The Sweetest Thing (12 page)

I had barely composed myself when a young man came to the bench and sat down, alone. I was half hidden in the bushes and didn't want to frighten him by stepping out, so I coughed twice, loudly, came out, and gave him a timid smile.

“Hiding from someone?” he asked.

“No, just admiring the beauty of this place,” I said, looking for another spot to escape to. I longed to go home, but Uncle Robert had driven us to the Fete, and he and my aunt were happily chattering with friends, seeming not in the least bit interested in leaving.

“I won't bite.” The boy had said something else, but I missed it. I turned and saw he was patting at the bench. “Have a seat. I won't bite.”

“Oh.” I felt my face flush. “I . . . I was just . . .”

“Leaving? I'm Andrew Morrison.” I sat down beside him. He had blond curly hair and dark blue eyes and was wearing a smart-looking suit. He smiled again. “I go to Tech and enjoyed the May Fete very much.”

“I've heard nice things about Georgia Tech,” I said, still in a daze from Peggy's stinging comments. “A fine school.”

“And your name?”

Embarrassed, I blushed again. “Forgive me. I'm Mary Dobbs Dillard. I recently came down to Atlanta from Chicago.”

“Splendid. And do you like our fair city?”

We engaged in small talk for probably ten minutes. At first I could barely concentrate on what he was saying, but slowly I relaxed and listened as he talked about being a mechanical engineer and hoping to use his skills to help some of the needy in Atlanta. And then he blushed and said, “I've talked too much about myself. Tell me about you.”

I looked into his dark blue eyes and said, “I really need to go, but it was nice to meet you, Andrew.”

He chuckled. “Likewise, Mary Dobbs. Perhaps we'll see each other again.”

“Perhaps.” I nodded and hurried away to where Uncle Robert and Aunt Josie were standing, puncturing meatballs with their brightly colored toothpicks and popping them into their mouths and laughing as if they hadn't a care in the world.

Perri

That evening, all worked up over the great success of the May Fete and my date with Spalding, I asked Mamma if I could go spend the night with Dobbs, who had disappeared at some point after the Fete.

Mamma agreed, in happy spirits because the folks at the license department had let her off to see me in the May Day festivities. She drove the Buick with me beside her while Barbara and Irvin sang at the top of their lungs the theme song from the Fete, a song that Gloria Swanson made famous in a musical from the twenties. I felt such a relief to see them laughing and happy when only two days ago I'd told them about us having to sell the house and they had both cried for hours.

Mamma let me off at the Chandlers' driveway. Bypassing the house, I hurried to the barn and into the darkroom and grabbed my camera. I didn't know what I would photograph, only that a new feeling of creativity was rushing through me, and I wanted—I needed—to profit from it immediately. I thought of the photo of the starry night so beautifully rendered in
Patches from the Sky.
Alas, the spring evening was far from pitch-dark, and stars would not come out for hours. So I hurried to the house, ran through the back door into the kitchen, and greeted Parthenia, who was crying rather dramatically as she peeled onions.

I climbed the stairs to Dobbs's room, impatient to talk to her about my date with Spalding and ask her advice about what to photograph. I found her lying perfectly still on her bed, staring up at the canopy. She was still wearing the soft pink tea dress, but she'd taken out her braids so that her black hair fell over her shoulders and off the side of the bed. Stretched out and recovering from the excitement of the day, she looked to me like a winsome starlet or a foreign princess. Before she even knew I was there, I had taken the photo.

She heard the noise of the shutter clicking and turned to the doorway. “What are you doing, Perri?”

“Taking pictures. I couldn't wait. Wasn't it all divine—the whole day? I feel so inspired; I can't begin to describe it.”

For once, Dobbs did not share my enthusiasm. She sat up and tossed loose strands of her hair over her shoulder and whispered, as if she were choking back tears, “I had no idea.”

“No idea about what?”

“That I was making your grieving harder by taking too much of your time.”

I gave her an odd look, my mind a thousand miles away. “Are you crazy? What are you talking about? You've saved my life, Dobbs Dillard.”

“That's not how your friends see it. Especially Peggy.”

“Of course not,” I acquiesced. “But they're jealous. And what can I say to them? I like you better? They'll come around.” I sat on the bed, set the camera carefully beside me, and ran my hands along my white dress. “You've done a marvelous job with our gowns.”

She barely acknowledged the compliment.

“Oh, heavens. Forget about Peggy.” Then I grabbed the camera and went to the far side of the room. “Look this way. I'm going to take your picture.”

She smiled a little then and rolled her eyes at me. I snapped the picture of quintessential Dobbs, with her black hair falling to her waist, a quick smile on her lovely olive-skinned face. Then she frowned. “Is it true what Peggy said? That you had a thousand dates in one year? A
thousand
?”

I felt my face go red with embarrassment. “Peggy said that?”

“Yes, she did. She said you were the most popular girl in Atlanta.”

“Well, she's wrong. It's just silly stuff. Stupid. We used to record in our diaries all the boys who came over to our homes, and last year she decided to count them.”

“So it's true? You had a thousand dates in one year? That's extraordinary.”

“I told you—it's just silliness. You know, pop-calling—just boys coming over to the house. Loads of girls had guys visiting all the time. The only reason those boys came over was because Dellareen baked the best brownies in the world.”

“I'm sure that's the only reason.”

“Anyway, it doesn't matter a bit now, because I'll have no more dates after we move.”

That's when I finally spilled out the truth to Dobbs—that we were going to have to sell the house. She listened to me but, thank goodness, didn't give me any shallow platitudes about God providing.

She just said, “I'm really sorry, Perri. It's another excruciatingly hard thing, with all you've been through.” Then we both lay across her bed and she began to recite something from memory about God's compassions not failing and being new every morning. I recognized it as Scripture.

She recited it softly, but with intensity, and I didn't know why, but afterwards I felt neither sad nor angry nor giddy. I felt a type of gentle cloth float down and cuddle me within its folds.

CHAPTER

10

Dobbs

I'd never expected to fit in at Washington Seminary, but it got worse after my confrontation with Peggy. Maybe she'd told the rest of the girls, because suddenly Perri's friends, Macon and Brat and Lisa—and Peggy, of course—were at times downright rude to me. They didn't smile at me in the halls, and even though we sat together at lunch, they carried on conversations that seemed expressly meant to exclude me. Only Mae Pearl continued to treat me kindly, and for all the ways her sugary sweetness grated on me, I still was thankful for her.

The talk at Washington Seminary for the first half of the month of May volleyed between the huge success of the May Fete and the “big swoon” over the Kentucky Derby. That's how the girls described it, and they jabbered on and on, not about the horses, but the jockeys!

I nodded politely and had a smile planted on my mouth, but in my mind, we were crowded around the little radio in the apartment in Chicago—Father, Mother, Frances, Coobie, and myself—listening enraptured to the Kentucky Derby. Father loved horses and, although he strongly disagreed with gambling, he enjoyed a good horse race. I had grown up listening to the frantic shouting of the announcers as they made the race come alive with mere words. Another pang of homesickness swept over me.

I had hoped after spending two months in Atlanta, I'd begin to feel at home, but in reality, I found myself counting the days till the end of the school year. Sixteen. Soon Hank would come and bring my sisters for a visit, and then we'd ride home on the train to my town. I longed for a walk beside Lake Michigan with the blustery wind blowing my hair all in knots while Coobie chased a kite and Frances tossed dry bread crumbs to the ducks.

———

On the second Saturday in May, I found Parthenia in the kitchen making sandwiches and sniffing away, occasionally wiping her nose and eyes on her sleeve.

“Whatever is the matter?” I asked.

She looked up, surprised, then seeing it was I, she said, “They's done found something else that's gone missin', ova at Miz Becca's house, and she sez it's Mama done stole it too, jus' like she stole the knives from Miz Chandler and Miz Becca's fancy jewelry.”

“Oh no! I'm so sorry.” I tried to give Parthenia a hug, but she turned away. “What did Becca say was missing?”

“Her heirloom earrings from her great-grandmother, and two pieces of her fine silver. Miz Becca sez it was the day before the Valentine's Party when Mama was there that she stole those things and that she sold 'em to the pawn shop, and so we ain't neva' gonna find everything that's gone missin'. Miz Becca sez Mama pawned off those fancy knives too, and that she's hiding the money somewhere so's she and Papa kin take Cornelius to a special doctor so he kin learn to talk. But it ain't true! I knowed it ain't true! She didn't steal those knives, and I don't believe she stole nuthin' else either.” She started to cry, and eventually she let me wrap my arms around her.

“Mama wouldn't neva' go an' steal from the Chandlers, and I don't know why Miz Becca hates her so much to say such things. Now she ain't neva' gonna git out of that there Alms House.”

“We have to keep praying about this, Parthenia. The Lord knows where all the missing silver is. It's not hard for Him to help us find it when it's His time. So we have to pray that He shows us. Okay?”

Parthenia backed out of my embrace, braced her small hands on the counter. “You bin talkin' to my mama?”

“No, of course not. I've never met your mother, Parthenia.”

“Well, she sez the same things as you do. Last time we wuz there, Mama took me on her knee and she said, ‘Parthie, I know I didn't steal nothin' and so I'm thinkin' the Lawd must need me here at this Alms House for some reason, and so I jus' pray He'll let me accomplish what He has set out for me.'

“
Hmpff!
I ain't one bit sure the Good Lawd knows what He's doing; I think mebbe He's jus takin' a long nap.” She spread mayonnaise on slices of bread, all the while looking at me. “I's sorry to say it, Miz Mary Dobbs, but that's what I think.”

Fortunately Mae Pearl and Perri showed up for lunch, and while Parthenia fixed the sandwiches for us, Perri started taking photos of her. The little girl glowed with pleasure and posed for several more photos, and I think she forgot about her mother's predicament for just a little while.

I didn't try to get any other information from Parthenia that day, but I felt afraid for Anna. Three accusations of stealing could mean a lot worse than time at the prison farm. As Aunt Josie had said, coloreds had been hanged for less than that.

“Tell us another story,” Mae Pearl begged me, as she and Perri and I walked from the kitchen down to the Chandlers' lake.

“Why do you want to hear another story?” My mind was still on the story Parthenia had just told me.

“I don't know. It's just that they are . . . inspiring.”

I glanced at Perri, who shrugged, and so I launched into another tale from my repertoire. “When the cotton prices fell in 1931, Father drove us over to Arkansas and spent a few weeks there preaching to the poor people who'd lost just about everything in a day. No money. No crops. On the first night of the revival in one little town there in Arkansas, a woman brought her sick son on stage. The lady looked about twenty and all skinny, and the little boy, maybe three or four, but hollow-eyed and yellow-skinned. The mother was crying for Father to save her little boy and pronounce healing.

“Father took one look at the boy and bowed his head and prayed, entrusting the boy to Jesus. Then Father took him in his arms and said, ‘He needs to go to the hospital, ma'am. My wife will take you in the car.' But before he could even say another word, the little boy died, right there in Father's arms.”

“Oh, Mary Dobbs! You have the saddest stories!” This from Mae Pearl.

“
Shh
,” Perri hissed. “You're the one who asked for it.”

“The woman was wailing, and I thought the people in the tent were going to rush on stage and pull Father apart. But Mother helped the woman off stage and held that dead little boy in her arms, and Father just stayed on his knees before the people, praying and crying and talking about how God was near to the brokenhearted and in this life we will have suffering and how Jesus suffered.

“And people started coming forward, right down that sawdust trail, begging for salvation. Coobie and Frances and I just sat on the front row and watched—Mother had left with the woman. And I don't know how many people came down that night, but Coobie said it was over a hundred.”

Perri and Mae Pearl just stared at me, not quite sure of what to say, and so finally I broke the awkward silence with, “Time to eat!”

Perri and Mae Pearl and I unpacked the sandwiches and ate them under one of the big hickory trees along the shore. We stretched out our bare legs on the blanket and let the sun warm our faces. The sandwiches had that early summer flavor, fresh and pungent, and we sipped freshly made lemonade and nibbled on lemon squares. Mae Pearl and Perri talked about tea parties and Phi Pis and boys from Georgia Tech, but I kept seeing Father there in that tent in Arkansas, down on his knees, praying and crying, and me sitting there knowing that my father was in a holy moment with the Lord.

———

The more I got to know my surroundings and the more I got to know Uncle Robert and Aunt Josie, the more I wondered why my father had left all of this. There are things that families do not talk about, and Father's decision to leave Atlanta was one of those in our family. I had no idea when he had packed up his belongings and moved to Chicago, or what the circumstances were.

“Your father left another life, an easier life,” Mother had told us years ago, “to follow God's call on him.”

Two men who had graduated from Moody the same year as Father had become very famous evangelists, traveling throughout the country and even overseas to hold revivals. Walking down the streets of Chicago each June, I saw their pictures plastered on every billboard in sight. Their tent meetings were usually packed out with hundreds, even thousands, of attendees.

But it hadn't worked like that for Father. He had the charismatic personality, the booming voice, and the theatrical movements that made a good evangelist. He certainly had the faith and the knowledge of the Bible. But for all the years I'd attended his tent meetings and sat in the pew at the little city church he pastored, it seemed Father did indeed attract the down-and-outers. Even though we saw God show up time and again, I often wondered what it did to a man's pride to walk by those posters and not be a part of that great movement of God. I was pretty sure that both of those men kept their families well fed, all the while remaining true to the Gospel and reaching out to the rich and the poor alike.

One night, cuddled in bed together, Frances, Coobie, and I had looked at my parents' wedding photo. “Mother was so beautiful,” Coobie whispered. “She looked like a princess.”

Then, out of the blue, Frances asked, “Do you think Father decided on being poor? Did God tell him we should be poor and that's why he left his nice house in Atlanta?”

I didn't know what to say. I always supposed that Father left Atlanta because he felt a strong call of God to attend Bible school and be a preacher. Since almost every one of Daddy's sermons included something about the sin of loving money, women, and strong drink, all lumped together, I figured maybe the whole Dillard clan in Atlanta, wealthy by anyone's standards, had gotten tired of his moralizing and shooed him off, and that was why he had become estranged from his family.

But now I was not sure about my assumption. Uncle Robert and Aunt Josie did not strike me as frivolous people. Yes, they lived in luxury, but they were extremely generous with their time and money, and Aunt Josie seemed truly to love my father and our family. She spoke of Father with a little catch in her throat and worry lines on her brow. Somewhere along his life story, Father had decided he didn't need his parents or a big sister, and after getting to know my aunt and uncle, I couldn't imagine why.

I had a vivid memory of my family getting ready for one of Father's week-long revival meetings. The old Hudson was packed to the brim with our luggage and affairs, and we were about to start our drive down to Arkansas. But before we left, Father received a telegram from Aunt Josie explaining that his mother had died. I remembered him staring at the telegram, his round, boyish face ash white, a look of defeat in his eyes.

Then, calmly, he had folded the telegram and handed it to Mother. “I can't go to the funeral. You can see that, Ginnie. The revivals start tomorrow night. Five days straight. Atlanta is in the complete opposite direction.”

In tears, Mother begged him to postpone the services and attend my grandmother's funeral. “Heavens, Billy, the people in Arkansas will understand. Sometimes you must put your family first.”

So instead of heading to Arkansas, we drove down to Atlanta. I was six or seven at the time, and all I remember were the crowds of people at the funeral and us sitting up front with Aunt Josie and Uncle Robert and my grandfather, and me feeling sad for the death of a woman I hardly knew. And I remember Father's tear-stained face when they lowered the casket into the ground.

———

I was looking at the photo albums I'd found in Becca's closet on a Sunday afternoon two weeks before Hank and my sisters were to arrive. Uncle Robert was out playing golf at the club, and Aunt Josie was sitting on the couch across from me, knitting.

“Why is my father not in these pictures? Christmas and Thanksgiving from 1907 on, he seems absent. He wasn't old enough to be at college, was he?” It was an innocuous question, but the answer Aunt Josie gave was not.

She glanced up from her knitting and said, “You know, those were during his wild years.”

Her remark caught me off guard. Then I remembered vaguely hearing reference to those years—always from the pulpit, always my father's voice choked with emotion, pleading with parishioners to turn their backs on sin and run, run, run. But I never knew what had happened in my father's past. It was another secret, something he carefully guarded.

Aunt Josie must have seen the look on my face. She stitched for a moment in silence and seemed to be contemplating something complicated with each stitch. Finally she said, “Your father was the most impulsive boy, with the biggest ideas, ideas to change the world and the personality to make it happen—not unlike you, Dobbs.” She gave me a sympathetic smile.

“But in his teen years, he became like a wild stallion. He left home several times and was found squandering money, hanging out with women of ill repute.” She glanced at me, put in another stitch, and set down the needles. “Dear me, it is not my place to be telling you these things.”

“Please tell me, Aunt Josie. I need to know. I think it's important.”

She let out one of her deep sighs and continued. “Our dear parents, God rest their souls, grieved and mourned and worried themselves sick—literally—over William. When he ‘got religion' at some revival meeting when he was around eighteen or nineteen, no one was more surprised than he himself. He announced to us that God had called him to be a preacher. Mother was overjoyed, Papa cautiously optimistic; after all the pain his son had taken him through, Papa didn't mind the idea of his son becoming a preacher.

“Things were good in the family for some months after that, maybe even a year. Lots of warmth and laughter and respect. A type of restoration for us all, Mary Dobbs. Your father begged us to call him Billy—he wanted nothing to do with his former self. I think he saw himself as another apostle Paul—his conversion had been that dramatic.” She smiled and looked my way. “Of course, most everything for Billy was dramatic.