Good Dirt

by Charmaine Wilkerson

Henry looked at Ebby’s parents, now, and marveled at how they had gone on after what had happened to their son. This was the true miracle of life, he thought. Not so much to be born as to bear up under what came your way. To find a way forward. To embrace what was good.

It felt a bit awkward to call Ashleigh, but once she did, it was as if they’d never had a rough conversation. Sometimes, people let you down, but they’re still your people.

You could not grow up to be a black man, no matter how successful, without knowing, in some quadrant of your brain, that you were more vulnerable to potential harm than other men. You had to watch your back. You had to teach your son to watch his back.

Massachusetts in autumn will always feel like home, even if Ed still doesn’t want to come back to stay. The feeling of home isn’t tied to one place only.

Then Baz died, and Ed’s view of the world shifted so radically that he no longer recognized himself. One day he looked at his image in the mirror, at his neatly trimmed, graying temples, at his long, manicured fingers, at the powdery-blue collar of his oxford shirt, at the muted, mustardy tone of his cable sweater, and saw right past it all. He saw through his skin, through the jumble of sinews and arteries and bones beneath, to the only thing he knew to be true. To the wounded heart at his center.

Maybe all you can do is give yourself permission to embrace the rest of your life. To play, to love, to risk. To take the beauty that someone brought into your life and share it.

But Ed was not the reason why Soh had kept herself from driving her car into a tree all those years ago. She had aimed right for the bank of trees one night, so desperate was she to simply turn down the volume of the rage in her head. But she’d had Ebby to think of. Her second-born. Her baby. And Soh had willed herself to be there for her daughter.