The Truth Is the Light by Vanessa Davie Griggs

his handkerchief.
    Gramps shook his head. “On the chain gang, them folks weren’t no joke. When I was close to finishing my ten-year sentence, they said there had been a mistake. I wasn’t the one who’d done that crime after all. So they was letting me go early. Six months before my ten years was up, and they come telling me that. No apology, no compensation for time lost. Nothing, but ‘We made an error. You now free to go.’ That was it.”
    Zenobia got up, went to her father, and put her arm around him. “I’m so sorry, Daddy. I never knew any of this.” Now she was crying.
    â€œOh, that was a normal thing back in my day. We learned to call on the Lord early. When things start riding your back, you fall on your knees and tell the Lord about it.” Gramps sat back in his chair and motioned for Zenobia to go sit back down. He had more to tell. “I’m just thankful that my fate wasn’t like so many other innocent men gone now. So when I tell folks that the Lord saved me, He saved me in more ways than one.”
    â€œWhat happened after you returned to Asheville?” Clarence asked. “Did you go back and find Sarah?”
    â€œI was going to go look for her,” Gramps said. “But as soon as I got back to Asheville, and my old friend, Pearl Black, heard I was in town, she quickly came to see me and told me I needed to lay low in a hurry. We pretended that I left town just as quick as I’d come. Pearl sneaked me back to her place and hid me out for about a month. She and I grew up together. When we were kids, we were closer than white on rice. Pearl was a tad bit older than I was, but we were like peas in a pod. She was like a big sister. Course, I’d been gone all that time, and both Pearl and I were a lot older by the time I returned. But minds don’t seem to age like our bodies do. With us, it was just like it was when we were younger. That was around the beginning of April in 1943. She was thirty-nine; I was thirty-three.”
    â€œAnd you actually remember how old she was?” Zenobia asked with a mischievous grin. “Most men I know have a hard time remembering their own age, let alone recalling someone else’s. And that was a little over sixty-five years ago.”
    Gramps remembered because he and Pearl discussed their ages at that time. “You remember dates like that when you have markers, like when you were released from hard labor. Where we were in life was so different from where we thought we would be. Pearl thought she would be married with a houseful of children. And I never thought I’d leave that prison alive.” With his hand shaking, he picked up his glass and sipped his water.
    â€œPearl had been there with the Flemings,” Gramps said, continuing the tale. “Pearl was a midwife, as was her mother before her. Pearl happened to be there when Sarah delivered her baby. Pearl was the one who helped bring my daughter into the world.”
    â€œYour daughter? ” Zenobia practically screeched the words as she sprung up.
    â€œYes, my daughter. You see, Sarah was pregnant when I left. At first, Sarah’s daddy believed the baby was this other fella’s that lived down the road from them. But when the real truth came out and her daddy saw Sarah was more determined than ever to keep her baby and still be with me, that’s when he seemed to come around and try to help us. That was the only reason I left her to go take that job. Sarah was having our child, and I wanted to do right by my family.”
    â€œSo, I have a sister?” Zenobia asked, sitting down as though she was in shock.
    â€œNo . . . yes,” Gramps said, sounding confused. “Okay, you see, the baby was born. When I got back to Asheville, the first person I saw was my friend Samuel L. Williams. Sam told me he’d heard Pearl had delivered a baby girl for Sarah, but the baby had died right after she was born.