Sugar Land

by tammy lynne stoner

  I watch his eyes and can tell when he is finding something funny that he’s not supposed to find funny, or when he’s upset but can’t really show it for fear of being placed in the Box.

  Huddie’s eyes have this dullness to them that I can tell he works hard to maintain. When I watch those eyes, I understand just a little of how it must have been to live a life being constantly watched, of being stopped on the street every day by people saying, “Where you going, boy?” “Look at me when I talk to you, you filthy animal.” “Your father still a lazy son of a bitch?” “You still stupid?” Every single day. Can you imagine?

  When we was growing up, I remember people talking to Negroes that way, right in the middle of town or in a store, even outside church—as if colored people had been put there for white people to dump all their anger onto. And I thought nothing of it.

  Well, today I thought about Huddie and all those terrible questions from people, and I realized that sometimes it’s the assumption of something that can create it. You hear these awful things about yourself and someday you’ll more than likely become some of these things, if for no other reason than to prove you did something right. Know what I mean?

  I wonder if it would have been that way for us. I wonder if us hearing over and over that we were evil, and our kind of love is bad and wrong, might have turned us bad and wrong. So maybe it was best for us not to try—to leave it as the most perfect three weeks I’ll probably ever know. But I still love you and in my dreams we have one heck of a life together.

  I signed the letter on the right-hand side at the bottom, and I lit up a cigarette. The way I missed her hurt, deeply. I didn’t know if it would ever go away. I wondered if the happiness of it would ever outweigh the sadness.

  After pulling a few inhales, I held my cigarette up in front of me and put the letter above it until the heat set it on fire. The orange-and-black flame reminded me of a flickering pirate’s sail. When it got too close to my fingers, I dropped the letter into a coffee can filled with the gray ashes of all my other letters to Rhodie. Then I went to bed, secure that I’d put myself in the safest place for me to be: a men’s prison.

  QUICK TO FIRE

  Huddie dropped a hard lima bean into one of those gigantic pots, just as I started washing it. The water jetted the thing around and around inside the steel. I looked up at him.

  “City?” he asked, keeping our interactions at a minimum due to the guard.

  “What now?”

  “City.”

  “Midland.”

  “You have tiny dreams then.”

  I smiled. Oh, I get it. Not the city where I was from, the city where I wanted to go.

  He looked at me and asked again: “City?”

  “Atlanta,” I said.

  I dried the pot. He took it from me and carried it over to the shelf.

  “You ever been to Atlanta?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “I have,” he said. “You oughta pick again.”

  I smiled. “All right then, how about New Orleans?”

  “Good one.” He grunted as he hoisted the pot up.

  The guard overseeing us wore thick black glasses that turned his eyes into little chipmunk eyes. He glanced up with those beady eyes from the newspaper he was reading, nodding to let us know that he could see we were talking and he didn’t like it. Every now and again he spit tobacco juice on the floor—me making a mental note to be careful not to slip in it.

  Huddie grabbed the broom and swept up with his head down as he passed by the guard on his way back to my area. I tossed the lima bean back to him. Just when I thought it was going to hit him in the chest, he reached out and caught it.

  “Music,” I whispered.

  He smiled. “Easy. My music.”

  “That so?”

  “Oh yes, ma’am. I sing and play just about anything you can think of.”

  Using my shirt, I rubbed up a line of sweat up, tickling my ribs. “Yeah?”

  “You mark me, Miss Dara,” he said as he shuffled by me, collecting flyaway onionskins in the bristles of the broom, “you will turn on the radio one day, and I’ll be singing back to you.”

  “I look forward to that day,” I said.

  He nodded, knowing I was telling the truth.

  I walked into the canning closet, careful to keep my eye on the head cook’s office door, in case he came out and caught us talking. It was dark in there, and I couldn’t help but check over my shoulder to be sure the guard and Huddie were still in the kitchen so that the head cook wouldn’t open his door and see me alone in that room. Antsy, I fumbled around for the fattest jar I’d ever seen, full of pimentos that looked like squirrel kidneys.

  After lugging it out of the closet, all red in the face and grunting more like a moose than a woman, I grabbed a small piece of wood to beat around the edges of the lid until the seal popped. Midway through banging I felt a ping on the top of my head, and turned to see Huddie sneaking a smile as he brushed by.

  I leaned over and retrieved the bean from the floor by the sink.

  When I had it in my hand Huddie shuffled by and whispered, “Dessert?”

  “Easy. Lemon meringue pie.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” He smiled. Clearly a shared favorite.

  Without me seeing it, the head cook had snuck up behind me, slithering his way around the edge of the room.

  “Am I interrupting?” he asked us.

  Huddie and I both stood tall.

  “No, sir,” I said.

  The head cook flashed his yellow teeth at me. “I been watching you two in here, getting on.” He turned to Huddie. “Nigger, you finish up her work. Put those pimentos in that big pot until she gets back. She and I got some talking to do. Just friendly words.”

  Huddie nodded, but kept his eyes up on me.

  “Follow me,” the head cook said.

  He tucked his shirt into the back of his pants as we walked along. My stomach flipped and flopped but I tried to look easy, though I knew there was no escape from whatever might be going on here.

  The head cook’s office was no bigger than a washroom and smelled twice as bad. He grinned and asked me to shut the door. I did.

  “You think you know the world?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  He sat down behind his desk and pointed to the ground where he wanted me to stand and face him. I did. A black lamp that looked like the crooked finger of a witch sat on his green metal desk. The sight of it made me more nervous. And there was no music in his office—no sound whatsoever.

  “You think you worldly enough to be conversating with the likes of Huddie there? You two talking about places to travel and good restaurants and whatnot?”

  “I’m just doing my job.”

  He cleared his throat. “You doin’ somethin’, you are.”

  I looked down and willed my hands not to shake.

  The head cook settled back into his black chair—a man enjoying himself.

  “You think you pretty smart coming into this man’s world, don’t you? Smart girl. Since you think you know it all,” he said, “how about you tell me this . . .” He looked around the room, then leaned forward. “Tell me how I told time when I got lost in Sheldon Park.”

  “Told time? I’ve no idea,” I answered, being only twenty years old and not really acquainted with the crude side of cruel men who are given jobs with a pinch of power and an office with no windows.

  “Come here and I’ll show you.”

  The head cook stared at me with loose, pinkish eyes that told me that he liked to drink.

  I stepped forward, and he motioned that I should come around the side of the desk, to get a better look. I assumed the answer was to be found in the drawers of his desk—not the drawers he was wearing. But there, in all its somewhat sad, maroon-tipped wonder, was his penis. It stood as straight as it seemed capable of standing, poor thing. The light glistened off the top, where the pee-hole sat, like it was waxy or wet. I gawked, having never seen such a thing.


  “When I got lost in Sheldon Park,” he said, “I told time with my sundial.”

  I backed away. No thoughts came to my mind. I only wanted to move out of there as fast as I could. I walked backwards and reached out behind me to feel for the door because I didn’t want to turn my back on him.

  The head cook laughed and waved his penis up and down, saying, “Bye bye—for now, woman of the world.”

  I tripped over my fat feet, turned, and fumbled with the doorknob, finally stepping into the lit hallway, where the air was cooler and fresher. The loud thumping of my heartbeat made me jittery—still, I straightened my white shirt down the sides and held my head up as I walked into the kitchen and over to the sink to finish the prep for lunch. With all my strength, I held the posture of nothing happened.

  Behind me, I heard the head cook laughing before he clicked his door shut.

  Huddie was nearly finished with his sweeping. When he saw me, he dropped the broom and walked over in quick steps that sounded louder than usual without the radio on.

  The guard, his black eyebrows raised in high half-moons over his black glasses, dropped his newspaper right quick and yelled, “Inmate. Stand! I said stand, dammit!”

  Huddie raised his hands and deliberately laid them on his head, as “stand” instructed. He stood tall and still, his chest wide in his gray uniform and his breathing angry. The skin all around his eyes squeezed up, causing him to squint in the way a man does before he shoots someone.

  The guard walked behind Huddie and cracked him on the back of his thighs with his big stick. Huddie didn’t move.

  “Just heading over to get a rag,” he said.

  The guard pushed his glasses up and lit a cigarette. “The hell you were.”

  I nodded to Huddie to let him know I was doing all right, although clearly I wasn’t. Let’s just stay calm, my eyes told him. Relax.

  The head cook walked up behind me, sucking on his teeth as if he’d just had the best meal he’d ever eaten. He put his hand on my shoulder and I cringed. I didn’t want to—I knew what might happen if I did—but I did anyway. It was a reflex.

  The cook moved his hand and caressed my neck as if he owned me. Huddie raced forward so fast I barely saw him until he stood in front of me. The head cook looked right at Huddie as he slowly moved his pointer finger down the front of my white uniform shirt. Huddie, his eyes on fire, lunged forward and punched the cook on the side of his face. The hit sounded like thick branches cracking over a knee.

  “I’m fine!” I yelled to Huddie while I put my hands forward to hold him back. I’d never seen anger so fast to light. “I’m fine!”

  The head cook held his face and spit out: “You nigga son of a bitch!”

  The guard grabbed Huddie, pulling his arms behind his back using that stick of his. Huddie, half-restrained now, kicked out at the head cook, who raised his leg to block the blow before moving behind me for cover.

  The guard spit out more juice and yelled: “Calm down!”

  The head cook panted through the pain. I could smell his anger in waves of musky heat. He shouted, “I want him in the God damn Box and never again in my kitchen!”

  There’s no tiger alive ever as focused in a fight as Huddie was right then. Despite the clear agony of having his arms twisted up in the guard’s stick and the threat of confinement out in a tiny box in the middle of the hottest part of the yard, he kicked around me somehow and got the head cook hard on the knee.

  The cook—the side of his flabby pink face already growing purple—leaned to one side and slapped at Huddie the way a girl swats flies. Huddie easily dodged him.

  “The Box!”

  The guard pulled Huddie backwards, twisting and groaning with enough force on his stick to finally cause Huddie to yield.

  The cook yelled while his nose bled, “Out! Now! Take this fucking nigger out of here!”

  When I looked over at Huddie, my mouth hanging open and my eyes wide, he did the most remarkable thing: he started humming. Then, still humming, he nodded and stood up as proper as a king and let the guard escort him out.

  GUTS, CROTCH, FACE

  After they took Huddie away, I stood there, the very definition of vulnerable. I knew there were hardly ever more than three people in the kitchen at one time, and often I was there alone while Beauregard hauled trash and the inmate staff mopped down the eating area, with the guard standing post out there.

  Meanwhile, the head cook had the freedom to go wherever he pleased in the food processing area, and with whomever he pleased. If I was in the kitchen alone, he could order me into the supply room or the icebox or out back near the trash bins with him any old time, and if I didn’t comply, he could fire me. I nearly suffocated with my position, my cage. The thought of it caused me to have the kind of nausea that starts at your throat and continues all the way down to your knees. The kind of nausea that settles in and stays with you in its misery.

  And now, Huddie was gone and would never be back. Poor Huddie who’d defended me. He hadn’t just resisted a guard: he’d hit the head cook in the face then kicked him solidly on the kneecap. The guard would support the head cook’s story. From what I could tell, not many guards liked the head cook, but they respected his title—and they all hated Negroes, every last one.

  For the rest of the day, I did my best to stay within eyeshot of the guard on duty. My body tingled, alert to the presence of the head cook, who nodded and smiled at me every time he walked by. Once, he grabbed his crotch and rubbed himself before disappearing into the hallway. I nearly vomited.

  Back in those days, there was no recourse for the kind of behavior exhibited by the head cook and his sundial. There was no union or group for women’s rights. He was my boss, and bringing his behavior into the light would have just proven that working women were a distraction. I would have been let go, no doubt after being chastised for being seductive—though I felt about as seductive as an acorn in the mud.

  At clock-out time, just when I was thinking I made it through the day, the head cook called me into his office again. My palms went damp. My head felt like someone had just wrapped it in cotton, all dull and numbed out. I wished I’d gone to college with Rhodie after all.

  “Close the door,” he said, his face looking considerably more swollen on the one side than the other.

  I closed the door, only this time I stayed right up against it, with the doorknob pressing into my tailbone.

  “What you are afraid of?” he asked, his mouth smacking with saliva.

  I didn’t answer, so he stood up and walked over to me.

  He smiled. “If you don’t come to me, I can always come to you.”

  He positioned himself right in front of me. With only that desk lamp of his—no overhead light, no windows—everything got dimmer further away from the desk. We were in one of the darkest spots of his office with him backlit in front of me like some evil spirit.

  His breath smelled of heavy tobacco. He took off his white cap and threw it on the ground, then reached out, put his hands on my hips, and pulled me into him so I could feel him pressing his urgency into my girl parts. My mind raced with a dozen different thoughts: Are there any sharp objects nearby? Can the guard hear us—would he care? Will it hurt? I’ve never been with a man before. This just can’t be happening.

  “You are just the right height,” he said into my ear, his eyes looking not at me, but at the white door behind me. “We work just right together.”

  He sniffed my hair. I shut my eyes and started praying. Then I remembered something: when I was a little girl, my daddy told me that if a bear attacks, make yourself look bigger and create lots of noise. Don’t be passive, he said.

  So, despite the panic that was creeping over me, I stuck out my chest and said, “Keep your penis to yourself, Billy.” This was the first time I’d ever said his name.

  He laughed, and I thought maybe my bluff had worked.

  “Listen to you getting all powerful and familiar-like!” he said. />
  I relaxed and smiled—this was all a friendly misunderstanding!—until he grabbed me by the throat. My eyes flared up with fear and I held my breath.

  “Don’t you ever call me anything but ‘head cook.’” He unbuttoned his pants and pulled out his penis again. “I will do what I want, when I want. This here is my kitchen. I didn’t want you in my kitchen, but here you are. Now I’m thinking I’ll make the best of it and do what I want with you, woman.”

  I closed my eyes again. My mind spun around. I felt dizzy and sick.

  He moved his hand fast, and he grunted as he said, “I do what I want.”

  I prayed that I’d vomit right there, all over him, but I didn’t. It was all I could do not to fall into a panic and cry. I listened to my heart beating and looked off to the left.

  A moment later, the head cook moaned and arched back slightly. He pressed hard into me two or three times and squeezed himself dry. When he finished, he said, “Wash your uniform. You’re a dirty mess, nigger lover.”

  My legs shook. I put my hand behind me, grabbed the doorknob, and let myself out.

  I don’t remember walking down the short hall into the kitchen. I only remember cleaning the evidence off my uniform—the look of it on the sponge and the feel of it when I wrung out the sponge under water. I had this sensation that I couldn’t get it off my hands, so I kept washing them over and over again. Still, I could feel it on me.

  I smelled him, even though he wasn’t around me. His smell stunk stronger than it had in real life, and it was everywhere. Suddenly, with the feeling of being kicked in the stomach, I leaned over the sink and threw up.

  Not wanting to fill my unclean hands with water, I tipped my head sideways and let the faucet run on my face to clean off the vomit. I grabbed some water in my mouth, swished it around, and spit.

  The head cook opened the door to his office again and my guts dropped. He shouted, “You can go home early today, Miss Dara. We don’t need you anymore.”