Sugar Town Queens

by Malla Nunn

  Boom. The small guard’s strange bird comment suddenly makes sense. I am the sparrow, and the Bollards are the white seagulls. And, judging from his surprised expression, I’m the only brown bird in the flock.

  6

  I’m fifteen years old and only now have I met my grandmother face-to-face. A grandmother who could have helicoptered us out of Sugar Town to a nicer place on any day of the week but didn’t. Why not? My stomach flips. I have a feeling that my black father and my brown skin are the reasons that Mother and I live separate from the Bollards.

  “Amandla, you pour,” Annalisa says.

  I blink, and the tea ladies are gone. The trolley, stacked with cakes and scones and tiny sandwiches cut on the diagonal, is set up beside Mayme’s bed with one chair on either side. Time has passed without me noticing.

  I take the cover off the teapot, give the tea leaves inside a stir the way Annalisa taught me to, and place the silver strainer over the lip of a china cup decorated with lavender flowers. I pour.

  “Milk, sugar, lemon, or black?” I ask Mayme as dark liquid fills the cup.

  “My mother taught me how to pour tea. I taught Annalisa, and she taught you,” she says, choking up. “The world moves so fast. It’s beautiful to watch you do that.”

  Something has changed in the room. In my grandmother.

  “Black tea, Mayme?”

  “Yes,” she says. “Yes, please.”

  I place the cup and saucer into her waiting hand. Liquid sloshes over the sides, and a river of tea spreads across the white bed linen. Mayme’s shoulders and arms shake, and the cup tilts. I grab it before the rest of the tea spills and notice, only then, the tears streaming down her face.

  “Are you all right?” Annalisa grabs her mother’s wrist and holds her fingertips at the pulse point. “Is there pain in your chest? Lie still. I’ll get the doctor.”

  “Don’t fuss, Annie,” she says. “I’m fine. I just had a moment of . . .”

  Sorrow, I think. A moment of sorrow. The same deep sadness that ate a hole in Annalisa yesterday. Mrs. M said the only cure for that was time and rest. Warm food helps, too. Mayme dries her tears and gathers herself together again.

  The electronic monitor beside the bed blinks red, and I am ashamed of my earlier anger. The room is clean and beautifully laid out, but it is a hospital room. A place for sick people, and Mayme is sick. I split open a scone and slather it with strawberry jam and cream.

  “Here. Eat. The scone is still warm.”

  “She can’t have that.” Annalisa waves me off like I have served up death itself. “Take it away.”

  I sit back down with the plate perched on my knees; I’m a visitor. Despite her poor memory, Annalisa fits into the quiet luxury of this plush room where high tea and doctors are ordered on demand.

  “You have it, Amandla,” Mayme says. “Sara, the cook here, makes the best scones. Annie, have the other half and let me catch my breath.”

  Annie. Mother has a nickname. It’s funny. She hates shortened names. She calls Mrs. M “Mrs. Mashanini” and Lil Bit “Esther.” All part of being proper. I bite into the scone and hold back a groan. Mayme did not exaggerate. The scone is the best I have ever tasted. Tonight, before I fall asleep, I will replay the light, fluffy texture of it in my head.

  “Mmm . . .” The sound escapes my mouth, and Mayme smiles to hear it. The tears have dried, but a trace of the sadness still remains. Being me isn’t what you think, Goodness Dumisa said in the schoolyard. Maybe it’s the same for Amanda Bollard of the Amanda Bollard Institute, with everything perfect on the outside but messy inside. Annalisa pours tea and glances at me to examine my posture and my manners, always on the lookout for anything that will brand me as coming from a township instead of being the proper girl she raised. She nods her approval. I’ve passed the test. For this moment, I belong exactly where I am.

  Tears dried, everyone calm; now I need to know why we live in Sugar Town. I need to know why Annalisa and I have been left to fend for ourselves. Why am I growing up with so little when my family has so much? I need to know who I really am.

  The phone on the bedside table rings, and Mayme frowns; she’s not expecting a call on the private line. Annalisa sips tea and listens in, waiting, it seems, for bad news.

  “Was that him?” she asks when Mayme hangs up. “Is he coming back?”

  “No, that was Julien and the boys. He’s parking the car.”

  “Quick.” Annalisa gulps her tea and waves me toward the door. “We have to leave now.”

  “I still have questions, Mother!” I’m also halfway through a scone I will remember for weeks. Walking away from tiny chocolate cupcakes with sugar flowers on top is going to break my heart.

  “My brother is . . . I mean . . . we . . .” Annalisa’s words scramble together. “Your uncle Julien and I . . . We haven’t seen each other in fifteen years . . . Now is not the time, Amandla. Let’s go.”

  I give the cakes a glance and commit them to memory. Tonight my dreams will be sweet and sad.

  “Shh. Relax, my love.” Mayme strokes Annalisa’s arm. “Why don’t you fill a napkin for Amandla to take home while we say goodbye?”

  Mayme’s voice calms Annalisa, who grabs a cloth napkin and goes to work collecting cakes and sandwiches from the trolley. One of everything would suit me fine, but I’ll take whatever I can get.

  “A hug before you go, Amandla?” Mayme asks, and my stubborn township self holds back. We stare at each other, and tears sting my eyes. No matter what happened before today or what happens after, there’s no denying that she is my grandmother. The two of us share the same name and the same facial features. We are connected by blood and by a family history I know nothing about.

  Mayme opens her arms, waiting and vulnerable. I fold gently into her embrace, afraid of hurting her. She grabs me and holds me close. I can’t help it. I love the way she crushes me.

  “Thank you,” she whispers into my ear. “Thank you for looking after my daughter. Come see me on Monday morning. Ten o’clock? Let’s try to make up for lost time.”

  “I’ll come.” Heat stings my eyes, and I choke back tears. My questions can wait. This moment, our arms around each other, holding each other tight in a warm embrace, is all I need for now.

  “We have to go,” Annalisa says, and when I turn around, she’s already standing at the door holding a bunch of cakes wrapped in a napkin. Some will go to Mrs. M and Blind Auntie with the sweet tooth, some to Lil Bit, and the rest are for the two of us to eat after supper.

  “Bye, Mayme,” I call over my shoulder, and follow Annalisa into the corridor. The elevator bell rings as we turn the corner and the doors swish open. A tall white man and two teenagers with sandy-blond hair step into the hall. Uncle Julien and the boys. My cousins. I want to stop and soak in the details: their pale skin and hair, the way they move and talk. Their ironed blue jeans and oxford shirts swish in the hallway, neat and laundered. Time is up. They are between us and the elevator. If we stay where we are, they will see us.

  “The stairs,” Annalisa whispers, and bolts in the direction of a door marked Exit. We slip into the stairwell and take the steps down two at a time to escape. She hasn’t seen Julien in fifteen years, she said.

  My age exactly.

  * * *

  * * *

  The bus bumps through the fields on our way home. Green stalks flex in the breeze, and the city grows small on the horizon behind us. I wait for Annalisa to tell me something, anything, about the Bollard family and how we came to live in Sugar Town.

  And, while we’re on the subject of secrets and lies, how dare you bring me up to believe that we’re alone in the world?

  Annalisa stares out the window and says nothing. Not a sorry or a please, let me explain. I cannot stand the silence for one minute longer.

  “What the hell!” I blurt out. “If I hadn’t followed
you into town today, would you ever have taken me to meet Mayme or told me about your family? Like, ever?”

  “How did you know where I was, Amandla?” she asks in a tense voice, like my being at the hospital is the most important talking point right now. And way to deflect the conversation away from the big issues, Mother. I’ll play the question-and-answer game if it leads us back to why we live in Sugar Town and how we came to be there in the first place.

  “I found the address for the institute in your bag,” I say.

  “It isn’t proper to look through other people’s personal possessions, Amandla.” Her annoyance is almost laughable. “You should know better.”

  “When you came off the bus yesterday, you were sick. I opened your bag to grab the house keys, and that’s when I found the note.” A little white lie, but at this stage, who is the real liar here? “Why didn’t you tell me about my family?”

  Annalisa turns her face away. She doesn’t look at me. She talks to the window instead. “My father is a dangerous man, Amandla. He threw me out of my own family and said to never come back. I meet up with Mother every few months in secret. If he ever found out that we talk, he’d find a way to punish both of us. If he’d caught you inside the hospital . . . I just . . . I don’t want to think about it.”

  I flash back to the cool way my grandfather dismissed me in the driveway like I was nothing. Annalisa’s view of the world is fractured, but describing her father as “dangerous” feels right. His face was stony. I bet his heart is, too. Only a cold, hard man would turn his child away forever. In Sugar Town getting kicked out of your own home is practically a tradition. William Caluza, our butcher, has thrown his younger brother out of his house a dozen times for being drunk or drugged out. But he has taken him back in every single time. How can Annalisa’s father sleep at night not knowing if she is cold or hungry or hurt?

  “I came back home once and he sent me away again . . . It was bad . . . He sent me to a place in the country . . .” The pause between words stretches out as the memory of what happened slips away. Finally, she gives up and turns to me. Her face is pale and her eyes are bright. “Your grandmother wants to see you, but it’s too much of a risk. You’re not going back. You’re staying home, where it’s safe.”

  That must be the first time anyone has declared our township a safe zone for a fifteen-year-old girl. It’s funny and it’s not. “You met your grandmother once and that will have to be enough,” she says. “Do you understand?”

  Lady, you are out of your mind if you think that’s going to happen.

  After today, it is impossible to shrink the world back to just Annalisa and me. My universe now contains cousins, an uncle Julien, and grandparents. Meeting Mayme has made me realize how isolated Annalisa and I are. A quick glimpse of two sandy-haired Bollard boys has made me long for impossible things: birthday parties, family squabbles, and Sunday lunches with bodies squashed around a table. For the first time I can remember, I feel lonely and alone.

  “Mayme is sick,” I say. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Heart failure.”

  “Because she’s old?”

  “No. She was born with a heart defect.”

  “Is it serious?”

  “Yes. She needs an operation to fix things. If she doesn’t have the operation, she’ll be dead in a few weeks. I know it’s a shock, but promise me that you’ll stay away from the hospital, Amandla.” Sweat gathers on Annalisa’s top lip, and her voice is low and serious. “Swear it.”

  “I swear,” I say, and the moment the words are out of my mouth, I know they are a lie. Mayme has a few weeks left on this earth, and I intend to spend every minute of that time getting to know her and getting to know my family and my history.

  7

  Annalisa sleeps like the dead awaiting resurrection on Judgment Day. Yesterday’s near miss with Uncle Julien and Mayme’s illness have bruised her, and she will need time to mend.

  Taking cupcakes to Lil Bit (Esther).

  Back around noon. Amandla

  I drop the note onto the table and pack two chocolate cupcakes into the napkin from the hospital. Mrs. M got the lion’s share of the goodies for her three grandchildren, depressed daughter, and Blind Auntie with the sugar addiction. If Mrs. M got to eat a single cake, I’d be surprised.

  Outside, the day is bright and cold. The streets are quiet. The holy are in church and the not-so-holy are settling in for marathon Sunday drinking sessions in backyards and illegal bars that will go into the night. I pass businesses with the owners’ names hand-painted over the doorways or across the front walls. Solomon and His Three Wives General Store. Rayvee Fish and Chips. Sheba’s Fast Fashions. People have buildings named after them in Sugar Town, too, but not six-story hospitals with underground parking lots.

  The Sunday service is still in full swing when I get to the Christ Our Lord Is Risen! Gospel Hall. Five large jacaranda trees surround the churchyard, their bare limbs stark against the pale winter sky. I stand under the sprawled branches and wait for the last hymn to end. It takes a while. Paster Mbuli likes to keep the music flowing and the collection plate moving from back to front to sweep for money that might shake loose on a second pass.

  The music dies, and the wooden doors swing open. Lil Bit and her mother, both dressed in blue cotton dresses that fall below the knee, are first out of the hall, the way they always are. Lil Bit sees me and comes over, but her mother hurries home. I wish she’d let the shadow of her husband’s disgrace go. She didn’t do anything wrong.

  “I brought you something.” I open the napkin before she starts in on the questions. The cupcakes are slightly squashed on the sides, but the whipped chocolate icing and the sugar flowers are intact. They are miniature works of edible art.

  “A tulip and a peony.” Lil Bit identifies the different blooms in a hushed voice; her slender fingers hover over the napkin. “They are too beautiful to eat.”

  “Well, if that’s the case, I’ll feed them to the birds.”

  “Don’t you dare.” Lil Bit grabs my right wrist with one hand and scoops up an iced cupcake with the other. She takes a bite and chews. She groans just like I did. Sara, the cook at the institute, is a magician. Lil Bit’s Afro curls are styled into two braids that are woven tight to her scalp. It looks painful, but her smile is pure sugar-fueled joy.

  “Good?” I ask.

  “Good isn’t a good enough word to describe it.” She licks chocolate from her fingers. “Try sublime or heavenly. Where did you get these?!”

  “The short answer is a place in Durban North,” I say as Goodness Dumisa and her mother step out of the hall. People stop them to talk, to compliment their outfits, their unfailing devotion to the good Lord above. Mr. Dumisa joins them. He is tall with a skewed nose and a bull neck that make him look like a gangster. He smiles wide and laughs loud, but there’s a hollow quality to his laughter that makes me think he is putting on a show. I wonder if he is something different in private. I know a little about family secrets now.

  Goodness strides over to us in a tight-fitting shweshwe fabric dress that hugs her hips and clings to her thighs. Her feet, in white canvas sneakers, are at least comfortable. Knowing Mrs. Dumisa’s taste for high heels, I bet Goodness had to fight to wear those kicks this morning.

  “What’s the news?” she asks me straight out. “Where did your mother end up?”

  Seriously?

  I’m grateful Goodness let me use her smartphone, but that does not give her permission to dig into my family business. It’s too soon to share information. I don’t even know how to process what’s happened myself yet.

  “The same place you got the cakes?” Lil Bit scoops up the crumbs from the first cupcake; she’s too caught up in the rush of sugar and chocolate to realize I don’t want to talk in front of Goodness. But there the two of them stand, looking at me and waiting.

  “The building
we saw is a hospital.” I give in. “The Amanda Bollard Institute . . .”

  “Oh, heavens,” Lil Bit says. “Is your mum sick?”

  “No, Annalisa is fine. It’s my grandmother Amanda who’s ill.”

  “You met your grandmother?!” Lil Bit says.

  Goodness tilts her head to the side, amazed. “Is that the first time you met your granny ever?”

  An impossible situation for her to imagine. The Dumisa family lives and works together. They take care of each other and fight each other’s fights. Try laying a hand on Goodness and see what happens to you.

  “That’s funny.” Lil Bit eyes the second cupcake, her attention split between my big news and the demands of her stomach. “Your granny Amanda in a hospital with the same first name as hers.”

  “That’s the thing,” I say. “The building is named after her. She is Amanda Bollard.”

  Lil Bit’s eyes go wide, and Goodness raises an eyebrow. Joan van Mark, a skinny white girl in the grade above us, loves to tell anyone who will listen that her family is rich and that, any day now, the money will hit the bank and she’ll be gone in the back of a gold Mercedes-Benz. Sugar Town people have a lot of lottery fever-dreams and money buried in the backyard fantasies.

  “For real?” Lil Bit asks in a don’t you lie to me tone. I don’t blame her. A grandmother with a building in the city would be a township first, and for an unnerving second, I doubt myself. Was Mayme real? Or am I my mother’s daughter—caught between reality and what I wish reality was? I glance down at the remaining chocolate cupcake. There’s my proof. The Amanda Bollard Institute is real. It exists. I was there.

  “That sublime cupcake is from the Amanda Bollard Institute. What else do you want to know, ladies?”

  Lil Bit laughs, relieved to find that I am earthbound and thinking straight. “So the Bollards are loaded?”

  “If money gets your name on the front of a building, then the Bollards must be rich. I don’t know for sure. Yesterday was the first time I ever heard that name.”