Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 68867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Did I care that the four of them had family dinners and I was never invited? No, because I remembered too many meals that erupted in brutality if someone didn’t eat fast enough. Being made to eat off the floor was engrained in my memory. I had no desire to sit across the table from that man ever again.
I got a part-time job, ate at my friends’ houses, and bought a hot plate so I could fry up bacon and eggs now and then. I also made quite a few grilled cheese sandwiches. There was electricity out there, so I had a light to do my homework, a space heater so I didn’t freeze to death in the winter, and the guys at the service station where I worked took turns making sure I spent the holidays with them.
When my scholarship came through for Everson University, I was gone. I was loading my deathtrap of a pickup truck the last morning in my hometown when my father came out of the house, handed me a shoebox of things belonging to my mother that I had never seen before, and told me that Marcy, his wife, wanted to make me some food for the road. She had never offered to do anything for me before, and it made me wonder why. Perhaps it was as simple as she’d been afraid to be nice to me in case showing me kindness caused my father to stop being good to her and her daughters. The smartest thing she could do was not get involved, and I got that. I did. But either way, it was far too late for me to care.
“Tell her not to go to any trouble on my account. I’m stoppin’ by Coach Preston’s house, and Mrs. Preston has been up all night cookin’ for all of us who’re leavin’ today.”
“Yeah, some of the guys I know said you’re a real fine player. I had no idea.”
Of course he didn’t.
I lifted the box. “Thank you for this.”
“You’ve got everything?”
“Yessir.”
I put the shoebox in the front passenger seat, then jogged to the driver’s side and got in. Moments later, I was down the gravel driveway and out on the road. I never looked back.
I still had the shoebox, which was filled with letters from my mother to me, her unborn child. There was a picture of her smiling like crazy, pointing to her stomach where I had been at that moment in time. She wrote that she loved my brothers so much, and she already loved me the same. She could barely wait to meet me. She named me Delroy after her father. He’d passed when she was young, and she still missed him. Her people were from Lubbock, and though I was curious, her mother had never looked us up, neither me nor my brothers, so it didn’t seem she could have cared all that much. And maybe my father had scared off everyone from my mother’s side of the family, but still, if you cared, you made the effort. Mrs. Ross, Lang’s mother, who insisted I call her Etta, told me that as a parent, it was your job to keep showing up. You could never stop trying to be a part of your child’s life. Never.
I learned over the years how parents and grandparents were supposed to be. In college I had teammates who took me home with them for the holidays every year, and I was treated to kindness, nurturing, and concern. When I blew out my knee, my team was the family that showed up at my bedside—the players and their families. Despite not playing football anymore, I lived with some of my teammates until I graduated, and once I was all healed up, I applied to be a deputy US marshal. It turned out, a knee that couldn’t take running on the gridiron was more than good enough to chase fugitives down city blocks. I was in great shape physically and more than ready to serve. With my degree, I was accepted and began my career. I still saw my teammates—we were friends for life, and we met on vacations. I was part of many a wedding, sent baby gifts, flowers when their parents or grandparents passed, showed up at funerals or sent huge plants in remembrance of the love and support I myself had been given.
When I got legal papers from my father wanting me to give over my stake in the land in Wimberley to my stepsisters, I signed my name on the line and got that right back out to him by FedEx the following morning. I had seen my brothers’ signatures above mine, and it was odd to be reminded that we were out there in the world, all three of us, without care for the others. Sometimes I wondered what my life would have looked like had my mother lived. Sarah Roundtree McCabe had been a sweet soul—at least that’s what Etta said when I showed her my mom’s letters.