Through the Darkness

It was Friday, July 26, 1957, and my parents had finally finished packing their bags. I watched as they put the last three pieces of luggage in the trunk of our green 1952 Roadmaster Buick. They were ecstatic about this trip; they’d been planning it for weeks. It was our church’s annual Sunday school convention, which took place in Oliver, Virginia, and was scheduled to last the entire weekend.

It was hard for me to hold back the tears as I listened to my parents give last-minute instructions to my sister Pearl, who had been asked to supervise my younger siblings and me until they returned. I wasn’t going on that trip; my older brother, Lonnie, was going instead. I really wanted to go, but for some reason, my father insisted that I stay at home. I tried to understand why he didn’t want me to go; after all, I was the son he always took on those trips. But he never gave me an explanation, just his vehement refusal to let me go. Pleading never worked with my father. We learned early that once he made a decision, no one could change his mind, so I didn’t even try. Lonnie’s excitement beamed through his mischievous smile. He didn’t tease me, but I could tell he wanted to…

Before leaving town that morning, my father dropped my younger brother, Willie, and me off at the D. C. Griffin grocery store, where we both held summer jobs. We didn’t go in right away; instead, we stood quietly outside the store and waited to see him go. It was a beautiful July morning with a slight breeze that periodically brushed my face.

“You’ll hear from me Sunday afternoon,” my father yelled to us before he drove off. We waved goodbye to him and watched from the doorway as the car headed down the street and disappeared through the plume of dust that trailed behind him. I stood there long after he had gone, still trying to understand why my father had been so adamant about my not going. But there was something else: a strange, gloomy, sick feeling that had parked itself in the pit of my stomach and would not move. What did it mean? Why was it there? I wondered. Going on these trips, after all, was nothing new to our family. My father was a Pentecostal minister who took similar trips with his family all the time, so why was today so different? As we stood in the doorway, I looked at my brother, Willie, and wondered if he felt it too: that sad, foreboding feeling. He showed no indication that he felt anything, but that’s the way Willie was—always upbeat and funny, rarely showing emotion beyond the comical side of things. I loved that about him.

I didn’t understand any of my feelings that morning, but I decided that I couldn’t afford to waste any more time trying to; after all, the store would be opening soon and I needed to begin preparing my produce department for the horde of customers that would shortly be flooding the store.

I hurried home after work that Friday afternoon, eager to do what was expected of me at home. My parents had placed me second in charge, and I had work to do there. I took out the garbage, mowed the lawn, and after dinner, helped my sisters with the dishes. It took several hours for things to return to some degree of normalcy that evening, but they finally did, and before I knew it, I had finished my chores without thinking even once about why I had not been allowed to go to Virginia with my family. I masked that sick feeling that was still lodged in my stomach by reading some of my favorite scriptures in the Bible. Reading the Bible always helped when I felt anxious about something, and as I knew it would, it worked this time as well.

As I prepared for bed that night, I felt an overwhelming need to cry. I didn’t know why—I wasn’t ill or in pain—I just needed to cry; and cry, I did. I lay in bed sobbing uncontrollably, missing my mother so much I could hardly breathe. I remembered the last time I cried like that; I had a reason then. I was ten years old and my sister Naomi and I had been playing tricks on each other all day. Because I was the oldest and of course, the cleverest, I always had to have the last and the best joke.

At dinner that evening, I stood behind Naomi and waited for her to sit at the table. Just as she was about to sit, I pulled her chair away, and she landed on the floor so hard that we just knew that some part of her anatomy had to have been broken. Thankfully, nothing was, but Naomi cried and screamed so loudly that she made everyone else cry too, especially me. I cried partially because I really had not wanted her to get hurt; it was just a prank, after all. But mostly I cried because the look on my father’s face told me that it was some part of my anatomy that was in trouble, and believe me, it was. Needless to day, after my father finished with me, I knew that I would never try that little prank again. Thinking of that incident took away my tears and replaced them with a quiet chuckle. I was finally able to fall asleep.