed him!”

  “Shame on you; shame on you all!” Sid said.

  Nobody answered, and Henry Jacobs moved down a step.

  Darlene turned back to the crowd. “Ain’t nobody gonna say what we got to say?”

  When no one answered, she thumped her hands on her hips and stuck her snooty little nose in Sid’s face. “Get him out of here by Friday, or we’re getting a lawyer!”

  Sid didn’t blink an eye or move a muscle. “Do what you have to do,” he said without backing off an inch.

  Paul, who for the whole of his life had been taught to respect a woman’s delicacy, did something he’d never before done. He swung his left arm out and gave Darlene a shove that sent her tumbling into Henry Jacobs.

  When Sid turned and went back inside the house, Paul followed him.

  As the door closed they heard Darlene yell, “Just you wait, this fight ain’t over!”

  Benjamin heard it too.

  Paul

  If Mama was looking down and saw what I did tonight, she’d cringe for sure. Once when I smacked Jubilee for scribbling on my school paper, Mama gave me a talking to I’m not ever gonna forget. ‘I don’t care what a girl does to you,’ she said, ‘there’s no excuse for raising your hand. If it’s something you can’t deal with just walk away.’

  I’ve been taught to treat ladies with respect, but tonight I just couldn’t help myself. Seeing Darlene push that pointy nose of hers into Uncle Sid’s face was more than I could take. A man can walk away if somebody’s hurting him, but if it’s somebody he loves that’s a different story. When somebody attacks someone you love, you’ve got to stand up for them. Woman or man.

  Sid Klaussner’s one of the kindest men I’ve ever known. I’ve never heard him say a bad word about anybody, and he sure don’t deserve to be talked to the way she did.

  I’m sorry Darlene lost her brother, but that don’t give her cause for hating everybody else.

  If Darlene took time to get to know Benjamin, she’d see he’s a lot like us. He’s a man with a heart full of hurts on the inside; the only difference is he’s got black skin on the outside.

  If you ask me, having black skin ain’t nearly as bad as having a black heart like Darlene.

  Voices in the Night

  When the doorbell first rang, Paul and Benjamin were downstairs playing checkers. Seconds after Paul laughingly said he was playing at a disadvantage because of the cast on his arm, he heard the shriek of Darlene’s voice.

  “I’ll be right back,” he’d said and stood up from the table. He hurried up the stairs as fast as he could go and Benjamin followed along, but when Paul pushed his way out onto the porch Benjamin hung back. When he caught sight of the crowd, he stood behind the side wall in a spot where he could hear but not be seen.

  Listening to the anger in Darlene’s voice, Benjamin knew the thing he feared had come to pass.

  In moments of
anger heated words fly quickly and there’s little time for taking stock of your surroundings, so Sidney didn’t realize Benjamin was there until after he’d slammed the door. As he stomped back through the room, he saw the dark figure and turned.

  “Dear God, Benjamin,” he said, “I’m sorry you had to hear that.”

  “You got nothing to be sorry about,” Benjamin replied. “Things is what they is.”

  “That’s not true,” Sidney argued. “That was just a bunch of loudmouth—”

  Nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other, Benjamin said, “Isaac ’n me been trouble enough for you. It’s time for us to get going.”

  “No,” Paul said emphatically. “If you leave that means they win.”

  Benjamin gave a cynical little chuckle. “They’s gonna win anyway.”

  Hearing such a thing made Sidney madder than he already was. Normally a soft-spoken man with a jovial tone to his voice he launched a tirade, saying that he planned to fight fire with fire.

  “It’s not just you, Benjamin,” he said. “It’s the principles of human decency.”

  Benjamin was going to say human decency wasn’t the same for colored folks as it was for white, but before he had the chance Carmella came in and shushed them all.

  “This is not a conversation I want the children to hear,” she said firmly. “If you have a need to talk of such things, then go out in the backyard and do it.”

  Sidney gave a nod and headed toward the basement stairs. Paul followed with Benjamin right behind him. Benjamin was the only one who’d noticed the tearful look in Carmella’s eyes. When he passed by he leaned over and in a soft whisper said, “That woman what lost her son ain’t mad at you, Miz Carmella, she’s just mad at the meanness of life.”

  “Thank you, Benjamin.” Carmella fondly touched her hand to his arm. It was a fleeting thing, a moment, maybe two at the most, but it was a gesture that would remain in Benjamin’s heart for a good long time.