Sugar Land

by tammy lynne stoner

  Was she ever right. If I had stayed out there to do the Twist, it might well have been the last thing I ever did. Made me think of Beauregard—I bet he did a great Twist.

  The next song was a slow one. I held out my hand and asked Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton to join me. Her face pulsed pink from the drinks and the heat of the place. Smiling her coy smile, she dabbed her napkin in a glass of water we’d been sharing, touched her throat, and stood up dramatically.

  “Any time,” she said. “I will dance with you now and any time hereafter.”

  I held her close and we moved so easily around the floor, doing a version of a waltz or something—I don’t know. The younger folks smiled at us, the people they might be some day, and made room when we passed by under the glittery disco balls hanging from the ceiling.

  The floor was icy gray, and that’s what it felt like dancing with her, like we were on ice—so smooth and laid-back. When I looked into her eyes, I finally understood that it didn’t matter who led the dance, just that there was one.

  She leaned in, pressing tight against me, and whispered, “I love you.”

  “I love you too, Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton.”

  One hour and two more purple drinks later, we took a cab back to the hotel—one we caught a block away, on the recommendation of the bartender. The men in their brown suits tipped their hats and opened the doors for us again. We kissed in the elevator, pulling back just before the door opened, and nearly ran to our room, holding hands and making a ruckus.

  I’d never felt freer, like I was a lion on the range roaming and running where there were no walls to be had for miles and miles and miles.

  That night, us two middle-aged widows threw one hell of a private party there at the Hilton. Some of our lovemaking took a bit of maneuvering, given the few pressure bandages I still had in place, but we worked it out. We Southerners are a stubborn and resourceful breed, after all.

  LIVING & DYING: LESSONS FROM HUDDIE

  1968—the year when the whole world wanted to blow out of their prisons. Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton and I had been together seven years, with us going on walks every day around the gravel roads near the Opry, where she lived with me. Folks thought we made the cutest old maids, especially when we walked those damn pugs, who I was convinced would outlive us all. We even brought those dogs with us to bingo on Sunday nights at the church hall, with all the other widows.

  On our first Christmas, I framed the drawing Rhodie made for me back in 1923—the one with the two black circles and the white space they made when they intercepted. A Venn diagram, as it turns out. I’d kept it in my delicates drawer all those years.

  Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton, always heavy on flair, hung it above our bed—where it took on a new, proud meaning. That picture was a prophecy fulfilled, she said, not some shameful part of myself to be avoided.

  Eddie talked about moving into the spare room at the Opry, but she never did, which is just as well since Miss Tanya May Rogerton made that her secondary sewing space. Every Christmas Miss Tanya May Rogerton made Eddie two custom-tailored shirts, since it was difficult to find men’s shirts that could fit over her breasts. Miss Debbie tsked every time Eddie unwrapped her gift, but she otherwise held her tongue.

  PD stomped on her way to the beginnings of young womanhood, though from behind she still looked like a boy, especially given her continued embrace of the pixie haircut. I wasn’t shocked when the boy she’d asked to her Sadie Hawkins dance had longer hair and softer hands than she did. That’s what modern times do, they flip things 180 degrees and shake them until the old rusty things fall out.

  Everyone came to the Opry for my sixty-fifth birthday. What would have made it perfect would’ve been to have the Fiddler there, too, but I suppose he was just a hard lesson I needed to learn. In losing him, though, I gained everyone else by opening up and not repeating the mistakes that had cost me my best friend. Everyone is here at the right time and everything has a reason, or so it seems.

  Eddie showed up late to the afternoon party, having gone out to Kitty’s on our suggestion the night before. She looked tired but happy. Miss Debbie was even later, though I have no idea why.

  “Nana Dara!” Miss Debbie shouted, throwing open my screen door and sending two of the cats running for their lives. “Birthday girl?”

  PD walked in behind her. She was growing so tall—tall enough to have stretch marks on her hipbones, Miss Debbie told me, after long nights of growing pains.

  I yelled, “Come on in!”

  I couldn’t get the door on account of Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton insisting that I stay seated on the couch so I could be waited on during my birthday.

  Everyone milled about while I moved my feet around inside my cushy socks, appreciating the results of a weekly pedicure—my Saturday outing with Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton before we get Mexican food downtown. Bo nodded to me, then walked into the kitchen where he popped open two beers—one for him and one for Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton who, to my constant surprise, loves beer. She followed him in and I could see them whispering about something.

  “What are you two cahooting about in there?” I called out.

  “Birthday surprises!” she said.

  Eddie rubbed her eyes. “Can you pour me some black coffee, strong?”

  Miss Debbie raised her eyebrows but couldn’t say anything, seeing as her mouth was full of gin-soaked ice cubes.

  “Coffee?” Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton shouted back. “Sure thing, hon. PD, you want some?”

  PD, who was trying on a few bits of adulthood, answered, “Coffee? Yes, please.”

  Bo came out of the kitchen carrying a homemade birthday cake. I worried that the ashes from the cigarette in his teeth might fall in the cake, but realized that nearly everything in my life had gotten ashes in it at one point or another, so who cares. He looked so handsome with more of his hair now turning white and those deep hazel eyes of his that looked like stones you would find on the beach and keep forever.

  Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton started the singing—“Happy Birthday to you!”—while she lit the blue-and-green candles before placing the cake before me on my gold-trimmed TV tray. The cake was a God damn mess. While Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton could make a wedding gown from an apron, she could hardly blanch greens without catching something on fire. On the top on the sunken disaster she’d written: “Happy sixty-fifth, Mrs. Dara!”

  I looked up from the edge of my mustard yellow couch. “Mrs.?”

  “Mrs. Dara in the way that I am Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton. We will be Mrs. together, even if we can’t be Mrs. together!”

  Miss Debbie clicked her tongue. The others all clapped and hooted.

  From that day forward, everyone in my family except Miss Debbie called me Mrs. Dara. She never called me Mrs. Dara or sat Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton next to me at her New Year’s party dinners—claiming the cycle of boy-girl-boy-girl that is present at any decent table would then be ruined—but all that said, Miss Debbie bought the lion’s share of her outfits from Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton and gave her genuine hugs when they saw each other, which was more than I’d ever dared to dream.

  And truly, it didn’t matter if someone sat between us during Miss Debbie’s New Year’s dinners when I looked out over the table at all those people filling the spaces I didn’t know needed filling forty-five years ago. That’s what life is about—what you choose to fill yourself with. If you choose to fill yourself with heavy, dark secrets—and almost all of them are heavy and dark—there’s not enough room left for much of anything else.

  When Huddie died, I knew how I wanted to live. I wanted to find the thing I loved and be open to it and let it carry me past myself—past my own death, even. For him it was his music; for me, it turned out to be my family.

  Now, when I die or the aliens come for me—as I believe they surely might—I will live on in the memories of people who knew me—really knew me—and loved me. It seems like this big-boned girl, who started out with two strikes against her, finally figured out what this
living thing is all about.

  Sugar Land Star Newspaper

  June 22, 1981

  This past week we lost a big figure here in the Sugar Land community. She was known to most as Mrs. Dara, even though she’d been widowed for some thirty years.

  Mrs. Dara was born in Midland, Texas, on October 29, 1903. She graduated from Midland High School with the Class of 1922 before working for ten years in the kitchen at the Imperial State Prison Farm—now called Central Unit—where she met and married Warden Daniel Jones. She leaves behind her family and her friend, Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton, who will stay in Mrs. Dara’s mobile home down off RR23.

  The funeral will be held at 17th Street Baptist Church, where Mrs. Dara sang in the choir, this Sunday at 2 p.m.. A wake will follow in the hall, which is filled with—as most of you know—picnic tables made and painted by Mrs. Dara herself.

  The wake will be hosted by Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton and Mrs. Dara’s children. They request everyone dress colorfully—no black. There will be plenty of food, but you can always bring a dish—and everybody’s welcome.

  NOTES ON THE STORY

  As with many fictional pieces, I took liberties to craft this book. Much of Huddie Ledbetter’s story is true, to the best of my research. For fact-geeks, I’d like to point out a few places where I opted to shift history in favor of my re-telling:

  Huddie was nicknamed “Lead Belly” at Huntsville Prison, prior to his transfer to the Imperial State Prison Farm. There, officials knew him as Walter Boyd because that was the fake name he gave when he was arrested. To streamline, I have the authorities know him as Huddie Ledbetter, his real name.

  Lead Belly did sing publicly to the prisoners, the guards and their families, but he sang for his pardon during a private concert with the Warden, Governor Pat Neff, and his wife on the Warden’s porch, which was located on the prison grounds (I situated my fictional Warden’s house outside the prison land). While he sang for folks and was a favorite of the Warden and the guards due to his work ability (it was said he could pick 1,000 pounds of cotton a day), being African American probably kept him out of the “easy” kitchen work.

  Also, though nearly one million women worked in agriculture on farms and almost two million women worked in manufacturing in 1920, it is unlikely that a woman would have been allowed to work in a men’s prison, no matter how progressive the Warden.

  The Warden of the Imperial State Prison Farm (which I nicknamed “Sugar Land” since most people prior to the 1950s were talking about the prison when they referenced Sugar Land) from 1919–1949 was R.J. “Buck” Flanagan. I created my own Warden, who loosely reflects several articles I read about Flanagan, but in no way is meant to represent him.

  Additionally, the Warden at Imperial State Prison/Sugar Land was known as “Big Captain” and his assistant as “Little Captain”; I simplified by not adding an assistant and using the title “the Warden.”

  I use the spelling Lead Belly, as opposed to Leadbelly, since that is the way it is spelled on his headstone, by ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax in his 1935 book, by Smithsonian Folkways, and by the Lead Belly Foundation, started by his niece. That said, it’s often spelled Leadbelly, and it’s commonly accepted that either way will do.

  SPECIAL THANKS

  Thank you to my dedicated publisher, Red Hen Press, especially Kate Gale, whose devotion to art is an inspiration.

  Thank you to my writing group, the Guttery, especially Melanie Alldritt, Mo Daviau, Lara Messersmith-Glavin, Michael Keefe, Tracy Manaster, A. Molotkov, Margaret Pinard, and Jamie Yourdon . . . to the positively golden energy of Laura Stanfill . . . to the Tin House Writers’ Workshop and Antioch University, notably my mentors Susan Taylor Chehak and Leonard Chang, and to Kate Carroll de Gutes and Gigi Little.

  To Jillian Lauren—you’ve always been there when I am in a panic about one thing or another. To Steve Almond, who first suggested I turn some short stories into this book. To Caroline Leavitt, my supportive freelance editor. To Joseph Chinook, my combat buddy who never says no to my asks. And to all my lovely friends, especially music wonder Sadie Contini and Andrea Maxwell, who read the manuscript in an early form. Andrea, my film project comrade and truly superriffic friend, also did my amazing book trailer. To my beloved ASSes, the Tobey sister-poets, “nothing compares to u.”

  Special researcher thanks to Carol Beauchamp from the Genealogy Department at George Memorial Library in Richmond, Texas; Brett J. Derbes, the managing editor of The Handbook of Texas; and Jim Willett with the Texas Prison Museum, who took the time to answer emails from me—a stranger.

  There were also many books I dog-eared during my research, notably Tyehimba Jess’s books Olio and Lead Belly, and The Midnight Special by Edmond G. Addeo and Richard M. Garvin.

  Thanks to Linda Epstein, whose notes strengthened this book immensely, along with Jeff Kleinman, Erin Harris, and Allison Devereux—for being so instrumental and gracious when you didn’t have to.

  Thanks, finally, to my family, especially the Twesmes, the Hibsmans, and the Kennans. To my beautiful, patient lady-friend, Karena Stoner, our three children—Oliver, Rosie, and Cedar—and Beth German, the best ex (and co-mom of Oliver) in the world.

  SUGAR LAND

  Reading Group Questions and Discussion Topics

  1.In the opening pages, Dara gives her first impressions of Imperial State Prison Farm. She says that its white walls are like “the walls of heaven—if heaven were an institution to house murderers and thieves, which it may be since we are all murderers and thieves in our own way.” What did she mean by this? Do you agree?

  2.Which character do you most relate to: Rhodie, Miss Dara, Beauregard, the Warden, Miss Debbie, Eddie, Nana Dara, Bo, Miss Tanya May Rogerton? Why?

  3.As Dara sits in the Sheriff’s station, listening to them talk about assaulting several women the night before, she says: “We all knew that there were different rules for the police, especially when it came to Negroes, but now I knew those different rules applied to me, too.” Do you believe there is still a second set of rules for people in authority today? If so, what groups of people are often the targets? If not, what do you think turned the tide?

  4.In real life, Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter sang for a pardon from Governor Neff and was given one in 1924, on the Governor’s last day in office. What does this say about Huddie? And about the Governor? Do you think this would ever happen today?

  5.It wasn’t until June 26, 2003, in the case Lawrence v. Texas, that the Texas Supreme Court struck down all laws making sex between consenting gay adults illegal. From a brief filed in that case, lawyers wrote that: “Discrimination against gay people peaked from the 1930s to the 1960s. Gay men and women were labeled ‘deviants,’ ‘degenerates,’ and ‘sex criminals’ by the medical profession, government officials, and the mass media. The federal government banned the employment of homosexuals and insisted that its private contractors ferret out and dismiss their gay employees, many state governments prohibited gay people from being served in bars and restaurants, Hollywood prohibited the discussion of gay issues or the appearance of gay or lesbian characters in its films, and many municipalities launched police campaigns to suppress gay life.”

  Growing up against that backdrop, how/why do you think Dara allowed herself to fall in love again? What events (both positive and negative) may have contributed to her being willing to try to love again?

  6.Could Dara’s life story serve also as the story of the evolution of American cultural and political beliefs? If so, how?

  7.Lead Belly was one of the strongest prisoners. He was often given the role of watching over the other black prisoners working the fields, which included being allowed to whip them if he felt it was necessary. What does this position say about the prison guards and the Warden—were they confident, cruel, fool-hearted, lazy? And how do you think this affected the black inmates?

  8.Discuss what you theorize may have driven the rebellious Miss Debbie back to “find the Lord” who was, as she
said, “ . . . never lost. I was.”

  9.In Sugar Land, what does each character’s individual “prison” look like? What is yours? Beyond prison, the metaphor of prison walls is a theme in the novel, with Dara working throughout her life to “shrink” and “push back” those walls. Do you think this is what life is really about?

  10.Do you consider Sugar Land to be a piece of literary fiction or historical fiction? Why?

  BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

  tammy lynne stoner’s work has been selected for more than a dozen anthologies and literary journals. Stemming from what her grandmother calls her “gypsy blood,” tammy has lived in fifteen cities, working as a biscuit maker, a medical experimentee, a forklift operator, a gas station attendant, and a college instructor—among other odd jobs. She is also the creator of Dottie’s Magic Pockets, and the publisher of Gertrude literary journal, and wrangler of the GERTIE book club, based in Portland, OR, where she lives with her lady-friend, Karena, and their three kids. She is online at tammylynnestoner.com.