Sugar Land

by tammy lynne stoner

  Even as I did, I wondered if I’d ever let anyone in. If I’d ever speak my truth.

  I looked out the window. The sounds and bounces of the train were normal to me now, my body moving without resistance. A plantation of what looked like Christmas trees speeded by.

  I saw that I’d been alone since Rhodie. For twenty-five years, I’d been alone. Even in a crowded room, even with a husband I respected and loved in my way, even with his children—I was alone. A loneliness that comes from settling for a love that won’t ever touch your soul. From settling for your body and mind being tended to, while you tell your soul to shush up—to stop being so needy and wanting to be heard. To be grateful no one is trying to kill you.

  Throughout my marriage I’d had that loneliness, one so dire that sometimes I’d find myself on the porch looking up at the sky long after the sun had set. On those nights, the Warden knew to leave me alone. He’d let me sleep on the porch swing outside, with my thoughts and my tears.

  I’d hated myself for crying then. To dry up those tears, I’d remind myself of all the happiness I did have and the children he gave me—of how selfish and ungrateful I was being to question this life. And then, slowly, my soul would close its eyes and sink back down into the darkness inside me.

  After my second glass of champagne and after the housing shacks along the tracks had faded into the moonlit fields behind them, I leaned back and decided to take a look at myself from the outside. To examine this person in front of me as if it wasn’t me.

  It took me a minute, but when I did, I sympathized with her. I came to understand that life isn’t moments of going from black to white; it’s letting the dawn come up as slowly as it needs, to until you realize it’s a new day.

  All these years, I’d silently chastised myself for being a coward—for not leaving as dramatically as Huddie had. Now I saw that it just wasn’t possible at that time, in that place, being who I was. I did my best, same as we all do. You simply can’t make your legs longer than they are. You can only take the steps that they allow.

  I’d been a twenty-year-old small-town girl. Still, I’d shown bravery—and, dare I say, prowess—to unbutton Rhodie’s shirt, to move to the Imperial State Prison Farm for men, and then to leave and do my best.

  After all—and I do mean all—here I was on a train by myself, in a roomette trimmed with gold paint and smelling of roses, sipping champagne on my way to New York City. That was something, I thought. I am something.

  × × ×

  I stepped off the train and caught a taxi over to the hospital that had been listed in the newspaper article: New York Presbyterian. Tired and stiff, I walked through the giant glass doors only to be told that Huddie had gone home.

  They gave me his listed residence—an apartment in Harlem. To get there, I needed to take the subway and, one of the more stern-looking doctors noted, a weapon.

  The nurse leaned across the desk. “You would do best to hail a cab. They come around in the circle out front every few minutes. Just raise your hand or ask someone with a yellow hat to help you.”

  “Thank you kindly,” I said, grateful that my large size gave me a kind of presence that I doubted many would want to mess with.

  I walked toward the door to where the cabs drove up. After all, there was no way I was going to take a subway. I was not going to walk underground into a metal tube speeding through the mud, especially given how many mines collapse on a regular basis. Crazy city folks.

  When I walked outside, I got hit by wind so fierce that big chunks of my hair pulled up like tile in a flood. Torn between holding down my skirt or my hair, I opted for the most modest route and walked forward with as much dignity as I could muster, considering a plank of hair had fallen across my forehead. A nice young man in a yellow hat helped me into a cab, and I was on my way.

  Not only did I get to Harlem, I got there unharmed.

  I won’t lie, though—I was scared the entire drive, seeing sights out my windows I’d never seen before: steam coming out of the street itself like nostrils of some terrible dragon, cars honking at nothing, women wearing next to no clothes, people sleeping on the street, Asians, men selling food and balloons on corners, all the lit-up signs.

  To ease my nerves, I reminded myself that these sights were also blessed by God. God, my convenient friend.

  The cab took me right up to Huddie’s apartment building, but the driver didn’t open my door or wish me goodbye or wait to see it I got in. He took off, and there I stood, shivering, hoping the address was correct—but also, from the look of the taped-up windows and cracking paint, hoping it might be incorrect. I steadied myself, repo-sitioned my shawl to give me the look of confidence, and walked up.

  The sky was grayer in New York than in Texas, or at least it was on that day. Kids played basketball in the street, same as we did, only they played dangerously close to folks’ windows. The buildings—mostly brick—were set close together, even closer than Guardtown.

  I rang the “Ledbetter” button near the huge entry door. A couple of colored men on the porch across the street raised their white mugs at me, saying hello. I didn’t know if they were mocking me or not, so I just nodded and turned to face the door—making sure I didn’t turn too quickly.

  The woman who answered the door looked like a black version of myself—though while my dark brown hair had only a few lines of white here and there, hers was nearly all white, with only a little black on the frizzy tips. She seemed tired.

  I was terrified as I stood there with her, clearly the only white person for miles around.

  She looked me up and down. “Yes?”

  I made sure my voice came out strong sounding. “I’ve come up from Texas to visit Huddie Ledbetter. Is he here?” “That’s my husband. And yes, he’s here.”

  The woman held the cracked wooden door open. I doubted many white women visited Huddie—at least not white woman my age and maturity—and I wondered what she thought. She, his wife.

  “I worked with him years ago,” I said.

  She nodded. “He’s not well.”

  “That’s what I read, so I came up here to see him.”

  We walked up the creaky stairs on stair treads that had worn down to dark blue threads in some spots. The hallways smelled like peppermint oil, and I wondered if they had a bad ant problem.

  She opened their apartment door for me, and I stepped in.

  “I need to get groceries ‘fore the store closes,” she said. “You go on in.” She pointed to the back room, presumably the bedroom. “It’s nice of a friend to come calling, rather than just sending word. So many of his friends are just sending words. Name’s Martha.”

  “Dara.”

  Martha turned and walked back out into the hallway, leaving me there in their small, tidy apartment. A few cans of beer dotted an otherwise clean coffee table sitting in front of a sagging brown couch.

  Not wanting to feel like I was prying, I turned my eyes down and walked back to the bedroom. The door was open a crack. I pushed in, so as not to wake him by knocking if he was asleep. There, on sheets the color of dry grass, under a gray military blanket, was Huddie. Propped in the corner, as dusty and dejected as a blind man’s gun, sat his guitar.

  I nearly cried, the sight of him like that, with not even enough breath to blow through a harmonica. This had been a man teeming with might and anger. A strong man with a wide chest and muscles all the way into his fingers.

  Now, the bones of his face showed through his skin. He still had his hair—gray but there—and that big gap between his front teeth and that sadness, but so much else was gone already.

  “You,” he said, gagging a little for air.

  I smiled and said, “You.”

  I sat down on the edge of his thin bed. Huddie moved his hand from under the gray blanket and looked over my wedding ring.

  “The Warden,” I said.

  He nodded that he’d already heard, and smiled. “You got out.”

  “I kept my promise to
you, though maybe not in a big way.”

  “You feel good with him?”

  “As good as I could expect,” I said. “The Warden’s gone now.”

  Huddie nodded, not that he was sorry, but just that death happens.

  “You OK?” I asked.

  Slowly, pacing himself, he answered, “I got this room and I got Martha—best wife a man could hope for. Stood by through all this.”

  I looked around the room: a bed, a black dresser with most of the handles missing, a short stack of records on the dresser, a matching set of sand-colored suitcases with black straps, and that dusty guitar.

  “Bigger than my other jail cells,” he said before dropping off with a little bitterness, “Though I have learned that, for a black man, every room is a cell where he stays ‘till they use him up.”

  “I’m sorry, Huddie.”

  He nodded. His tired eyes reminded me of a sick, lonely puppy. My glorious Huddie.

  A roach crawled across the radiator under the window, down along the floor, and under his bed. At least roaches don’t bite, I thought.

  Huddie closed his loose, dark eyes again. This must be tough on Martha—helping him wash and change his clothes—and tough on him, on his dignity.

  I took his hand, feeling the rough skin of a working man. “But we did get out, as much as we could, didn’t we, Huddie? We pushed against those walls . . .”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He shook his head and smiled up at me. The dim sunlight hit the side of his face, and he let the anger go. “You loved him—the Warden?”

  “In a quiet way.”

  “Well, good. So now you might be ready for love in a loud way.”

  I pulled back a bit, on reflex. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know for sure what he was saying, but I think I did.

  He looked up at me. “I knew folks like you. Had to fight off scores of mellow boys during my time at Huntsville, ‘fore Sugar Land—and more at Rikers Island. And in between, well, I played at all kinds of clubs, you know. All kinds. Along the way, I met lots of people, and I recognized you in a few of them, Miss Dara.”

  Huddie smiled up with the smile of the spirits—open and noncommittal, so I told him the truth: “Once . . .” I said, my face hot. “Her name was Rhodie.”

  His eyes fluttered. “You loved once, so it’s possible to do it again.”

  I nodded.

  “Just talking science,” he said, trying to smile again. “Pure science.”

  I exhaled and laughed. “Yes, yes, I hear you.”

  With his free hand, Huddie pointed to the short stack of albums on his dresser.

  “Got three of mine left.” He paused, then: “You take one, Miss Dara.”

  I walked over and lifted up the one on top: Lead Belly and the Golden Gate Quartet.

  “They got me recorded other times too. In Austin, Minneapolis—” he struggled, but this was important—“All over the country.”

  “I’ll look out for those recordings.”

  He closed his eyes. “Now, everyone’s singing my songs—everyone except me.”

  “I’m so proud of you.”

  Huddie squeezed my hand with weak fingers that had once dug up foot-long weeds and worn down fretboards.

  He opened his eyes and whispered, “Best go before it gets dark. Don’t worry about me. I got Martha and I got five hundred songs in my head.”

  I held up his record, letting him know I had it. “Goodbye, Huddie.”

  “Goodbye, Miss Dara.”

  “Huddie,” I said, mustering up my bravery again, “I love you.”

  He turned his head to me. His pink lips cracked a little when he smiled, and in that smile—that particular, soft kind of smile—I knew that he knew that we had loved each other. In this world I had known this man truly and without fear, and he had been my friend.

  × × ×

  Huddie died on December 5, 1949. His death got front-page coverage in Sugar Land, him being a former resident of the prison. The paper even did a few follow-up articles on him. One article was about this white band by the name of the Weavers who recorded one of Huddie’s songs a few months after he’d died—just one—and made themselves two million dollars. Two million dollars from a single one of Huddie’s songs.

  I hoped that wherever he’d landed, he wasn’t angry over the success of that song—and all the others to follow. I hoped he wasn’t bitter that he’d been prevented from having that kind of success with his own damn music. Instead, I hoped he saw the success of his music as a way to continue who he had been—a way for Huddie to escape his birthright and his color and even his death. His life would continue after his death.

  This way, in his death, my friend showed me how to live right: to find the thing you love and be open to it, let it take you over—for him, his music—then let it carry you past yourself.

  BOOK THREE

  mrs. dara

  THE BLAND OLD OPRY

  After a bit of vacillation, I found the strength to make the decision to leave Guardtown and the shadow of what they by then called the Central Unit and set out on my own. I was determined to push the walls of my jail back even further and, at nearly fifty, it was about damn time.

  Looking back now, I see the importance of that moment. That moment turned my path crooked and led to me find not only independence, but love and acceptance both from others and myself. At the time, though, I was so scared I broke out in hives all over my belly and my neck, which caused several strangers to shift back and ask me outright if I had poison ivy. No, I told them, just fear, which I don’t think is contagious, though I’m not totally sure about that.

  The sale of the house happened almost immediately since there was a long list of prison employees wanting to move from shantys into houses. I used part of the profit—much more than I had expected—to send Edna off to college in Dallas to study American history. She didn’t stay there, though, instead moving to a new city every other year it seemed, including places that surely would have killed the Warden if he had been alive, places like Boston and San Francisco.

  In some ways, I took Edna’s disappearances harder than the Warden’s death. There was a finality in him leaving, whereas with her, I kept hoping one day she’d stop back by. I was proud of her, though, the way she shuffled around, seeing the world. In my crazy daydreams, I even harbored a hope that, one day, she’d ask me to tag along, and maybe we could go see the Grand Canyon or pet the dolphins that swim right up to you in California.

  In reality, I knew her moving was just another way for her to keep pushing away, like she did when she was a teenager and suddenly didn’t want anyone to hug her. I gave her space, and when I got to worrying, I’d nibble on a few extra biscuits to calm myself.

  I blessed Miss Debbie’s engagement to Bo, who brought me flowers, but had no money, and never got his high school diploma. In an effort to connect with Miss Debbie, I offered to pay for a fancy shindig of a wedding. Turns out the offer was ill-timed.

  Miss Debbie, ring finger wagging in front of her, announced, “It’s too late. We eloped Thursday.”

  I folded my newspaper in half and slapped it down on the coffee table. “Who gets married on Thursday?”

  “We do. We got wed.”

  “Where did you spend your wedding night, in one of Bo’s cars?”

  She stuck her lip out. “We are saving that part.”

  I raised a very doubtful eyebrow. “That so?”

  She ignored me by flipping her hair and turning around to help herself to an apple on the counter. “But we’d still like to use Daddy’s money for a car shop.”

  “It’s not your daddy’s money—it’s mine.”

  “It’s ours.”

  “He left you all your mother’s jewelry, if you recall. The money is mine.”

  She crossed her arms the way she always did, and I couldn’t help but smile at her spunk. “You’re married now, huh?” I said.

  “I am.” She fiddled with her ring. “Bo’ll be paying on this until h
e’s seventy.”

  “You have an odd way to show your love.”

  She yanked her hand back, and I regretted saying that. Why could I never say the right thing with her?

  I corrected myself. “I’m sorry. It’s beautiful.”

  With a loud crunch, Miss Debbie started in on the apple. Despite her mouth being full, she told me her plan: “There’s a garage for sale a county over, and above it is this little room where we can stay until he makes enough money to get us a house. Won’t be long. He’s already got customers.”

  I nodded, trying to look as thoughtful as possible.

  She munched. “I want kids.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you want grandkids?”

  “If they come, sure.”

  “Then we need that garage.” Miss Debbie put the half-eaten apple in the sink, a move that never ceased to infuriate me. She noticed, pulled it back out, and threw it in the yard through the kitchen window to be a treat for the nearby animals, the way I always wanted her to.

  I said, “A garage?”

  “You sent Edna to school!”

  “And I’d pay for yours too, or your wedding.”

  She sighed loud enough for the neighbors to hear. “We eloped, and college is not my way. I hate reading.”

  “Who hates reading?”

  Her neck got that angry tension in it. “I do! You know I do. Asking me that question for two decades is not going to make the answer change!”

  “OK, now.”

  “Shoot, though.”

  I smiled. “I suppose we could call the money for the garage an elopement gift.”

  Miss Debbie literally jumped up and down. In her excitement, she raced over to hug me before that invisible barrier between us got in the way again, and she pulled back to a gentle hug with a bit less skin contact. “Thank you, Nana Dara.”

  I almost said, Now be nice to him. But instead I said, “You’re welcome.”