DELORES' LOVE, IKE

DELORES’ LOVE, IKE

  Around 1960, the most prosperous business in Groves Place, Delaware’s Black community has for a long time been Wright’s Funeral Services, owned by fifty-nine-year-old Herbert Wright. His grown sons, Douglas, Leonard and Louis are co-owners of the family business. Delores, Herbert’s wife and mother of their children, is an attractive, well-bred woman. Delores Wright has everything, but regrettably you could say that living a life of privilege has not protected her for she lives in luxury and hell at the same time. She’s had to endure much coming from her husband’s infidelity. Nevertheless her greatest dissatisfaction is not attributable to her husband Herbert and other women. It’s with someone else, namely, Isaiah (Ike) Whitney.

“What do you mean that you’re taking Eula Mae Rutledge to the prom, Ike Whitney?” six-teen-year-old Delores Smalls shouted in contempt. It was inconceivable to her that Ike Whitney would reject her, especially for Eula Mae Rutledge, a girl brought up in rural poverty? Nonetheless Ike (Isaiah) Whitney stepped out of his league for the sake of love, and even went on to marry Eula Mae Rutledge.

 Delores’ resentment over his decision had been festering from all that time ago when he didn’t choose her. As a second choice, Delores could not have done better than Herbert Wright, for had she married Ike Whitney, a successful farmer, life wouldn’t have been as gainful. However, she’d have given away all of the gains and extravagance, to belong to Ike (Isaiah) Whitney.     

    “Hello, Ike Delores here. Yes, Herbert and the family are doing just fine. And I take it everyone’s faring well in the Whitney household? Well, I know that Eula Mae can’t be, of course.” If Delores Wright had caved into a propensity to remark truthfully about her nemesis, Eula Mae, Ike Whitney’s mentally-ill wife, she would have remarked: “that loony, piece of trash!” The pain of rejection hadn’t stopped for Delores even after all of these years. She and Ike Whitney were practically set to marry. It angered her every time she thought of how he released her for Eula Mae Rutledge, a woman who’d come out of poverty to be his wife.

 “Ike, I’m calling with a serious problem.” Delores’ tone was as if something required immediate attention or it would be disastrous. “If you haven’t heard we have in Groves Place corruption like nothing this town’s ever seen. There’s this young woman named Justine Harris who uses her house for gambling. The dinky rented house is in the poor part of the Black community. I don’t want the police brought in…you know what they always think about us. We’re criminals the worse kind of people. So I thought that if we, us Negroes could handle this ourselves…this kind of thing needs to be stopped. I and some others feel that men in the community need to address it, especially men such as you and Herbert.”

 He was well aware that Delores Wright made a life of putting her nose where it didn’t belong, and wondered just how bad that this situation really was. It could be as harmless a place where several men gather for a game of cards. Ike Whitney said nothing for a while, Delores maintained silence also. “Has Herbert done anything?” Ike Whitney was annoyed that she came to him if her husband wasn’t actively doing anything first. Right after, he was sorry he didn’t mull over it first, but it was too late, and maybe the question was proper.

Ignoring the question since her husband did not react when she brought up the matter to him, “Ike, wherever she was she should have stayed. Groves Place didn’t need her to come back here with her impropriety. She’s Bad News! She’s one of those Johnson’s, you know. You remember those Johnson’s, from the lowest sort, they had the worst reputation of anybody in Groves Place.” Delores Wright was emphatic, but she was speaking the truth. The Johnson family was ill-fated. With the multiplicity of misfortune, it seemed there was no family that had been touched more by horrific circumstances, it just wasn’t possible that any family had seen worse. (The Johnson’s had suffered horrendously, many unspeakable things had been thrust at the family: incest, murder, perversion, abuse, neglect, abortion and more). “Rumor has it that when the brother, Rodney I guess that was his name, left Groves Place, it because he was a..a..fa…well, freak.” She stopped just in time by better judgment from using the more demeaning term. Had you heard that, Ike?” Ike Whitney replied that he had not. During the conversation, you could have bet that Delores wouldn’t bring up her children’s association with the ‘doomed’ Johnson family. (Delores immediately stepped in when she had an inkling her teenaged son had his eye on Justine Harris’s attractive daughter). Ike Whitney waited quietly on the other end for a second or so for what Delores would hurl out next.

 “The woman is engaging in criminal activity, running a gaming house; it’s against the moral code of the Black community.” Even if he dared not say so, of this, Ike Whitney was unconvinced since he knew about plenty going on that came under the heading ‘immorality,’ including the antics of her husband Herbert.

 “I think the woman knows all of that. But, what would I do about it?” There might have been just a slight bit of sarcasm in his voice, but Ike Whitney did was not void of some compassion for the well-bred, attractive woman on the other end of the telephone. He realized that Delores’ heart had been broken since the day he shifted his feelings to Eula Mae Rutledge, and Delores was operating in life sadly and resentfully.

      From the day Ike (Isaiah) Whitney laid eyes on Eula Mae Rutledge at Dickenson High she touched something inside of him. He’d spotted her coming toward him carrying an armload of books, and went to assist. There was something special and greatly appealing about the pretty brown-skinned thin retiring girl named Eula Mae Rutledge. It didn’t matter one bit that she was from the poor Rutledges’, sharecroppers for the Hansley/Aldridge family.

 “Well, Ike, are you going to do something about this woman and her house of gambling or not?” Delores was always fighting the disturbing feelings surging up in her, her feelings of love for Ike Whitney. Speaking with him or seeing him always revived those emotions. Although the idea that anything would change between them was distant, for she was well aware that everything was forever lost, never to be. Nevertheless, the idea always tempted her that she could draw him back. Temporarily lifted by an instance of self-confidence and self-esteem, she considered that this as a wonderful opportunity to restore some past powers of seduction which she rarely used. “Please, Ike, do this for me?” Delores Wright asked him in her most pearly-laced voice.

“Well, Delores, I don’t know when I’ll have the time to get to visit this woman, uh, Justine Harris, but I will at some point.”

“Thank you, darling.” Smiling with pleasure, Delores put the telephone receiver in its cradle. She had made contact with, and received some form of recognition, however small, from the man she loved, Isaiah (Ike) Whitney.

“Uh, Mrs. Harris, uh, you are Justine Harris, aren’t you? I’m the man who called yesterday saying I’d a…stop by today. I’m Isaiah, well Ike Whitney. Whew! As I informed you yesterday, I am one of a couple of citizens who would like to discuss the activity rumored to be going on in your home.” As he spoke, Ike Whitney’s heart pounded hard. He hoped the unbelievably beautiful young woman standing in her door did not see any movement in his chest.

  Ike (Isaiah) Whitney fell for Justine Harris instantly. And she felt her heart leap the moment she opened the door and saw the tall, handsome man standing there. There was no rhyme or reason for his feelings for the tall, ebony beauty but he couldn’t help himself. And it had nothing to do with Eula Mae’s worsening mental condition that had made family life difficult. Every night the woeful, terrified sounds coming from her grandmother’s bedroom horrified young Ginger. “Ahhhhhhh! Ahhhhhh! Help me, someboddddy! Black devils comin’ at me!!! When night fell, and darkness drenched the silent farm young Ginger imagined that the terrifying, eerie sounds her grandmother made poured out of a chamber of death.

 Instantly, the spark of love went from heart to heart. Ike Whitney and Justine became lovers, it was just something meant to happen that two people could share their deepest love. Ike’s love for Justine Harris reached a ‘pinnacle’, exceeding how he felt about his wife Eula Mae. (The power of their lovemaking was such that every time both would cry out loud. “Justine, you give back like no woman I ever knew,” Ike Whitney softly said, following an incredibly fulfilling session together. They became two people love had missed, two people love kissed, and sweetly smiled on.

The day that Ike (Isaiah) Whitney left this earth he was at the wheel of his pick-up, on his way to the home of his beloved Justine Harris and suffered a fatal heart. That was in the fall of 1960.