The Other Zion
I bury my wife on a Thursday.
The dirt is wet from yesterday’s rain, and the preacher’s voice barely rises above the hush of wind in the trees. I stand beside the open grave in a too-tight suit, fists clenched in the wool lining of my coat pockets, and I wonder how I ended up alone again.
She didn’t go easy. Cancer came hard and fast—like it was mad at her for taking her time leaving. Her hands were bones by the end. Still warm. Still kind. But all bones. I held them anyway, whispered nonsense about angels and peace, and I lied. I told her I’d be okay.
She died in our bed just after dawn, with her hand on my cheek.
Her name was Gloria. She made terrible coffee and worse fried chicken, but I married her anyway.
This year, I’ve lost both my wife and my mother. Two women in four months. Two different kinds of silence in the same damn house.
And now, after all this time, the quiet has teeth.
The day after the funeral, I try to clean.
I wash the dishes, sweep the porch, vacuum the rug that hasn’t been moved in twenty years. None of it helps. The silence just gets louder. So I go into Mama’s old room, thinking maybe I’ll box up her Bibles or move that old cedar chest of hers out to the shed.
I open the chest.
Inside: folded linens, yellowing Sunday school programs, brittle photos, pressed flowers still holding the faintest smell of perfume.
And beneath it all, a single envelope.
It is addressed to me. But someone—I assume my mother, clearly opened it. Read it. Stowed it away. Kept it from me.
It has been decades, but I know the handwriting before I even open it.
Delilah.
The name cracks something open in me. My stomach twists. My knees go weak, like I’m seventeen again and seeing her at the back of the school bus in that yellow dress.
I sit down hard on the bed.
And start to read.
Elijah,
I waited for you. I sat on that church bench until the streetlights came on. I thought maybe something happened. Maybe you got caught. Maybe you changed your mind. But I waited. And when I saw the lights come on and the preacher leave, I knew. I knew you weren’t coming. Then Pastor Richards drove me home and told my Daddy what happened.
They’re sending me away. Daddy says I disgraced him. I don’t care what he says. I only care about you.
Goodbye, my love.
Delilah
The room closes in on me.
I can feel my heart beating in my teeth.
I never knew.
All these years, I thought she changed her mind. Thought she ran. But she waited.
She waited.
My mind drifts back to the summer of 1943.
I was eighteen. She was sixteen and wild—red ribbons in her hair, bare feet on the pavement, always smelling like gardenia and sun. I had just turned 18 the week before.
Delilah Walker. White girl. Sheriff’s daughter.
We met behind the local Five and Dime, After that we would meet in all sorts of private places teenagers go to find love.
Under the stairs of apartment buildings. Behind the choir loft of the local methodist church. In the colored folks cemetery late at night. Pretty well anywhere we wouldn’t be seen. We talked in half-whispers. We kissed like we were starving. I gave her my class ring and she gave me her grandmother’s handkerchief.
“I love you,” she whispered that last night, as the train passed behind us. I had just gotten my orders. I was to ship out the next week to Camp Claiborne—two states over in Louisiana where they trained colored folks like me to go over to Europe and kill other boys I had no issue with for a government that still called me “nigger” and tried to tell me my love for Delilah Walker was sinful and hers for me was just—dirty.
I meant to say it back. I meant to say “I love you too.”
Instead I said, “Let’s run.”
She grinned. “Let’s do it.”
“I’m serious,” I said. “We can go to New England—New York. Connecticut—where it’s legal. You know the preachers don’t care. Hell, half of ‘em so drunk most the time they would marry a goat and a pig if they gave the man $20 and a bottle of bootleg.”
Back in them days, Mississippi was a so called “dry” state—which really just meant folks that drank didn’t drink for pleasure. They drank themselves half dead. They drank to forget things. And a hell of a lot if ‘em did it.
“What about the Army?” she asked.
“I ain’t interested in getting my black ass shot off for no white man who ain’t never done right by me cept’ the Sheriff what made you so I could love you.”
“You love me?” she asked, forgetting everything else I had said for a moment.
“I do,” I said. I leaned over and gave her a deep kiss. Her lips tasted like freshly applied lipstick that smeared against mine and left them greasy.
She pulled away momentarily.
“But you have your orders,” she said. “They’ll put you in jail. My Daddy will do it himself. I’ve seen him do it.”
“He can’t arrest me if I ain’t here. We’ll go up north. Change our names. Leave all this behind.”
That was it. We decided on a plan. She’d steal her mama’s suitcase. I had the $20. I’d borrow my daddy’s best suit and commandeer a bottle of my older brother’s whiskey. Then we would meet at New Zion Baptist church and get married.
“This time tomorrow, I will be Delilah Johnson,” she cooed as we parted ways.
But now, looking at the aged letter my mama had never given me, I looked again at those words “Pastor Richards drove me home” and I knew what happened. I closed my eyes and kicked myself mentally for not having asked the question.
Back in those days, the town had a White church called “Zion First Baptist Church,” where the preacher was a decent fella by the name of Jonathan Richards. But on my side of town, there was a colored church my family had attended since the days when my great grandparents were slaves on a local cotton plantation. That church was called “New Zion Baptist Church,” Pastor Ezra Nehemiah Washington.
“Goddamn it,” I whisper aloud as I realize what happened. I stare into the ceiling as if I can see through it, through the ages, into heaven, to the throne of the Almighty himself and I imagine his mischievous, smirking face. I think of Delilah, her smell, and then I think of the war I lost half my leg in. I think of Gloria. The constant arguments. The burnt suppers. Sure, I had loved her, but not like Delilah. Delilah who had waited for me at one church while I had waited for her at the other. Both so much in love. Both so determined. Both heartbroken over something as simple as a communication error. In my mind, I look into the eyes of God as he sits uncaring in his throne like a petulant child making dolls fight each other for sport and I snarl. “And Goddamn you!”
I close my eyes again and remember.
I showed up early. The sun was still high. The preacher stood in the doorway, squinting.
“You sure about this, boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
He nodded. “She show up, we’ll do it quick. No questions.”
So I waited.
And waited.
Each tick of the clock louder than the last.
By 8:45, my palms were sweating.
By 9:00, my heart was breaking.
By 9:15, the bus came and went.
By 9:30, I knew she wasn’t coming.
I walked home in the dark, rage knotting in my chest.
I never saw her again.
I showed up for the bus to basic training the next day. When I returned from the war, her family had left Mississippi altogether.
Word had it initially that upon learning of our plans, her father sent her to Alabama to live with an aunt. Some said she left town pregnant. Some said she went crazy.
I told myself she was a coward. That she never meant it.
And I buried her memory under the weight of everything I chose instead.
After the war, I got a job as a clerk in a supply warehouse. I met and started a marriage with Gloria. We had daughters—two of them. And thanks to the GI bill, a mortgage.
I learned how to be grateful.
But I never learned how to forget.
As to my mother, she knew all along and chose to keep it from me. She’s dead now, and I can’t tell her this, but I’m sure at this moment, I will not forgive her. Not today. Not ever.
The old country courthouse smells like dust and bleach and old lives.
I find the county clerk—young girl with bright pink nails—and slip her a twenty. She doesn’t ask questions.
I give her the name.
“Walker, Delilah. Born September of 1925. Last time I saw her was July 1943.”
She taps on the keyboard and narrows her eyes.
“Found her,” she says. “Died July 7th, 1943 Complications from childbirth.”
My breath catches.
“There’s a note,” she adds, tilting the screen. “Infant son. Elijah David Johnson Jr. Became a ward of the state of Louisiana on July 10th of that same year. Adopted by a colored family in Alabama.
My name.
My son.
The clerk leans in. “There’s an address here. Adoption home. Outside Selma. Baby was renamed. No other information available at this time.
The sky turns blood-orange as I drive.
I don’t remember eating. Don’t remember breathing.
I just follow the road like it owes me something.
The churchyard is overgrown. Weeds curl up around stone angels. Spanish moss hangs like ghosts from the trees. The sun’s gone low and the air smells like damp clay and old regrets.
I find her near the back.
Delilah Mae Walker, 1926-1943.
She Waited.
I drop to my knees.
My hands tremble.
I want to scream. I want to dig through the dirt and hold her.
I want to take it all back.
I press my forehead to the stone.
“I didn’t leave,” I whisper. “I just went to the wrong church.”
The wind shifts.
I feel it—like breath on the back of my neck.
A short time later, I fuel up at Fred’s Service Station and aim my car toward Laurel. I missed out on my last days with his mother. I won’t miss any more with my son—if he’ll have me.
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