The Sweetest Thing (6 page)

As we walked out of the kitchen, Parthenia muttered to herself, “Ain't proper for guests to serve themselves like that.”

A few minutes later, Perri and I sat cuddled under an old quilt on the sofa on the screened-in side porch that gave a view of the stables and the servants' quarters and the hill leading down to the summerhouse. We sipped our tea in silence until Perri finally asked, “What's his name?”

“Henry Wilson. But everyone calls him Hank. I met him eighteen months ago when he came looking for my father. Father is a preacher, and Hank was at Moody Bible Institute and wanted to see if he could help Father with his tent meetings.”

“Oh.” Perri looked a little confused. “Your Hank wants to be a preacher at tent meetings?”

“Yes. He's devoted to the Sawdust Trail.”

“The Sawdust Trail?”

“That's what my father calls preaching the Gospel and touching the world for Christ—it was a phrase used by the famous evangelist Billy Sunday.”

“Ah.”

“You know—at tent revivals there's always sawdust on the ground, and when someone converts, well, he walks down the sawdust trail to the front and meets with the preacher.”

Perri looked at me blankly. “If you say so.”

“And Hank will make a fine preacher with his deep bass voice and the prettiest blue eyes. He dreams of going all over the world, inviting people to walk the Sawdust Trail.”

Perri took in this news with a cocked head. “Is that what your father does?”

“Well, not exactly. He doesn't travel around the world—just the States, primarily the Midwest and the Southeast.”

Perri scooted closer on the sofa. “What's it like? Going to those cities and seeing those people?”

I closed my eyes and saw my father holding up his big black Bible, his face all red with passion, beads of perspiration running down his face, as he pled with people to find Jesus. I was sitting there in the audience of ten measly looking people. One man had dozed off; another was mumbling under his breath—Coobie said way too loudly that he didn't have all his wits about him—and a little woman all decrepit and bent over was searching in her purse for something.

I kept wanting the people to pay attention to Father, to call out “Amen,” but they didn't. Father went right on preaching as if he were standing before a crowd of five hundred.

But I didn't want to tell Perri that, so I just said, “It's hard. The people don't have money. And they look hungry. Sometimes they just come to the tent meeting to get free food.”

“Your parents give out free food?”

“When they can.”

“They go and buy food for people before the tent meeting?”

“Oh no. Mother just prays and asks God to provide, and people usually turn up with some food and stuff—because they don't have any money to leave an offering. And whatever the people give Mother, she gives to others who are in worse shape than we are.”

“Goodness. That's, that's . . .” Perri seemed to struggle with a word to give to what I had just described. “That's interesting.” She paused, took a sip of her tea, and looked out over the back property, her fine feminine nose turned slightly upward, her eyes closed, as if she was trying to picture my parents handing out food to the destitute. Then she turned to me and asked, “Are you ever hungry? I mean, if your mother gives away all the food that was to be your father's pay for his services.”

“Sometimes I am. But we just trust God to provide.”

“And He does?”

“Every time. I haven't starved to death yet.”

She shook her head slowly. “I couldn't live like that. I
wouldn't
live like that. Never knowing where my next meal is coming from.”

“You would if you had to,” I blurted out before I thought through what I was saying. “I mean, I guess it might take some getting used to for someone like you who generally has plenty of food to eat. But it isn't hard for me.”

I stood up, spread my arms out wide, and looked across the fields. “Imagine that you are part of something big and wonderful, Perri. Imagine that you're going to help feed all the poor people in Atlanta. Yes, it means you'll have to give up certain things, but it will be worth it. Imagine lines and lines of people out back here and us serving them soup and bread and pies and wonderful cakes and iced tea—imagine the laughter on their tight, drawn faces. Just having a full belly would bring joy to them. Imagine that!”

Perri set down her glass of tea and came to stand beside me. She leaned her arms on the back of a chair and stared out into the Chandlers' property as if she was indeed imagining the scene I had just described. “I'll have to admit that sounds,
hmm
, like a very kind thing to do,” she said.

“Kind! Jesus called us to proclaim freedom to the captives. It's not kindness; it's truth. I've seen it happen in other cities. I promise I have! It's what we Christians are to be about.”

Perri backed away from me. “You really get worked up about this stuff, don't you? You're a fascinating person, Mary Dobbs Dillard.”

“The other day you said I was the strangest person you'd ever met.”

“Well, they're both true. Strange and fascinating.” She walked to the other side of the porch, putting distance between us. “And so that's what Hank wants to do. Help the poor and never have any money for his family?”

“He wants to obey the Bible. And watch God provide.” This, I'll admit, I said a bit defensively. Then I walked over to Perri, grabbed both of her hands, and squeezed them tight. “And I know your situation is different and everything, but honestly I feel it rumbling down in my soul. God is going to provide for you and your family too.”

She let go of my hands and folded her arms tight across her chest. Her face became dark, and her eyes swelled with tears. “I've never heard anyone speak like you do, Dobbs. It sounds absolutely crazy to me. But one thing I do know. Your God may provide for you, but here in this part of Atlanta, everyone works hard and provides for himself and his family. And that's what I'm gonna do now.”

I realized in that moment two things: I hadn't really gotten to tell her anything about Hank, and it might take a while to convince Perri Singleton that I was right. God would provide.

While Aunt Josie practically lived at the Singleton house, Perri stayed with me at the Chandlers'. I don't think that Aunt Josie realized that I didn't attend Washington Seminary at all that first week I was in Atlanta. The enormity of the tragedy just sucked her in, and she spent every ounce of her energy taking care of details. She'd reappear at the house long enough to fire out orders to Hosea and Cornelius and disappear again. I watched my aunt with deep admiration for her endless energy and determination.

Dearest Mother, March 9, 1933

Well, I have been here in Atlanta for almost a week, and because of the tragedy I wrote you about, I have hardly left the Chandlers' property.

Perri Singleton has spent the last two days with me at the Chandlers'. I think the fact that I have nothing to do with Atlanta and that I knew virtually nothing about her life and family and school before the tragedy, somehow makes me more approachable.

I have tried to tell her stories about the Lord providing for us, but she looks at me as if I have two heads, and it makes me feel quite stupid.

But don't you believe that the Lord will provide for them, Mother?

Please keep praying. I will write again soon.

All my love to Father, Coobie, and Frances . . .

CHAPTER

5

Perri

I stayed with Dobbs at the Chandler home for two days and nights, and honestly, sometimes Dobbs succeeded in making me forget the horror of what had happened to my family. She had an endless supply of stories about her family's life on the road—going from town to town, her father preaching and her mother handing out food that she didn't have but which miraculously appeared, and of children healed of sickness and a bunch of other farfetched things that I wasn't sure were quite true, but they sure were entertaining.

And Dobbs did practical things to help too. On Thursday afternoon, Hosea—I learned his name as well as those of his children, Cornelius and Parthenia—drove us back to my house, and we picked up my siblings. My, were they thrilled to ride in that Pierce Arrow convertible! Barbara laughed the whole way over to the Chandlers' house, and Irvin just kept fiddling with every gadget he found in the car, and Hosea didn't say a word to stop him. Irvin and Barbara stayed with us the whole afternoon, riding the Chandlers' pony—none of us had dared to go near our barn where the tragedy happened—and playing silly games that Dobbs seemed to invent out of nothing.

I had never before felt the tightening in my soul that I felt for Dobbs. Most of my friends I'd known forever, but my bond with Dobbs came swiftly, desperately, born from all the things breaking inside me. She had a kind of intuition that read my mind and peered deep into my soul. I found that I needed to be near her.

On Friday afternoon, Dellareen called me at the Chandlers' and said that Jimmy was coming over in the Buick to pick me up. “Your motha' wants you to spend some time at home now, Miz Perri.”

By the time Jimmy showed up, I had gathered my belongings and made a decision. “Dobbs, you're coming home with me.”

She was standing in that grand entrance hall, talking to skinny ol' Jimmy as if they were good friends. She turned to me and, with a huge smile on her face, said, “I just
knew
you'd invite me. Yes, of course I'll come! Let me get a few things.” She spun around in a circle and then hurried up the stairs.

Jimmy raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Dobbs came back downstairs with her pitiful suitcase and called out to Parthenia, who was down the hall in the kitchen, “I'm going over to the Singletons' with Perri.”

The little girl came into the hall, holding a wooden spoon, her hands on her hips. I laughed behind my hand, seeing the colored girl in her pinafore walk up to Dobbs—she didn't even come to her shoulders—and challenge Dobbs with her big black eyes. “Ain't proper to impose yourself on people who is grieving,” she said.

Dobbs was unperturbed. “It's none of your business, Parthenia. You just relay the message to Mrs. Chandler when she gets back.”

As Jimmy drove us up the long, winding drive that led to my house, I marveled at the heaviness that came over me. I stared at the home that had been called an architectural treasure of Atlanta, a house that Daddy had helped his father build when Daddy was a young teen.

Eventually, when Margaret Mitchell's
Gone with the Wind
was published in 1936, everyone started calling the house Tara because it fit that description, but this was 1933, and we had not heard of Tara or Scarlett O'Hara at the time.

Perched high up on a hill on Wesley Road, with a driveway that climbed and twisted around, our house appeared from behind a forest of trees as if in a dream—a three-storied white-brick mansion with six white columns out front and black shutters on the big windows, with front and back porches and big magnolia trees that surrounded the house. Everything that had at one time meant home and comfort and beauty now looked gray, as if a thin layer of ash had swept in on the breeze and settled on our house and yard.

A sickening feeling hit me hard in the stomach, just as real as if my little brother had punched me there, which happened occasionally. Dobbs noticed—she noticed everything—and looped her arm through mine as we walked up to the house. She called back to Jimmy, “Thank you kindly for the ride.”

Mamma met me at the front door, and she looked just as ashy gray as the house, and I thought no amount of makeup would have been able to cover up her grief. She grabbed me and held me tight, strangling tight, for a long minute.

Struggling out of her embrace, I asked, “Mamma, is it all right if Mary Dobbs stays with me tonight? I'd really appreciate it.”

Sweet Mamma, thin and bone weary, reached out her delicate hands, took Dobbs by the shoulders, looked her straight in the eyes, and said, “It would be our great pleasure to have you with us tonight, Mary Dobbs.” What I read on Mamma's face was a whole lot of gratitude.

I found I couldn't grieve for long with Dobbs around. Life for her was such an adventure, and she found excitement in every detail. Upstairs in my room, which she proclaimed “extravagant,” she waltzed over to one of the walls where four photos of our house and yard, taken at different seasons, hung in simple wooden frames. She stared at them and then at me and then at them again. “These are magnificent. Perceptive. They're yours, aren't they?”

I gave a little nod. “Yes. I took the photographs.”

“I
knew
it! The minute I set eyes on you, I knew you had potential.”

“Potential?” Honestly, Dobbs talked in enigmas sometimes.

“To see the world from a different perspective. You know—‘the eye is the window to the soul.' ”

I nodded, recalling the words written in that little blue book, and said, “Oh yes. I suppose I see what you mean.” But I didn't.

“So you have a camera? A real camera?”

“I do. My . . . my father gave it to me for my fourteenth birthday.”

She didn't let me dwell on that. “Can I see it?”

I opened my closet and pointed to where the camera sat, neatly arranged on a shelf. Beside it was a stack of albums in which I had classified my photos. Dobbs ran her slim hands over the camera's red leatherette box.

“It's an Eastman Kodak Rainbow Hawk-Eye,” I said. “It was a really nice camera for me to receive as a beginner.”

“It's absolutely marvelous. And you're no beginner now. You're practically a professional. Look at all these photo albums! You're amazingly organized, Perri.” She stood up and turned to where all my dresses hung on the other side of the closet. “And you have wonderful taste in clothes.”

I wondered how in the world she knew anything about clothes, but I didn't say a word. No need to risk another gaffe like calling her one dress a potato sack!

“It's a splendid closet, and you've arranged it so well.”

I shrugged. Arranging things, keeping order, came very naturally to me, for whatever it was worth.

“Do you have a darkroom here where you develop your pictures?”

“Not at home. Mrs. Carnes, the fine arts teacher at Washington Seminary, lets me use the darkroom there, since I'm one of the photographers for the school yearbook.”

Dobbs had squatted back down in my closet and was carefully leafing through one of my albums. “You're very gifted!” she enthused.

I'd soon learn that Dobbs seemed almost always enthusiastic, but on that dark and dreary day, I believed her. I took the compliment like a cool splash of water on my face, wiping away the ash residue that had settled there.

But Dobbs's compliment didn't come without its requirements. She began calculating immediately. “With talent like this, you should be taking photos of reality.”

“Reality?”

“Not just shots of your friends for the yearbook and wonderful photos of your house, but life—real life.”

I stared at her, thinking briefly of “White Angel Breadline.”

“You should be showing this snippet of Atlanta society how the rest of the world lives. Why”—I could tell an idea was brewing—“you could put together booklets to raise money for the poor, for the prisoners, a hundred different causes.”

I plopped down on my bed and glared through the closet door at Dobbs Dillard. “Don't you think I have enough worries of my own right now—how to help Mamma and Barbara and Irvin deal with the grief, how my family is going to pay the bills, how to keep this house? I don't have time to get involved in some lofty idea of helping the poor. Right now, Dobbs Dillard, the poor is
us
!” I jabbed a finger into my chest to emphasize my point.

She came out of the closet holding a copy of the Washington Seminary yearbook,
Facts and Fancies
, plopped down on the bed beside me, and gave me an impulsive hug. “You're right, Perri. Forgive me and my big mouth.” She sounded truly sorry.

I shrugged. “It's okay.”

“So show me which photos you took for last year's
Facts and Fancies.
”

We opened the hardback black annual, and I leafed through the pages, turning them quickly. “All the head shots of the girls were taken by a professional photographer. He also took the ones of the May Day festivities, but I took these.”

She peered closer. “You took all these pictures of people in action? Why, they're just grand! You've caught people in the midst of real life—not posing.”

She was pointing to one photo in particular that was part of a collage I'd put together of the sophomore class. In the photo, my dearest friends, Peggy Pender and Mae Pearl McFadden and Emily Bratton, were standing by the columns out front of Washington Seminary, gossiping about something and completely unaware that they were being photographed.

“You've got talent, girl,” she reaffirmed.

I appreciated her confidence in me, but all I could think about, being back in my room, were the words that Bill Robinson had pronounced on the day after the funeral to Mamma and me,
“We are going to do everything in our power to keep the house from being repossessed.”

I awoke in the middle of the night from dreams of dangling feet and voices screaming, my body sweaty and fresh tears on my face, my heart pounding. I switched on the little lamp beside my bed and breathed a thankful sigh for the diffusion of light in my room. I rolled over, disoriented.

Climbing out of bed, I walked to the window and pressed my nose against the cool pane, wishing for a ray of sun to pierce the cold darkness outside and the chill in my soul. All was black, but a thought seared through me.
Patches from the Sky.
I remembered the way the clouds had parted at Daddy's funeral and the snatch of hope I had felt when that happened.

At length I found the little volume under a stack of papers on my desk and brought it into bed with me, as if this small hardbound book could console me, chase away my nightmares with a sunbeam. I opened the book and once again read the handwritten message on the inside cover:

An artist's eye can take the spiritual
and bring it down to earth.

Remember that the eye is the window to the soul.

Then I turned the page. Above the book's title, I found another inscription in the same handwriting.

To Hank, Easter 1925

Love, Grandmamma

Dobbs had given me Hank's book.

It was a collection of well-known poems and Bible verses, many of which were familiar to me. Interspersed between the poems and verses were occasional photographs of clouds, flowers, a field at harvesttime, a child in his mother's lap—each exquisite in its simply beauty. I turned the pages with trembling fingers, not bothering to read the poems, but instead eager to glimpse the next photo.

On one page, there was a photo of the night sky, lit up with stars. I ran my fingers across the page and wept. This was a picture of what Dobbs called reality, a beacon pointing to all that pushed and strained inside of me, longing, needing to escape. Drying my eyes with the sleeve of my robe, I stared at the photo and wished deep within me that I would someday take a picture as beautiful as that.

At last I read the poem on the opposite page, “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes” by Francis William Bourdillon. I had never heard of this poet, but his short poem touched me deeply:

The night has a thousand eyes,

And the day but one;

Yet the light of the bright world dies

With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,

And the heart but one;

Yet the light of a whole life dies

When love is done.

I fell asleep clutching the book to my chest, the pages opened to that poem and a whisper on my breath. “Oh, Daddy. I miss you, Daddy.”

———

The next morning, I awoke with gratitude to the sun filtering through the window. Dobbs had slept in Barbara's room—my sister was over at Lulu's again—and I went down the hall to find her. The bed was made and the room empty. I located Dobbs downstairs in the library, which was attached to my father's study, reading in his big leather chair.

She sat up straight when she saw me. “I hope it was all right to come in here. No one else was awake.”

“It's fine. Would you like some breakfast?”

She shrugged. “There's no hurry.” Then she narrowed her black eyes and said, “You had a bad night, didn't you?”

When I nodded, she stood up, took my hand, and squeezed it hard. “Give yourself time, plenty of time.”

Again I had a feeling that Dobbs understood heartache very well.

She saw that I was holding
Patches from the Sky
. “Have you been reading this?”

I nodded again. “Some . . . in the night. It's lovely—so simple, so profound
.
”

“I knew it would be meaningful to you.”

“But how did you know, Dobbs? You gave it to me before we were friends, before you knew I loved photography.”

She looked me straight in the eyes, and I wanted in that moment to peer through the sparkle and deep intensity straight into her soul. “Mother calls it woman's intuition and Father calls it the moving of the Holy Ghost.”