Sugar Land

by tammy lynne stoner

  He backed away, toward the truck. “No, ma’am. This could be jail for me.”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake, grow a set!”

  He just shook his head and opened the driver’s side of the truck.

  Alone but determined, I drug over a rusted metal basin Miss Debbie used for bobbing for apples at Halloween. Overcoming my fear of falling right through the thin metal, I stepped up and shoved my arm in the window to knock the stick down that was keeping it from being opened any further. A redneck lock.

  For those of you who don’t know, there’s a section of a woman’s upper arm—especially a woman such as myself—that abruptly bulges out. It was that bulging spot that got wedged in the open window. I tried to bend up and wiggle my fingers to knock down the piece of wood, but I couldn’t. I was stuck.

  “Fiddler!” I yell-whispered. “Fiddler!”

  No answer. God damn coward, probably crouching down inside the truck.

  I feverishly tried to nudge the wood down with the fingers of my stuck arm—only to realize that my arm fat had caused the window frame to push up even tighter against the wood stick. Now firmly jammed in place, my arm started turning blue. On top of it all, I was sweating like a whore in church.

  At that point, I heard Mrs. Jimmy James, Miss Debbie’s neighbor, open her door. She owned a pair of Rottweilers so big you’d think she was in league with the Devil.

  “Come on you two,” she said to the Devil-dogs. “Don’t shit in the front yard.”

  Obediently the beasts waded right through the bushes along the property line and into Miss Debbie’s yard, where the window held me tight. Not having been taught the boundaries of their property, the Rottweilers came at me with fangs exposed, barking up a storm. Panicked, I struggled to free my arm, which caused my slicked-back hairdo to flop out in hairsprayed bunches.

  “José and Righteous,” Mrs. Jimmy James yelled from the stolen pebbles in front of her door that she called her patio, “where are you two?”

  They were up on me now, both dogs, black as night, staring up with those mean white eyes. In my frantic attempts to free my arm and keep back from the beasts, I stepped too hard on the metal basin, and one of my feet dropped clean through it.

  The Rottweilers took that as a sign of aggression and lunged at my overalls. Luckily I was never a woman who believed that tight clothes were slimming, so I had a little give for them to pull on. Just as one of those wretched creatures tore my overalls off at the upper thigh, exposing years of neglected inner-thigh grooming, Mrs. Jimmy James raced around the bushes in her nightgown, armed with a broom and a can of insect spray—or at least that’s what it tasted like when she started shooting it in my face.

  Despite my blurred vision, I screamed, “I am Nana Dara!” but it couldn’t be heard over the dogs barking and Mrs. Jimmy James calling out for the police.

  Lights went on all around me as all of Miss Debbie’s neighbors opened their doors to investigate.

  Finally, in the fury, my bruised, blue arm came free.

  Then—freed—I fell backwards, my foot still stuck in the basin. Mrs. Jimmy James clobbered me several times in the head. Clumps of broom straw lodged themselves in my already shameful mess. At one point, the broom itself got stuck in my defeated coif. On the upshot, the smell of the insect spray kept the dogs at bay.

  Mannie Johnson, the sign painter who lived across from Miss Debbie’s trailer, ran over with his shotgun. He guided Mrs. Jimmy James away from me.

  All sunburned and aftershavey, Mannie stepped up to my metal basin, which was now wrapped around both of my feet like a skirt. His eyes widened. He pressed the tip of his rifle into my doughy stomach, where it had peeked out between my upturned shirt and overalls.

  He cocked the trigger. “What’s going on here?”

  As I turned my head to answer, I realized that I was lying in the exact location the Rottweilers visited every evening to relieve themselves of what clearly must be high-fiber meals.

  I lifted my soiled, patchy head. “I’m Nara Dara, Miss Debbie’s mother. You know me, Mannie.”

  “Whew—Lord! Is that dog doo in your hair? My goodness.” He lowered his rifle and raised his hand to cover his mouth.

  “I’m trying to get in the house here,” I stammered.

  By now, the moon shone down on me like a spotlight. A few more people walked up behind Mannie, took a peek at me, shook their heads, and retreated back into their houses.

  “We keep a spare key in case Miss Debbie locks herself out. I’ll—I’ll go get it for you,” he said, stepping back.

  Mrs. Jimmy James didn’t apologize. Instead, she consoled her dogs on what must have been a terrifying experience for them, and left me there with their poop.

  I struggled up and stepped out from the basin. Mannie Johnson met me at the front door with the key. He handed it to me at a distance with an outstretched arm, suggested I wash down.

  “Thank you, Mannie—I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Holding my disheveled and discolored head up high, I walked—limping only slightly—to the truck. I banged hard enough on the door to scare the pants off the Fiddler who was, as I had suspected, crouched down in the front.

  He looked up at me from the patchy floor. “That you I smell?”

  “Unless it’s the scent of coward—then that’d be you.”

  “I’d be a coward and a free man any day.”

  “You are not going to jail. Dammit, Fiddler. I got the key. Let’s go in.”

  The Fiddler poked his narrow, scared head up and—seeing the coast now clear—he edged up on to the seat and out of the truck. I looked down, amazed he could fit his long body in such a small space.

  We walked in silence up to the front door. I resisted the urge to itch at something stuck in my hair.

  “I feel like people are watching us.”

  “For once,” I said, “you might be right.”

  The key slid in easily. We opened the door and clicked on the light. There on the photo wall behind her white-and-red flowered couch were five rectangles where the paneling looked darker—five spots where pictures of Edna used to hang. They’d all been taken down. Looks like Miss Debbie had done a bit of changing herself over the years also.

  “Don’t you say a word,” I mumbled to the Fiddler. “Not one God damn word.”

  THE TWO-TON MONSTER

  With the patience of a brain surgeon, the Fiddler lifted dripping bacon—piece by piece—from the skillet to a plate with a paper towel on it. He sucked on his toothpick with those little hamster noises he made.

  I shouted out, “What are you diggin’ in your tooth for—gold?”

  I dropped down on the mustard couch and felt the fabric of my housedress stretch at the hips, where it always scrunched up against my girth. The dress had softened after years of washing and wear. The fabric had faded to nearly see-through. I think, at one time, there were small pink roses printed on it, but they faded away completely. “The tiny print,” Mrs. Lynne, my dressmaker, had told me, “will draw less attention to your curves.”

  Now, I wondered, without any tiny print left, are my curves in the forefront?

  I wiggled to find a comfy spot on the cushion and, just like that, my dress ripped.

  “Hot holy hell!” I said.

  The Fiddler nodded his head at me from the kitchen. He slouched his thin body against the white edge of the sink. When he raised an arm to scratch his beard, a considerable puff of underarm hair sprang out of his cut-off flannel shirtsleeves. Looked like he had armpit afros.

  “Time for a new dress anyway, isn’t it?” he asked as he pulled out another toothpick from the front of his jeans.

  “You got a problem with those toothpicks,” I said, and made my way down the hallway into my bedroom and up to my closet, with my right hand holding the side of my dress together.

  That winter, I’d dyed my bedding in a tie-dye method that little PD showed me. Something she learned in her kindergarten. We stood out there with three buckets,
all the plain fabric I could find, a box of rubber bands, and three boxes of various dyes. Her brown hair was still straight as ever and still in ponytails. Miss Debbie had painted her nails, and PD was particularly proud of them. That was how I convinced her to put some rubber gloves on before dyeing. I warned her that otherwise the dye might ruin her nails.

  “I love my nails,” she said, smiling with those teeth coming in crooked.

  “Well, Peanut, you have to protect what you love. So wear them gloves.”

  She shrugged that same cute shrug she’d been doing since she could walk, and put the gloves on, even though they were huge on her. I rubberbanded them onto her wrists, and we got to twisting and tying all the fabric, starting with my bedspread. It came out with circles of purple and red, with muddy greens that looked like a salad had melted on it. Still, it always brightened my days—all that color.

  The walk to my bedroom with my ripped dress wore me out. I dropped down on the edge of my bed and slid my closet door open with my foot to survey what I had hanging in there.

  “Dresses, dresses, dresses . . .” I muttered, scanning the hangers, most of which were holding extra blankets and drawstring bags filled with old rags I thought might be made into rag carpets someday.

  One, two—two dresses. I had only two fall dresses left.

  I remembered using one to clean up some cat mess back in December, then deciding it was best to toss it, and I remembered that another had gotten a little tight at the end of the season, so I had given that to the church. Did that really leave me with only two dresses?

  Fiddler was right—I needed dresses. It was October already. I needed fall dresses, and quick.

  I changed into my best underwear and one of my two remaining dresses, grabbed my truck keys, and headed to town.

  This is the thing about my dressmaker: she knew me. Me and Mrs. Lynne had developed a kinship supported by our mutual love of fried cheese and dogwood trees. We also liked the same kind of dress—tight on the top and on the hips, loose everywhere else. We understood each other.

  Imagine my horror when I drove around the corner to see a giant “CLOSED” sign on Mrs. Lynne’s door. A table of her goods sat out front, and some young man, no more than twelve years old or so, was selling everything off to a crowd of eager ladies.

  I pulled my old Ford, popping and clicking the way it does, up to the curb, and yelled out the passenger window to the boy. “What the hellfire is happening here? Where’s Mrs. Lynne?”

  “Heart gave out, ma’am,” was all he said before he turned to a woman who was asking about the price of Mrs. Lynne’s huge white scissors.

  “Her heart?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said over his shoulder. “You can try Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton down two blocks. Most of Mrs. Lynne’s folks have gone over there, I hear.”

  He hadn’t done anything wrong, but still I drove off without so much as a thank you.

  Poor Mrs. Lynne. Hearts are tricky things. Sometimes I feel like they have timers inside, and when your time is up, it’s up. And who the hell is this Tanya May Rogerton?

  I lit up a cigarette. “Dammit.”

  I parked behind another truck, this one with a coat of primer and stickers on the back that gave us the full character of the driver in five words: Speed Demon and Join the Army.

  Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton’s dress shop was clearly identified by a white mailbox that had a picture of a woman wearing a tea dress painted on it. The woman was painted in red, making her seem patriotic in color and style. Big florets of jade grew on either side of the mailbox, indicating that this place was well maintained—that this dressmaker had an eye for detail. She cared.

  I headed up the cobblestone path and into Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton’s tiny and tidy little dress shop. A bell jangled when I shut the door. It smelled like lilacs inside and had the low lighting of someplace sacred. Ahead of me was a mother-daughter duo, talking wedding dresses. This is going to take all God damn day, I thought, when out from behind the mother-daughter duo walked Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton, her hair as white as Cupid’s diaper.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I—Ah . . . I only have two dresses left.”

  She smiled. “Well bless your heart, that won’t do.”

  Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton gestured toward one of two antique chairs set up in a spot in the corner near the tall front window. I hoped I could fit. A book of fabric sat on the dark wooden table between the chairs, with a mason jar of white roses near it.

  Without her slightly heeled shoes, Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton was probably a good three inches shorter than me, but the way she carried herself—chest out, head up, smile on—added height. She looked like she might have done pageant work in her younger days. Her white hair was done up in the shape of a perfect upside-down U and her nose was dull the way someone’s is when they know the secret art of powder application.

  I was glad I had changed my drawers, but would it have killed me to pay a little more attention to my hair?

  “Why don’t you pick out some fabric, and I’ll be back to take measurements.”

  “Oh no, I know—I know my measurements.”

  “Just in case. Don’t you worry. I have a back room and am very discreet. Would you like some lemonade?”

  “That would be lovely.”

  Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton walked quietly across the various Victorian carpets she had laid around the floor to a pitcher of lemonade near the mother-daughter. I watched as she poured me some, adding mint with silver tongs that were sitting in a white bowl of fresh lemons.

  Measurements? I groaned to myself.

  When she handed it to me, I noticed her wedding ring. It had a tiny diamond on a gold band that grew up and coiled around the diamond to make it look like the center of a snake eye. She noticed me looking and simply said, “Art deco, hon.”

  I nodded and directed my attention to the fabric book as Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton walked over to help the mother-daughter. After a few minutes, she insisted that they take the wedding fabrics book home to look over before they made their decision.

  “Don’t show the fiancé, of course!” She smiled, shutting the door behind them and dropping her reading glasses from the tip of her nose to hang from her neck on a white ribbon.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton!” the daughter called back.

  It had been a couple years since I’d had any strong attractions, but I woke right back up again at the sight of Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton’s breasts snuggled up inside her tight white cotton top. She was a woman of advanced years, but she knew how to perk herself up, to be sure.

  The heat from the October sun through the window beat down on the back of my old yellow dress. I looked down at the fabric book and noticed that my nails were lined with dirt from my time weeding yesterday. Oh God. And I’d forgotten all about that barbecue stain on the front of my dress.

  Here was this woman, about the same age as me, but just look at the two of us.

  I pulled my dirty hands back when she sat down across from me. “How about you pick the fabric?”

  “Well,” she said, looking into my eyes, “you’ve got pretty blue eyes—I would kill for that color—with your fair skin. Hmm. Peach colors, bright blues, maybe a bold green. Avoid whites.”

  There was no judgment in her tone. No “you’re too fat for white.” She was only offering her impartial, professional opinion.

  “I dare to wear white because it makes my customers think I can keep something this white this clean, and if that’s true, then I can handle their wedding gowns and alterations on their great-grandma’s silk party dress from the turn of the century.” Her breasts, followed by the rest of her, leaned right by the roses. “Truth is, I keep this outfit here in the shop. I’d never be able to keep it clean if I didn’t.”

  I smiled and curled my fingers in while I sipped my minty lemonade.

  She stood up easily and waved me to follow her. “Let’s go take those measurements.”

  Her shop was ba
sically a square, with a short, three-step hallway off the main room that led to a closet or “a quaint measuring room,” as she called it.

  “OK, now, so you go in there. Pull the string on the lightbulb and it’ll click on overhead. Be ready—she’s bright! Then undress down to your basics.”

  She turned the bronze doorknob to the slender door and held it open for me. The room was narrow and not too deep. I had enough room to barely stand akimbo, but that was about it. Luckily I could slip my shoes off and didn’t have to bend over.

  “Knock when you’re ready!” she called through the door.

  When I stood up, I looked at myself as if I were looking at a stranger. Staring at my stockinged feet, I examined myself up from my thick-but-muscular calves to my thighs, which had bags hanging off them in the middle, where there were obvious signs of chafing. I cringed at my saddlebag of a lower belly, and my doughy upper belly where oval-shaped, pink-nippled breasts rested. Everywhere, there were stretch marks to document my journey to obese.

  Surely that wasn’t me. Surely I hadn’t let me become her.

  Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton asked if I was OK. I wanted to say, Sure, if you like being a melting snowman with nipples like saucers of pink milk, but instead I said, “Yes, ma’am. Come on in.”

  She clicked open the door with the greatest care. Her tortoise-shell reading glasses were perched back on her nose. The light was so bright above that my belly cast a shadow over everything from my mid-waist down. I closed my eyes as she unraveled her tape measure.

  “My apologies. That is one bright bulb,” she said, “but I need it to read my tape numbers.”

  I felt Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton hold her arms out and realized to my horror that she couldn’t get them around me.

  “Can you do me a favor and hold this end while I take my measurements?” she asked.

  I opened my eyes. “Certainly.” I tried to sound upbeat, despite the fact that it took two grown women to get a proper number of my circumference.

  She measured my breasts, waist, and hips.

  “52-53-54.”

  That’s not the weekly weather forecast for Alaska—those were my measurements. Dear God.