Sugar

by Bernice McFadden

  On that day, just as the wind was beginning to kick up the dust in the road and a horse brayed loudly in a nearby stable, another little girl joined Sugar outside the store.

  She sucked contentedly on her own peppermint stick, watching Sugar shyly from the corner of her eye. Sugar had never been this close to another child, and at the age of five, this nearness caused her heart to clamor with excitement inside her chest.

  “What’s your name?” the little girl finally asked, in the way only a little girl can.

  Sugar considered her. Her worn dress, bare dirty feet and uncombed hair.

  “Sugar,” she said and waited for her reaction.

  “Hmmm,” the little girl uttered and looked thoughtfully at her peppermint stick. “That your mamma in there?” she said, pointing in the store. There were only two women in there, Sara and the woman who’d come with the little girl, and neither one of them was Sugar’s mamma. In fact, at that tender age, Sugar had no real sense of what a mamma was. She’d heard the word used in conversation, but its meaning was foreign to her.

  She shook her head no.

  “Where’s your mamma at?” the little girl asked, her eyebrows raised in surprise.

  Sugar shrugged her shoulders.

  “She dead?” she asked and her eyes widened.

  Again, Sugar just shrugged her shoulders.

  The little girl looked into the store again and then back at Sugar.

  “Ain’t you got a mamma?” she said with shocked disbelief.

  Sugar just stared blankly at her. She had a May, a Sara and a Ruby. She didn’t have a “mamma.”

  “What’s a mamma?” she asked, hoping the little girl would shed some light on this thing that seemed so important.

  The girl returned the same blank stare.

  “Don’t be talking to the likes of her, Caroline.” The little girl’s mother came out and dragged her by the collar away from Sugar. Her bare feet skidded across the dirt, leaving squiggly lines behind. “She a Lacey and we don’t fraternize with those type of people.”

  “Those type of people,” Sugar muttered to herself and moved to reach for another cigarette. Her face was wet with tears, but she did not notice. She tried to distract her mind and focus on the dust that swirled in the thin stream of light that filtered through the window. But like a storm, there was no stopping these memories, no matter how painful they were. Sugar leaned back, inhaled, and let them come back to her.

  They lived in a big yellow and green house surrounded by willow trees and wildflowers. Sugar spent hours out and about the flowers and trees, trying to block out the heavy breathing and moaning that sailed down to her on the evening breeze.

  Friday and Saturday nights found men and women from all over the county sitting in and around the Lacey home, where the good times rolled as long as you had the money to keep it going.

  They came for the conversation, corn liquor, catfish and Lacey pussy.

  The Lacey women sold themselves a sliver at a time. Leaving some back to fill the years when there would be no lean hard body to press against theirs and whisper sweet syrupy lies into the swell of a breast.

  Time stopped and stepped aside to allow Sugar to walk away from the trees, leave behind her wreath of wildflowers and put away the sweet songs she sang aloud to the meadow. Time made way and Sugar strolled right into womanhood.

  You see, no one ever told her to keep her legs closed and crossed at the ankles. No one ever said: “Save it for the one you love” or “Good girls say no.”

  They’d been watching her for some time. The men. Watching the way her ass grew out and moved up and onto her back. The way her legs lengthened and the muscles strained hard against her skin when she walked. The tight knobs that once struggled against her blouse had suddenly blossomed to something full and buoyant, ready to be held, kissed and caressed.

  Her scent told them she was ready.

  She went with him into the empty room. Some nameless, faceless him. They went to the same room that saw Isaac die.

  She did not get kind words or gentle kisses. What she got was callused hands and boots that were worn thin at the sole. A man who, after he was done riding her, sat on the edge of the bed, his face in his hands, and wept out his guilt.

  Guilty—’cause he was laying with someone else besides his wife.

  Guilty—’cause he was paying out money he was supposed to use to buy food for his family.

  Guilty—’cause the smell of Sugar reminded him of his own twelve-year-old daughter.

  It was done and over. Tears mean nothing in the Lacey home. Just the two dollars on the dresser.

  A door slammed in the distance and jerked Sugar away from her memories. She looked at her wristwatch; it was ten past six. “He’s running late today,” she mumbled to herself. She got up and walked over to the window, parted the curtains enough to see the tall, dark man bound down the stairs and then turn on his heel and bound back up to place a quick forgotten kiss on the cheek of his wife. Seconds later he was gunning the engine to his old pick-up and was off down the road.

  Pearl stood out on the porch, her thin robe pulled tight around her against the morning chill, until the truck faded in the distance. She then turned her attention to Sugar’s house. She stood there for quite some time, straining her neck this way and that way, trying to see whatever it is she thought she would see. Sugar smiled in spite of herself.

  Nosy people irritated Sugar, so she began to keep the curtains drawn. Little it did, they still kept coming.

  The town women were the worst. A few had ventured over to #10 Grove Street on more than one occasion, sometimes with their children in tow, always with food; knocking at the door and peering in the windows, hollering hello. Sugar would just sit there listening and waiting for them to leave. She did not need nor did she want to be friends with anyone in Bigelow.

  Nevertheless, they kept coming. The women of Bigelow in their dainty dresses and light makeup. Some even wore white gloves on their hands and veiled hats usually reserved for Sunday church, weddings, baptisms and christenings. Some even jiggled the doorknob. Pearl watched all of this from her kitchen window and waited to see if the mystery woman would appear, and if she did what would she say?

  But she never did and the women would clear their throats, look around, set their baked goods wrapped in shiny tin foil down in the rocking chair, or tuck them back under their arms and walk swiftly away. Some would stop at Pearl’s house, pretending they’d come all that way to see her in the first place. They’d sit and smile, speaking on small things. Family mostly, inquiring about Pearl’s two sons. “How Joe Jr. and Seth getting on up North?” Pearl knew better and accepted their Corning Ware filled with peach cobbler or stewed pears, served them coffee or tea and told them her boys were doing just fine. The women really only wanted to know one thing, and that was if Pearl had met her yet. But they behaved like the Bigelow women they were raised to be and engaged Pearl in light conversation that involved everything and everyone except her neighbor.

  “Oh, by the way . . .” they’d say as Pearl showed them to the door and thanked them again for the visit, “have you met your new neighbor yet?” They’d say it with such an air of mock disinterest that it made Pearl want to laugh, call them phonies and point an accusing finger at them. Instead, she bit the inside of her cheek, shook her head and said, “No, I haven’t had the pleasure.”

  The women would transform then; their eyes would go wild and they’d have to fight to control the froth that formed at the corners of their mouths. “Oh, I seen her in town. She look like a harlot if there ever was one. What she gotta dress that way for? And all that makeup! She wear wigs that them white women wear, long, blond or red! I tell you, Pearl, not in all my years have I seen a sight like her. Umph!” Their words would run in a fast stream that made Pearl’s head hurt.

  Pearl would just raise her eyebrows. “Really,” she’d say with exasperation.

  “Yes, really. You better watch yourself, living so close
to her and all. Best you keep away from her, she don’t look like she mean nobody no good. Coming through town without even a hello. Umph! Who does she think she is?”

  Pearl would close her door to their backs and their two-faced attitudes. She didn’t much like people like that, and didn’t care to eat food made by people with such wicked hearts, so the pie, bread or cake would end up in the garbage.

  Chapter Four

  PEARL blushed mauve with embarrassment as she ascended the steps. They creaked loudly under her weight and announced her arrival to everyone in and around the house. She’d been reduced to following the example of the gossiping women that came to this very same door with the intention of weeding out this foul seed that was now living among them. Befriend her, find out who she was and what she was about and then run her off when they find that she did not meet with their requirements. She being the color of crude oil and maintaining its qualities, Sugar would not and could not mix. That was their only interest. Pearl’s intentions were different.

  From the first day Sugar arrived and Pearl laid eyes on her from the shadows of her hallway, she was struck by the familiarity of her face. Her heart had skipped an entire beat when the woman stopped in front of her house. It wasn’t because of how she looked or the way she was dressed that threw Pearl for a turn, it was her profile that caused her to catch her breath and grab her chest. For a split second Sugar looked everything like her Jude. Sweet, sweet Jude, spending the rest of eternity in a pine box, six feet underground.

  For a quick instant Pearl thought Sugar was Jude and had to control the impulse to run out through the front door and grab the woman in her arms. But then Sugar turned toward her and smiled and Jude’s face melted away like lard left out in the hot sun.

  Pearl had to, needed to see her without the annoyance of shadows. She wanted to make sure her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her again.

  For the first year after Jude died she seemed to see her face everywhere. In her dreams, looking up at her from a dish that rested in the sink waiting to be cleaned, in her own reflection in the mirror and peeking at her from behind the living room drapes. Sometimes she would call to her, “Jude? Jude, baby, is that you?” And walk over to where she thought she saw her daughter’s almond eyes. Joe, if he was there, would grab her firmly by the shoulders and guide her back to bed or the couch. “She gone, baby,” he’d say and sit and rock her until the tears and weeping were done.

  It was the hardest time in her life and after fifteen years it was still hard.

  The worst incident had come when she and Joe went to Short Junction to meet the train. Joe’s nephew and his wife were coming in from Jackson to spend some time with them. It wasn’t too long after Jude’s death. Colored papers were still hot with the story. No one had been picked up as a suspect and the police had all but given up on their halfhearted efforts at finding the killer.

  The wife of the nephew was a nurse in Jackson and Joe had felt it would be a good idea to have her around. Pearl didn’t seem to be getting any better; he thought he would lose her to grief.

  Pearl stood beside him, lifeless, shoulders slumped, giving her a hunchbacked appearance. Her dress hung slack from her body, which was growing thinner by the day. Her straw hat sat limp on her head and stiff gray strands of hair poked out from beneath it like wild weeds. Her eyes were small dull black stones that held vast emptiness. She was nothing more than a dead tree trunk in the middle of all the hustle and bustle of the station.

  Joe was holding her hand and looking toward the train that had just pulled in. Joe Jr. and Seth stood restlessly behind them, tugging at their shirt collars. People rushed to the train, waiting anxiously for loved ones to appear. Children chased each other around and between the legs of grown folks, and porters moved like sleek, black wildcats to and fro, moving large steamer trunks through the buzz of people like rats through an intricate maze.

  “Here they come, Pearl,” Joe whispered to her and squeezed her lifeless hand. He was waving at them as they approached. Pearl lifted her head slightly and tried to offer a weak smile, but none would come. Jude had taken her smile with her. And then her head bounced. She caught sight of a girl, just the same age as Jude, dressed in a dress that was too mature for her. Her face was painted, hiding the last threads of innocence. She turned to say something to the man that was with her, excitement swirling all over her face. Pearl saw her. Saw Jude. And began to walk toward her, slow at first, pulling Joe along with her. He followed, believing she was walking to greet his nephew, but she blew straight past them, her speed increasing to a run, leaving them standing, mouths agape, in shock. “Pearl?” Joe had yelled above the throng of the people. “Wha—” and then he saw what Pearl was rushing toward. He saw the girl that looked so much like his dead daughter and his heart thumped hard in his chest. He gripped Pearl’s hand and jerked her sharply backward; she slammed into his chest and then turned eyes on him that reflected such savagery it made him shudder and he smelled his own sudden fear break out on his body in tiny beads of sweat.

  She spoke to him between clenched teeth and quivering lips. Pearl looked like a trapped animal. “Turn me loose, Joe Taylor.” And he did, without thinking of the consequences, he turned her loose and with the agility of a child, Pearl raced through the station toward the young woman and she screamed her dead daughter’s name as she went, “Jude! Juuuudeeee!!!!”

  Thank goodness it was too late. The girl had boarded the train. “All aboard!” was yelled one final time and the whistle was sounded. Steam bellowed out from beneath the cars and then the train started its steady movement as it pulled slowly out of the station. Pearl was running alongside it, her hands reaching out to touch the steel cars that were now swiftly whisking past her. She called Jude’s name one last time and collapsed onto the platform.

  A year passed before Pearl smiled. Another year before her laugh, high and gay, was heard again.

  Not a day went by without her thinking of her daughter, but she kept the vision of her mutilated body buried deep in a section of her mind reserved for horrible things that scared and frightened her.

  Pearl reconstructed her life, bit by tiny painful bit and now a woman, just the profile of her Jude, was slowly fragmenting what she had spent fifteen years putting back together.

  Pearl balanced the sweet potato pie in one hand and knocked on the chipped and peeling screen door with the other. The window to the right was open and the curtains pulled aside revealing the misty gray-black within. She resisted the urge to tilt her head to peer inside. That’s what someone else would do, she told herself. She waited and then knocked again, the sound of her knuckles making rapid contact with the wood echoing loudly up and down the street.

  She shifted on her feet and looked at the rocking chair that moved gently back and forth in the warm spring breeze. Small clay pots filled with mint and jasmine lined the base of the partition that encircled the porch area. The plants were in full bloom and enveloped the house with their fragrant soothing aromas.

  Ivy crept silently along the side of the house and stretched over to run the length of the banister. Pearl was amused; she’d never noticed the ivy before. Not even when Old Mrs. Wilks was living there.

  Pearl knocked again. Still no answer. She sat down in the rocking chair and rested the warm pie on her lap. “I’ll just rest a bit,” she lied to herself. She was actually lying in wait. She rocked slowly back and forth, the yielding sounds of the chair and the smells of mint and jasmine easing away any apprehensions she may have arrived with.

  The previous owner, Beulah Wilks, had been dead and gone for more than ten years. She’d been a nice old woman, pint-sized and frail with dull brown eyes and hair like snow, soft and white. Pearl and Beulah had made small talk over the years; neighborly chit chat that unfolded their lives to each other.

  Beulah Wilks moved to Bigelow from Waco, Texas, with her husband and infant son. The husband died not too long after they settled in and she raised her son alone, supported by her decease
d husband’s war pension and her tailoring skills. She never remarried and never mentioned to Pearl any desire to marry. “Men are like children. They need too much time and attention. I ain’t had the patience to go back to mothering two men instead of one, so’s I stayed alone and liked it.” Pearl was taken aback by the old woman’s candor—talk like that was nearly alien coming from a woman who was raised in a time when they believed a woman needed a man to survive and the man made the woman complete.

  Beulah watched Pearl’s sons, Joe Jr. and Seth, move from boys to men and then North. She was there when Jude was found, and sent casseroles of food over daily for three months.

  During that time Pearl had never met the son Beulah spoke constantly about. She glowed with delight whenever she said or heard his name mentioned: “Clemon.”

  He was her pride and joy and although she didn’t see him often, he faithfully sent her a letter with money the first of every month. “Had a little trouble ’round these parts some time ago,” Beulah confided. “He don’t feel safe comin’ ’round here no more.” The old woman never mentioned what type of trouble and Pearl didn’t ask.

  The one and only time Pearl had laid eyes on him was about ten years ago when Beulah passed away, fell down dead among the beloved flowers, fruits and vegetables she spent all her time tending.

  Pearl remembered he was a slight man, built like his mother, so small that a strong wind could come by and lift him from the ground and carry him up into the treetops. Pearl addressed him as “Mr. Wilks.”

  She held his small hand in hers and stared solemnly at the bald spot on his head that so perfectly reflected the sun, and said her condolences: “She was a mighty fine woman, your mother was.” Joe squeezed his shoulder and nodded in agreement. She had approached him after the funeral as he was preparing to leave. His mother’s body lay waiting inside her coffin on a wagon. He was taking her body back to Texas for burial.