Passing Through Perfect

by Bette Lee Crosby

  The next day he began building a seesaw.

  “What’s this?” Delia asked.

  Otis, not a man given to sentimental gestures, mumbled, “A seesaw.”

  “Oh, Daddy Church,” Delia sighed, “I can’t believe you’d go to all this work just for the party.”

  “It ain’t jest for the party,” he said and kept hammering.

  At that time Otis expected there’d be other babies. That Isaac would have sisters. And brothers. He’d imagine the future and could see the kitchen table surrounded by a circle of chairs. In each one there was a grandchild with a shiny bright smile.

  But the future is a thing made of whisper-thin glass. The tiniest crack causes it to shatter and break into pieces. One moment you’re holding it in your hand, and seconds later it’s gone. Like happiness, it disappears before you realize it.

  The day of the party dawned with a bright sun and gentle breeze. Delia declared it to be the finest weather God ever made. All morning she bustled from task to task, carrying Isaac in her right arm and setting out plates with her left.

  At noontime the visitors started arriving. They came with cakes and pies and dishes of food. “Welcome to Grinder’s Corner,” the women said as they oohed and awed over Isaac. As Delia handed out dishes of potato salad and turnip greens, the women passed Isaac from one set of arms to the next. The whole while he gurgled and laughed, his little arms and legs spinning like pinwheels.

  Until that day Isaac’s only food had been goat’s milk and mashed grits, but at the party he sucked the last bit of flavor from an almost bare rib bone and tasted bits of sweet potato pie.

  “He’s after more ’n milk and grits,” Benjamin said, laughing. He poked his finger into a dish of cooked apples, let Isaac taste the sweet sauce, and then laughed again.

  In all there were thirty-six people at the barbeque. Twenty-one of them were children, the youngest being Luella Jackson’s boy who was just six weeks, and the oldest Beulah’s girl, who’d be starting high school next year.

  In the late afternoon when the babies slept and children played, the adults gathered in small groups. The women shared recipes and talked of visiting one another; the men spoke of crops and pay. Delia saw Benjamin sitting on the south edge of the grass so she went and sat next to him. She leaned her head on his shoulder. Threading her fingers through his, she lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed it.

  “Thank you,” she whispered and smiled.

  In the days following the party, Delia began visiting back and forth with the women she’d met at the barbeque. Once she walked the full way to Luella Jackson’s house carrying Isaac in her arms. Benjamin volunteered to drive her there, but Delia shook her head.

  “I like walking,” she said. “I like the feel of sun on my shoulders and the smell of growing things.”

  A few weeks later Beulah came to visit with two of the babies and the teenage girl. They spent a full afternoon sitting on the porch, talking and laughing as they lingered over sweet cakes and lemonade.

  That evening sitting across from Benjamin at the supper table, Delia said, “Now that I’ve come to know Grinder’s Corner, it’s not so different from Twin Pines after all.”

  Benjamin smiled.

  Letters

  During that first year Delia wrote countless letters to her mama; some were answered, some were not. She also wrote four letters to her daddy, but each one of those was returned with a heavy-handed scroll saying “Return to Sender.” Delia recognized her daddy’s handwriting, and after the last one came back she stopped writing.

  When Isaac was just a few months old, Delia took a picture of him and sent it to her mama. She told of the clever things he did and how although he had Benjamin’s features, he had her own coloring and frame. “He’s got eyes exactly like you, Mama,” she wrote, then slid the picture inside the envelope and sealed it.

  That letter was answered the very next week. Mary claimed the picture was dear to her heart and that she was keeping it hidden inside her underwear drawer.

  “I’ve been wanting to come for a visit,” the letter said, “but your daddy won’t hear of it. Every night I pray God will make him a more forgiving man, but so far those prayers haven’t been answered.”

  Mary went on to say how much she loved Delia and wished her well.

  “What happened, happened,” she wrote. “It may not be right, but it sure isn’t reason enough to turn your back on your own child. I can’t come to see you and Isaac, but that don’t stop me from loving you.”

  There was a five-dollar bill tucked inside the envelope.

  Through the years Delia and her mama sent letters back and forth on a regular basis. She sent pictures of Isaac with his first tooth, when he started walking, and then throwing a ball. There were a few pictures where Delia was sitting alongside of Isaac but only one where Isaac was sitting on his daddy’s lap.

  Mary usually wrote back with gushing comments over the boy. “He’s such a handsome lad,” she’d write, “he’s got his granddaddy’s build.” She expressed amazement that Isaac was walking at just nine months. “Why, you were full into a year before you’d take a single step.”

  But when Delia sent the picture of Isaac with his daddy, there was no answer for two months. When the letter finally came, it made no mention of the picture.

  They say that given time all wounds will heal, anger will be forgotten, and sins forgiven, but that was not true of Delia’s daddy. He never forgave her and forbid Mary to speak her name.

  “As far as I’m concerned, she’s dead,” he said and stuck to it.

  Once when George’s cousin came from Baltimore for a visit, they were sitting at the supper table and the cousin asked how Delia was doing.

  “She’s dead,” George answered and stuffed a chunk of pork chop in his mouth.

  Mary gasped and clutched her hand to her heart as if the death had occurred that very second. “George, don’t…” She was going to say more, but the anger in George’s eyes and the hard way he chomped down on that piece of pork stopped her.

  The cousin, sensing something was amiss, moved on to talking about baseball.

  Just as time didn’t dull George Finch’s anger, it didn’t dull the hurt in Delia’s heart. When Mary’s letters came, she would sit on the porch reading and rereading every word. Each sentence was carefully constructed to say only certain things, but threaded through the words were feelings of fear and anger. After that first time there was never another mention of her daddy.

  ~ ~ ~

  Delia and Benjamin hoped for more children, but it never happened and by the time Isaac turned three she had given up hoping.

  “I can only assume this is another thing Daddy has wished on us,” she said.

  Setting aside the sadness, she poured her love into Isaac and the life she and Benjamin were building together. She found a new kind of happiness in the small things that filled her days. Winters were long and sometimes harsh, but during those days Delia threaded her sewing machine and stitched patches for a quilt. The week after Isaac’s first birthday, she finished the first quilt and began stitching a second.

  Keeping busy proved to be a way of forgetting her daddy’s words. When the cold of winter left, she planted a garden nearly as wide as the house. She grew the things they ate: sweet potatoes, carrots, cabbage, tomatoes, beans, watermelons, and strawberries. As things ripened she carried them inside and began canning. Everywhere she went Isaac trailed behind her. Shortly after he began to talk, he started to learn the names of things she grew in the garden.

  “Dat’s coo-cumer,” he’d say and point to a tomato.

  “No, no,” she’d say with a laugh. “That’s a tomato.” Pointing to the far end of the row, she’d explain, “That’s a cucumber.”

  In the height of growing season Delia worked alongside Benjamin and Otis in the fields. When she went she allowed Isaac to tag along. Whatever she did, he mimicked. When he was only half the size of a full-grown stalk, he could tell the differenc
e between a weed and a young corn sprout.

  “Dat a weed,” he’d say and start tugging away at a piece of fern or skunk-vine.

  Although it took twice as long to work a row, Delia liked having the boy beside her. They would work for three or four hours then she’d bring him back to the house, tired and happy.

  After a bowl of warm soup or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, she and Isaac would sit together on the porch swing, and as they swayed back and forth she’d tell stories. Sometimes it would be a made-up tale of when his daddy was his age, but many times it was her foretelling of the future.

  On one particular occasion Delia told Isaac what it would be like when he grew up.

  “When you’re old enough,” she said, “you can go off to college and get a fine education. Then you can be a doctor, or maybe write stories for a newspaper. You might even get to live in New York City.”

  “Is Noo York got farms?” he asked.

  “Afraid not,” Delia laughed.

  “Me not wanna go dere,” Isaac said. “Me gonna be farmer like Daddy.”

  Delia gave a sad shake of her head. “You don’t ever want to be an Alabama farmer. It’s a hard life.”

  “Daddy ain’t got no hard life.”

  “Yes, he does,” Delia laughed. “He just don’t let it show.” She gave the swing a push and said, “In New York City colored folks got it way better than they do in Alabama.”

  Isaac’s world was small. He’d never been outside of Grinder’s Corner and didn’t understand the meaning of her words.

  “Is Daddy colored?” he asked.

  She looked down at him and laughed. “Yes, Daddy’s colored, I’m colored, you’re colored. We’re all colored.”

  “If you ain’t colored, what is you?”

  “White,” Delia answered sadly.

  Isaac started school when he was five. On the first day Delia took a picture of him wearing the new checked shirt she’d made, then she walked with him the whole two miles to the First Baptist Church where colored kids went to school.

  She went inside expecting to see classrooms like the one she’d sat in, but such was not the case. There was a single room with a cluster of chairs bunched around a long wooden table. The smaller kids gathered at one end and the older ones at the other. Delia’s heart fell when she saw the room and plummeted even further when she caught sight of the stack of ragged looking books piled on the window sill.

  “Lord God,” she murmured. With a heavy heart she kissed Isaac on the cheek and promised to come for him at three o’clock.

  On the walk home Delia’s eyes overflowed with tears, and they rolled down her cheek. The sound of her daddy saying “You made your bed, now lie in it” still echoed in her ears. How long, she wondered. How long did she have to pay for a single mistake? Although she was content with her choice, it saddened her to believe that choice had determined the pathway for Isaac’s life.

  “Please Lord,” she prayed, “stay beside my baby.”

  After seeing the Grinder’s Corner school, Delia knew whatever Isaac learned he was going to have to learn at home. From that day forward, every afternoon she’d sit beside him at the table and they’d practice numbers, letters, and words. Before a month had gone by he knew the alphabet and could count to fifty.

  In early October Isaac’s first-day-of-school picture was developed and Delia wrote to her mama.

  “I’m so proud of my little man,” she wrote. “I’d give anything in the world if you could see him.” She told how Isaac already knew his letters and numbers but said nothing about the makeshift school he attended.

  “If you could slip away from Daddy and meet me in town,” she suggested, “we could have lunch and you could get to know this fine little grandson of yours.” She went on to say Benjamin would drive them to Twin Pines and then do errands while they were having lunch. At the end of the letter she wrote, “Please say yes, Mama.” Delia slid the school picture into the envelope and sealed it.

  It wasn’t unusual for a week or two to go by before a letter was answered, but when it became a whole month Delia started to worry.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have asked Mama to come for lunch,” she said. “Maybe I should’ve left well enough alone.”

  “Inviting your mama to lunch ain’t a bad thing,” Benjamin said. “Could be she’s just been busy. Give it time.”

  Another week passed and there was still no answer, so Delia sat down and wrote a second letter.

  “I’m sorry if my asking you to lunch put you in a bad spot,” she wrote. “I’d be willing to just forget about that. Please write me back soon.”

  The days dragged as Delia watched and waited for an answer. After two weeks she began to believe none was coming. Trying to make amends for whatever wrong she’d done, she started sending a new letter almost every day. In one she begged for forgiveness, in another she promised to never again suggest meeting, and in one she even apologized for her sloppy handwriting. Still there was no response.

  Delia’s garden became overgrown with weeds and tomatoes waiting to be picked; still she did nothing but pace the floor cursing herself for alienating her mama as well as her daddy. “Why’d I do it?” she’d sob. “Why?”

  On the day that marked the second month without a letter, Benjamin came in from the field to find her red-eyed and weepy.

  “I should’ve never suggested Mama sneak away from Daddy,” she said. “He must’ve found out and now he’s turned her against me.”

  “I don’t think any such thing—” Benjamin said but before he could finish the sentence, she cut him off with a comment about how he didn’t know her daddy.

  “Yeah, I do,” he replied, but after that he kept quiet.

  “Maybe your mama can’t write,” Otis suggested. “Maybe she’s sick or down with a fever.”

  Delia gasped. “Lord God Almighty, don’t even think such a thing.”

  Although nothing more was said, that evening Benjamin tucked the thought inside his head and a day later, without mention to anyone, he drove into Twin Pines. He went past the Finch house three times before he finally worked up enough courage to park the car and go knock on the door.

  The first time he rapped lightly and stood waiting, but when there was no answer he knocked with a heavy hand. Still no answer. He walked around to the back of the house. The curtains were drawn, and there was no sound coming from inside.

  “Hello?” he called out.

  After he’d been there a good fifteen minutes, a woman came from the house next door. “Are you looking for the Finches?”

  “Yes,” Benjamin answered. “Missus Finch is my wife’s mama.”

  “Your wife’s mama?” the woman said. “And she doesn’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “Mary passed away this past September and George—”

  “Missus Finch is dead?”

  The woman nodded. “I’m surprised Pastor Finch didn’t let you know.”

  “He ain’t close with family,” Benjamin said; then he turned and walked away.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman called after him. “I’m real sorry.”

  “Thanks,” Benjamin hollered back and kept walking.

  For the remainder of that day Benjamin debated what to do. There was no good answer; there were only two different kinds of terrible. It was a painful thing to know your mama died without ever giving you one last hug or holding your baby in her arms. News such as that would break Delia’s heart. It would rip loose the thin thread of hope she’d been clinging to. But if he didn’t let her know, she’d go on hoping.

  Which was worse—to destroy the little bit of hope she had or let her go on wishing for something that would never happen? Long after Delia had gone to bed Benjamin sat on the porch and pondered the thought. It was near dawn when he came to a decision.

  There was little conversation during breakfast. Delia hurried Isaac along so he wouldn’t be late for school, and Otis claimed he had chores to finish up. Benjamin was silent. H
e took a few sips of coffee and left the plate of biscuits and gravy untouched.

  “You feeling okay?” Delia asked.

  He nodded then said he’d feed the chickens while Delia walked Isaac to school.

  “Leave it be,” she said, “I can do it when I get back.”

  “You got enough to do,” he replied and disappeared out the door.

  When Delia returned, Benjamin was sitting at the kitchen table.

  “Delia, honey,” he said. “Sit down. There’s something I got to say.”

  After years of loving him, she’d come to know Benjamin’s thoughts as well as her own. A single glance at the serious expression on his face told her something was wrong.

  “Lord have mercy,” she moaned and dropped into the chair.

  “I know you been worried about your mama not writing,” Benjamin said, “but it ain’t your fault. Sometimes things happen and it ain’t nobody’s fault, it’s just a thing what happens—”

  “For heaven’s sake, Benjamin, say what you got to say and be done with it.”

  “Don’t hurry me; what I got to speak ain’t easy.” He stretched his arm across the table and took her hand in his. “Delia, honey, I’m sorry I got to be the one to tell you this, but the reason your mama didn’t answer those letters is ’cause she’s gone to be with the Lord.”

  Delia yanked her hand loose and let out a gasp that could be heard a mile away. “Mama’s dead?”

  Benjamin nodded and reached for her hand again. “I know it’s a real hard thing to hear, but I couldn’t let you go on thinking it was your fault.”

  “Mama’s dead?” she repeated.

  Benjamin nodded again; then he began to explain how he’d driven to Twin Pines and spoken with the neighbor lady. As he told the story, Delia sat there with tears rolling down her cheeks. When there was nothing more to tell, he remained beside her.