AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“How much hatred and abuse and anger do you think Blacks and whites have endured for simply loving each other?”
“Far too much. And none of it was right.”
“And what mother would want that pain, that danger, for her child if there was an easier path to take?”
“So you think his mother didn’t want you and Joshua to be together?”
“I know she didn’t, because she told me so right to my face. I would ruin her beautiful son’s life. I would take him away from his world, his kind. And worst of all, I would be condemning him to death.”
“And how did that make you feel, Hilly?” asked DuBose in a cautious tone.
Hilly’s features clouded over. “It angered me. It... it made me think there was no way through, no way at all. And before then, Desiree, I always figured out a way to keep moving ahead. No matter what life threw at me, and it was a lot, I figured out a way to keep going. People calling me a stupid hick all those years because of where I came from and the way I talked? The fact that I didn’t have a good education? The fact that my momma and daddy would just leave me up there by myself like I didn’t matter? Like I wasn’t worth anything? It all just made me fight harder. Made me more determined to prove them wrong.” She paused and drew a shallow, nervous breath. “But with this damnable thing I couldn’t punch through it. It swallowed me whole. It turned me into a person without a lick ’a hope about anything. And that’s as low as a body can get.”
DuBose felt her chest grow heavy. “And so you...?”
Hilly’s features tightened and she nodded. “And so I just accepted it. The way everybody told me how my life was to be led, that’s what I did. I was weak, like I said before. It’s always easier to follow, isn’t it? See, that way you don’t have to face the hard problems. You don’t even have to think for yourself. You just do what others want you to do, become the person they tell you that you already are.” A solitary tear slid down her cheek.
“But wouldn’t you know deep down it was all a lie?”
Hilly dabbed at her eyes and then resettled herself. “I had my issues with how Lucy turned out, as you now know. The guilt was beyond any pain I had ever felt. What I’d done to that poor, innocent child. But it wasn’t physical pain. It was all in my mind, my heart. And even after I came back from that hospital over in Petersburg, I believed that I could not... survive, without some help. So I went to the preacher who used to be at our church here. I talked to him about Lucy. And I told him about me and Joshua, because I just had to tell somebody about it. The things I was feeling, what was in my soul. Regrets I had. Everything so mixed up in my head.”
“What did he say? Was he helpful?”
Hilly lifted her gaze to DuBose, and the woman’s expression of crushing hurt was all-encompassing.
“He said that God had made Lucy the way she was as punishment for me being in love with a colored man, though he did not use that term.”
DuBose caught a quick, erratic breath, and her thoughts went back to her encounter with Father Matthew. “Then he was no man of God.”
Hilly touched her eye where a tear clung to it, letting it leach into her finger. “But I believed his words for the longest time. And then I thought: How can that be? God created the heavens and the earth and every single thing on it. God doesn’t say one creation is better than another. For God there is no color. There is only love. So these folks can’t have it both ways.”
“I’m so sorry, Hilly.”
“The law case that allowed Blacks and whites to finally marry?”
“What about it?”
She smiled, bittersweet and deep. “The white man’s name was Loving. I always thought that was one of God’s finest ironies.”
She rose and gazed around the room of her dead daughter before looking back at DuBose. “You and my son both give me hope. And that’s a powerful thing when it looks like the whole world is spinning right out of control, when we should all know better if we just opened our damn eyes.”
After she left, DuBose stayed sitting up in the bed.
When you’re fighting for the rights of the millions, Desiree, never forget that the millions are made up of single people, like Jerome and Pearl. And... Hilly Lee.
CHAPTER 71
THE NEXT DAY, AFTER CALLING a series of witnesses as part of the prosecution’s case, Edmund Battle brought Albert Custer to the stand. He was a Black man, slender in physique, wearing a three-piece cream-colored suit and a colorful bow tie. He was sworn in and faced the crowd with an assured, superior manner. Several of the jurors looked at him with contempt.
Battle said, “You are the owner of Winston’s Food Market?”
“I am.”
“Do you employ the defendant Pearl Washington?”
Custer looked at Pearl, who had her head bowed, clearly unwilling to meet his eye. He smiled and licked his lips.
“Yes I do,” he said.
