CHAPTER
fifty

The more time Hugo spent with Nick and Dick, the grimier the tub was after his evening baths. The more effort I had to put into washing his clothes. The more socks and pants and shirts I found in need of mending.

For the first time in my life, I understood what Marvel had meant when she said that her boys were like wolverines.

After I put Hugo to bed, I collected all the worn and hole-ridden clothes, carrying them to the living room along with my thread and needle. I turned on the light next to my chair and got busy. Stitching for a few minutes, I decided it might be nice to have a little background noise, so I got up and turned on the television.

By the time I sat down, the set was still warming up, so I focused my attention on my sewing.

At first I didn’t really pay attention to the words of the baritone voice that came through the set. I assumed it was just a part of whatever program was playing that evening. As that voice went on, it took on an urgency, an intensity that made me look up from my work, letting the shirt drop to my lap.

Even in the blurry picture of my television screen, I could tell that the man was Martin Luther King Jr. He’d been in the news and on magazine covers and talked about quite a bit. Not being one to understand all the happenings in the world, I’d not paid a whole lot of attention to what they called civil rights, as embarrassing as that might have been.

Then again, I lived just about as far north as one could get. We didn’t have the Jim Crow laws like they had in the South and I didn’t know a single person who would have considered themselves a bigot or a racist.

Still, I heard the prejudiced things people said in hushed tones. I’d seen the way a white woman might cross to the other side of the street when she saw a dark-skinned man coming her way.

As much as I hated to admit it, I’d done the same. Out of fear? Yes. But that hadn’t made it right. And when I heard someone say something cruel or ignorant or just plain ugly about another person I stayed quiet, not wanting to upset anyone.

My reluctance to speak up was every bit as offensive as the nasty words the other person had said.

Sitting in my chair, I felt ashamed of myself. I grieved that I never thought twice about it until I had to.

I have a dream.

Still holding the shirt, and careful not to poke myself with the needle, I got up, turning the television volume just a little bit louder so as to hear him better.

The camera panned out, showing a hundred men—at least that was my guess—standing at the feet of the giant-sized Abraham Lincoln. The crowd clapped and the screen zoomed in to the statue of the long-past president’s carved-in-stone face.

Instead of sitting back in my chair, I lowered myself to the floor, folding my legs up under me.

I have a dream.

Dreams of equality, of the end to racism, that children of all colors would hold hands, that they would be brothers and sisters.

Turning my eyes away from the television, I looked at a picture that Hugo had asked me to put on the mantel in a new frame he had picked out at the dime store.

It was one that Stan had snapped on the night of their backyard campout. Nick and Dick had Hugo between them in a two-handed seat carry that they’d learned in Scouts. Hugo had his arms around their shoulders, and his mouth was open in a glorious laugh.

We will be free one day.

Slumping, I thought of how I hadn’t understood the bus boycotts and the lunch counter sit-ins and the marches. After all, why wouldn’t they all just move to places where they might be accepted, why not go to diners where they would be served? Why did they have to go where people would treat them badly?

Maybe it hadn’t been a lack of understanding in me, but an unwillingness to listen and learn.

Let freedom ring.

Sitting on the floor, listening to the crowds cheer on Dr. King, keeping my eyes fixed on the little brown boy being held up by his older pink-colored cousins, my thinking shifted.

How would it be for Nick and Dick to be able to go to a good school that Hugo could never attend? For the twins to enter through the front door while Hugo was made to walk in the back? Two sit in the front of the bus and one in the rear, the twins use one drinking fountain while another is put to the side for Hugo. Nick and Dick could stand up against injustice and be lauded as heroes. Hugo would suffer the spray of fire hoses and the bites of police dogs for the very same stand.

All because of the tone of their skin.

Sitting on my living room floor, a mending shirt in my lap and Martin Luther King Jr. still speaking through the television, I realized why it was worth the fight.

All it had taken was loving someone like Hugo to clear my vision.

It should have mattered to me all along.

Right around ten o’clock Hugo came downstairs for a drink of water, his bear dangling from his hand and dragging along the floor behind him. He found me in the living room, my pad of paper on the writing desk.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Oh.” I put the pen on the table beside me. “I was just writing down one of our stories.”

He sidled up to my chair, looking down at the book. “You write pretty.”

“Well, that’s very nice of you to say.” I touched the back of his neck, feeling where the barber had cut it close to the scalp, but glad he’d left the top just a little bit longer. “Are you all right?”

He nodded but didn’t smile.

“If you aren’t, it’s okay to tell me, you know.”

Shrugging, he looked away from me. “I miss my mommy.”

He tried keeping himself strong, I could tell by the way he pressed his lips together and clenched his jaw. But he couldn’t fight off the sadness. His little face scrunched up on itself and the tears came.

“Oh, buddy,” I said, dropping the book to the floor and reaching for him, pulling him onto my lap. “It’s all right.”

He let me cradle him in my left arm. With my right hand, I pushed the tears off his cheeks as they came. Once his crying slowed, softened, released, he looked into my eyes.

“Aunt Betty?” he said. “Can you tell me a story?”

I nodded at Hugo, and he shifted on my lap, sitting up and turning so he could look right into my eyes.

“There was once a young boy . . .” I started.

“Can his name be Hugo?”

“I thought you already knew your stories.” I pulled back my face from his to look into his eyes.

“Maybe not all of them.”

“All right,” I went on. “Hugo was the kind of child who had lots of dreams. Not the kind he had at night while he was sleeping. No, he had the kind of dreams that someone has when he believes the world can be a more beautiful place.”

“I do have those dreams,” Hugo whispered. “During the daytime.”

“I know you do.” I adjusted my arm, resting it against the chair. “The thing about these dreams, though, is that they don’t come true on their own. They never do.”

“How do they come true, then?”

“They come true with a lot of hard work, and gumption, and so much love.” I leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. “So much love that sometimes it hurts.”

He didn’t ask me what that meant, and he didn’t argue that love didn’t hurt.

I thought that in his five-and-a-half-year-old heart, he knew that what I’d said was true.

Love hurt sometimes.

But it was always worth it.