Sugar Land

by tammy lynne stoner

  “No, honey. Your mama did nothing of the sort. Your Aunt Eddie called out to her. Eddie did the best she could. It was a lot for her to just wake up in the mornings back then. The pregnancy was so difficult for her. But she got through—in a big part because of your mama. Eddie loved you enough to keep you in this family and close by—”

  “But not raise.”

  “That wasn’t about love.”

  PD looked down at my feet. I was still wearing slippers.

  “Even during emotional crisis, a person should be comfortable,” I said.

  She smiled, and my heart stopped racing. Maybe we were going to be OK.

  “Take me to Aunt Eddie, please.”

  × × ×

  Eddie rented a room with a small kitchen behind a grand old house that looked like it was carved out of butter, situated just off the center of town. We walked up the driveway, climbed the white, rain-damaged stairs leading up and over the garage, and knocked on the door to Eddie’s room. Eddie called out for us to come in, as if she was expecting us.

  The green curtains were open, and there were fresh flowers on the nightstand. A cigarette twirled its tail from a clean ashtray on the arm of Eddie’s rocker.

  PD looked her aunt dead in the eye. “I know.”

  “She knows,” I said. “Knows knows.”

  “And I know,” Eddie said. “Miss Debbie called.”

  “How is she?”

  “As panicked as a fire alarm in a volcano.”

  Eddie leaned forward in her threadbare rocker. “PD, I am so very, very sorry if I hurt you. I want you to know—I need you to know—that I wanted you. You were such a gorgeous baby—but I couldn’t, honey. I was in a state. It was so hard to give you up, but I knew how much Miss Debbie loved you. She loved you even before you were born. She used to sing to my belly—and it made it all worth it. You are so worth it . . . I love you.”

  PD was a tough kid, so I was shocked when her dark eyes welled up a bit. “I love you too, Aunt Eddie.”

  PD walked over, across the worn white carpet, and hugged Eddie, who started to cry in that way someone cries who has wanted to cry for a long time.

  “I love you more than anything, honey,” Eddie whispered. The light played on the fraying bits of PD’s unraveling French braids. Eddie smoothed them down and smiled with so much love in her eyes I thought they might melt.

  PD jerked her head toward me. “Oh, and she’s a lesbian.”

  “I knew that.”

  PD stepped back. “You knew!”

  Eddie ran a hand up and down her tailored pinstriped men’s pants and suspenders as if to say: Of course I knew—look at me!

  PD nodded. “Yeah.” She shook her head and took in a deep breath.

  I leaned down and nudged her. “You’re doing great.”

  “I’m afraid I might still be in shock,” PD said, very seriously. “I read about it in a magazine.”

  “Sweet tea?” Eddie asked. “We can drink it outside on that picnic table I got from you, Nana Dara.”

  The tea sat waiting on Eddie’s tiny counter, a fresh coat of humidity on the outside and a dozen thin slices of lemon floating inside. Three cups with gold rings painted around the middle had already been set out. Clearly, Eddie had been waiting.

  The day was cool, the way it can get in January, with the threat of thunderstorms making the air staticky and causing the droopy trees to sway back and forth like tassels on a child’s bike handles. When I made Eddie that picnic table, she’d requested that it be painted green and blue to liven up the butter house’s boring backyard. And it did.

  We all sat down, me and PD wearing sweaters and Eddie wearing a black raincoat that she got in Boston, where she said it looks like a funeral whenever it rains. The three of us talked about all of it: Rhodie, Eddie’s love of baby PD—and how she always secretly looked for the ways that they were similar, the things that live under their skin—how Eddie endured living here in a small town just so she could be near PD, even Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton.

  “You have a girlfriend!” PD gasped. “Is that what you call her?”

  “What else would she be? Though we are a little old.”

  “Scoundrel,” Eddie said.

  An hour or so in, we knew the rains would be coming and Miss Debbie was probably out of her mind with worry.

  I said to PD, “We need to get going.”

  Eddie wrapped her strong hands around her cup of cold tea. She cleared her throat. “I want to say again how sorry I am for not telling you. It’s cheap maybe to say that it was complicated . . .”

  PD smiled at us from across the picnic table. “You know what I feel like?” she said. “I feel like a girl who is so loved that everyone did crazy things to keep on loving her.”

  I looked over at PD. How did we deserve to be forgiven and accepted so quickly and unconditionally? It was another miracle in my life that I never even asked for. I don’t know who watched over me, but surely someone. My life was blessed—or maybe everyone’s life is blessed, only some just can’t see the miracles for the weeds.

  Eddie wiped away a tear. “I love you, PD.”

  “I love you too, Aunt Eddie.”

  “Well,” I sighed, relief warming my skin, “no one can accuse our family of being dull.”

  Eddie shook her head. “No, they cannot.”

  PD smiled with all her big crooked teeth. “Nana Dara, on the way home let’s stop at the Quickie Mart so I can get Mama some barbecue corn nuts. They probably restocked by now.”

  THE DRAMA OF IT ALL

  Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton chugged up to the Opry in her exhaust-heavy Volkswagen fastback, which she had recently painted powder blue with a bright yellow trim to go with her white-and-yellow leather seats. I told her it looked like she was driving in the clouds, and she said, “That’s why we are together, you and me.” Then she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek as I got in. My guess is that she was well aware that her breasts ran the length of my forearm in the process. That lady was a sneaky one.

  She smiled. “Your summer pants look perfectly tailored. Whoever does your clothes?”

  We took off with a bang and a burp of smoke.

  My hunter-green pants sat low on my hips, with a thick fabric belt that was stretchy so I could tie it around my waist to give myself some dimension. The honey-yellow shirt she’d made me was drapey everywhere except the end of the three-quarter sleeves, which wrapped around my forearms to make the whole shirt look, according to Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton, billowy. She said that kept the eye to the upper portion of the outfit—“and those blue eyes of yours.”

  I grabbed her hand down low. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could go out dancing together somewhere tonight?”

  “Dancing? That would destroy our culture.”

  My heart sank. “Really?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said, nearly slowing for a stop sign. “The needs of the few shouldn’t ruin the foundations for the many.”

  I took my hand away. “How’s that?”

  “They let us dance, then where does it end? You want us let into church? We gonna let in robbers and molesters, too?”

  My stomach dropped and my head spun. “You think we are like them?”

  “Well, we all break the rules of God.”

  “Molesters, though?”

  Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton made one of her famous hard rights, nearly clipping a telephone pole. I held onto the door handle.

  “You think one sin means more than another?” she asked.

  I couldn’t believe this was happening. “Yes! That’s why there’s the Ten Commandments. Those are the big ones.”

  “So they let us in church, then what? We gonna kiss in front of children?”

  She skidded through the gravel on the side of the finished road heading into town.

  I said, “Honestly, I don’t know anymore if I think that this is a sin. I can’t seem to see who it is hurting. And I won’t sit here and be likened to a murderer by the person who—who—”


  “Who what?” She grabbed for her sunglasses in the glove compartment, moving more than a few times into the oncoming lane.

  “Who I love!” I said. “There.”

  “Oh, you are too easy, Nana Dara. Here, hon.” She pulled a pair of tickets from her bra. They were to some place called Kitty’s in Dallas. “We are driving to Dallas. I got us a hotel room. These are tickets to a lesbian dance. We are going dancing.” She leaned over and kissed me again, smelling like lemon. “And I’m glad that you love me.”

  “I don’t understand. Do you think we’re evil?”

  She let out a heavy breath then laughed. “Oh, honey. I am kidding you!”

  “You are meaner than a mongoose in a stocking.”

  “You know I just like drama.” She squeezed my thigh. “And be warned, we are not cuddling in this hotel room. We are not snuggling, hon. My meaning clear?”

  “Crystal,” I said, rereading the tickets. We were going to make love. Oh my.

  “You and I are leaving an hour after church. I will drive you home and wait while you pack.” She touched my thigh again. “Prepare yourself.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I sat back, feeling anxious.

  Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton smiled over at me like I was a kid on the special bus. She kissed my cheek and said, “For the record, I do not think we are sinners. We were just born too soon for the rest of the world to realize that.”

  × × ×

  Service went fast with me worried nearly sick about my upcoming encounter with Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton. I watched her from the choir loft, singing her heart out like any other day, while I was up there perspiring and breathing deeply, so as not to trigger a heart attack. What if our lovemaking is a disaster? What if I unveiled myself and she’s not attracted to me? What about my feet, for God’s sake?

  Then the world came to a halt. I realized she hadn’t said she loved me back. I said I loved her in the car, and she hadn’t said it back. Forget all the rest.

  I barely got through the last two songs, missing cues and leaving my choir brethren in the lurch several times. After the service was over, Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton met me at the bottom of the choir loft stairs with a smile. My neck was sweaty and I had some kind of rash on the backs of my hands.

  I said, “Let’s skip breakfast.”

  She smiled, took her arm and wrapped it in mine, and walked me out past the precise white lines of Seventeenth Street Baptist’s parking lot. All the while I’m wondering if she’s just being polite somehow, like she feels badly for me being in love with her when she was just having fun.

  “I have another surprise for you,” she said.

  “I don’t think I can take it.”

  “Shush now.” She looked hard at me. “I bought you that skin surgery we talked about. I know you are low in funds due to all the hospital bills and such, so I called a Dallas skin specialist and it’s my treat.”

  I stopped short. “What?”

  “You are going there right now—don’t worry, I will feed your cats and the pugs. I’m driving you to the doctor in Dallas, but I’ll come back and tend to things here. Keep walking or people will stare.” She waved to a big-headed woman who always brought vanilla fudge with pecans to Christmas events. “The doctors need to see you for a day before you go in, then you need to recover for a few days. That’ll be about a week. Just in time for us to use these tickets for Kitty’s, the way I add it up—and I got all As in mathematics.”

  “I can’t believe it,” I said. “You got me the surgery? You’re amazing. I just can’t believe it.”

  “It’s a selfish plan really.” She winked. “You need to get comfortable in that body of yours. Oh,” she said, snuggling in close to me, “and to intensify the drama of this moment: I love you too.”

  THE CATS AT KITTY’S

  In Dallas I met several very nice doctors and grew indifferent to opening my hospital gown before total strangers. The healing process from my skin removal involved pressure bandages and drainage systems no doubt left over from the Inquisition. I will spare you the details.

  Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton came by the hospital every day to lotion my hands and legs—I kept my socks on for obvious reasons—and change out my flowers. I was in reader’s heaven, with the Dallas News delivered each morning, and a lady with a limp who wheeled a book cart up and down the hallways twice daily for me to pick and choose new material. In the evening, Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton brought me popcorn and we watched The Ed Sullivan Show, once laughing so loud that I started bleeding through my bandages and the nurse gave me a stern wag of her finger when she changed my dressing.

  On that last day of my hospital stay, true to her word, Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton picked me up and drove me to the Dallas Hilton, where she’d booked us a room with a view and two double beds—“one for our clothes,” she said, even though I knew that it was a way to maintain discretion. The room had this beautiful brown striped carpet and real leather chairs. They even set out a pair of coffee cups for us, with a selection of five teas, which Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton quickly shoved in her purse saying, “We paid for them!”

  After we’d dressed—her in a blue dress with a sequined sweater and me in my favorite blouse and a new, skinnier pair of black pants—I waited for her to do her makeup before we headed out into the elevator to meet the cab that she’d called. The sun had already gone down, but it was still hot. When the nice Hilton men in their brown suits closed the glass doors to the hotel for us, the heat fell down like invisible clouds.

  She sighed. “Whew.”

  “Good thing you called a cab, rather than us walking,” I said.

  “Oh hon, I can’t walk in these shoes.”

  The cab pulled up. It had been recently washed and had a sticker of the star of Texas on the side window, beside a gold cross. We slid in the back onto the hot seats. It smelled like pipe smoke and sweat, but it was spotless.

  Rather than say the name of the club, Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton gave the cab driver the address. He sat still in his cowboy hat and didn’t turn around, which I took to mean that he knew where we were going. For a moment I wondered if something awful was going to happen to us, then I chastised myself for letting my old way of thinking creep in again.

  She leaned over and whispered, “You nervous?”

  “The dances might be so different now.”

  “Well I’m sure they’ll play some country—and that mostly stays the same.”

  I relaxed. “Now ain’t that the truth.”

  The city—with its tall buildings made more of glass than brick—passed us by. Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton tickled the side of my leg as we watched the scenes out the window, which I kept closed so her hair would stay put.

  Fifteen minutes later, the cab pulled over. From the outside, Kitty’s looked downright dangerous, all flat-black paint with the only mention of the name being the word Kitty’s in white cursive on the wood door. The door sat off to the side, not in front like regular doors. And there were no windows at all.

  The cab driver, still hidden under his black cowboy hat, didn’t turn around, so I dropped money on the passenger seat for him and we got out. Outside the door to Kitty’s, we each straightened our clothes and got our resolve together. Walking through those doors took more nerve than I’d needed in quite some time, but we did it.

  And inside was a glittery fairyland of lights and music and men in shirts that were unbuttoned to show some chest hair. Most of the women couples were set up so that one was the masculine one and the other was the feminine one. A few looked so similar to Eddie that I had to do a double take.

  I leaned in to Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton. “Which type am I?”

  She kissed my cheek. “Oh, bless your heart.”

  Dance music kicked on with a loud slam and everyone took to the floor like a gaggle of geese lifting off a pond, only in gold lamé. It was as if the Fourth of July was housed inside Kitty’s.

  Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton beamed at the excitement and shouted to me over the
music, “Let’s drink first!”

  “I’ll get them. You go sit down—someplace a little quieter.”

  She nodded and walked off to one of the tall white cocktail tables along the back wall. Each table had a purple carnation in a white vase on it and a little cup filled with wooden matches.

  After I got us two drinks, the house special that night—something with a purple liquor in it—Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton confessed, “I’ve been watching American Bandstand.”

  I leaned close to her, careful not to tip over in my tall white chair. “What now?”

  “American Bandstand! I’ve been studying. Most of these city dances are similar to country dances, only you move your upper body more. In short, I am prepared.” She sipped her drink through a thin black straw and nodded, like she was making total sense. “That’s also how I got the idea to do up my eyes like this.” She shut her eyelids, showing me how carefully she’d drawn a wavy line from the lids out.

  “Impressive.”

  She kissed my cheek, all flush with how open we could be. “What fun!”

  A new song clicked on, something that sounded almost like a children’s song, and she nearly squealed. “I know this one! Come on!”

  “My drink—”

  “Leave it on the table. Come on now!”

  I held the black straw off to the side of my cup and gulped my beverage down in one mighty swig. She pulled on my other hand and towed us out to the dance floor to take our place in a long line of people, most considerably younger than us.

  The music played, and I did my best to catch the groove and keep up, with her laughing and grabbing my hands across the line to tug me along with the music. The song thankfully gave you instructions how to do “The Loco-Motion,” which looked like playing choo-choo train with your arms while doing criss-crosses with your feet.

  It was hopeless. I waved her off and stepped out of the line, breathless and damp under the arms. She grabbed me and we walked to the table, laughing loud. “Good thing we stopped,” she said. “This next one is ‘the Twist’!”