Sugar

by Bernice McFadden

  Silence.

  “She, she, she! What that mean? Who is ‘she,’ she ain’t Sugar! She could be anyone. Could be you. Could be me!” Pearl was near to yelling, her words came out in waves of trembling emotion.

  “True. He ain’t call her name directly. But he did say that she was over on Grove Street,” Clair Bell said.

  “Grove Street run near a mile long,” Pearl said, running her open hands across her moist face.

  “Uh-huh, that’s what the man said when he told him, but then he made it clear that he should look for her at number ten.”

  Clair Bell’s words echoed in Pearl’s head. Shirley stood and placed her hands on her hips, a triumphant smile resting comfortably on her lips, her past sins forgotten for the moment. “Told you so, Pearl,” she said.

  Minnie saw the darkness suddenly cover Pearl’s face like a widow’s veil. “C’mon ya’ll, I think it’s time we get going.” She could see they had pushed too far. She gathered the loose cards that had been forgotten on the table. “I think it’s about to storm out there,” she continued, feeling an appropriate excuse was needed. “Shirley, Clair Bell, let’s go.”

  Clair Bell shot a questioning look at Minnie. The dark sky was speckled with brilliant stars and held no threat of rain. Minnie stretched her eyes wide and nodded her head a bit. “Let’s go,” she said again, stern this time.

  “Shirley, you know you don’t want that piece of wig to get wet. It’ll smell like a dog when it do and take a whole week to dry.” The humor camouflaged Minnie’s growing nervousness. She was uncomfortable with what had been said there tonight. The look that blanketed Pearl’s face was all too familiar to her, she’d seen it roosting there for years after Jude was killed.

  “Why you messin’ with me all the time—” Shirley started her attack on her sister, but Pearl cut her off.

  “Out, now.” Pearl spoke in a low hushed voice, one that carried despair, loss and loathing. “Get out now.” Her anger and disappointment could not be repressed with politeness, not this time.

  The women turned, open-mouthed, on Pearl and watched her as if watching a stranger. Shirley started to speak but Minnie pinched at the thick meat that was her waistline. Shirley sucked her teeth and slapped her sister’s hand away. It was now obvious that they had pushed Pearl to the edge, she was ordering them to leave her home, to get out. Not feigning a headache or claiming that she had to rise early for church. No excuses this time, they had taken her way past courteous and dropped her off somewhere near I don’t give a damn!

  The women left, muttering under their breath and throwing cautionary looks over their shoulders at Pearl, who sat quietly at the table, her head resting in her hands. All uttered good-byes and the sound of clicking heels was replaced one hour later by an approaching Buick in need of a new engine. Joe walked in, his steps a bit unsure, his balance slightly off and the smell of beer swimming around him. He saw his wife, kissed her wetly on her cheek before heading upstairs. He only realized that she had not greeted him, verbally or otherwise, as his head hit the down-filled pillow and sleep claimed him.

  Chapter Nine

  PEARL sat still, barely realizing that Joe had entered the house and kissed her. Her mind was floating above her, concentrating on things she could not quite understand. She jumped at the sound of his boot hitting the floor above her head, the creaking springs of the bed as he lay down and the cutting snore as sleep took him over.

  She heard a car’s engine cut off, a door open and then close, the muffled sounds of knocking and then the quick clean closure of Sugar’s screen door. Pearl squeezed her head between her hands; she would not get up and spy on her neighbor. Her friend. She would not.

  Morning found Pearl still seated in the chair, in the kitchen. Her eyes were swollen from lack of sleep and weeping. She’d seen. Seen Sugar passing from window to window, naked and encased in the arms of a man Pearl knew to be Carlus Harden. The moon was high and illuminated the sky so brightly, it was as if heaven had lit a bonfire. Pure black nakedness that blended and united to form living breathing darkness.

  Pearl wondered if Carlus held his wife Alberta that way. If he grabbed her head and pulled it back so far that another half inch would cause her neck to snap; all this to run his tongue across her chin and down the length of her throat. Pearl shivered, and wondered if she could ever eat at the Rib Shack again knowing those hands, his fingers that cleaned and seasoned the meat, skinned and cut the potatoes and shredded the cabbage and carrots for cole slaw also probed deep inside the womb of her neighbor and handled her breasts.

  In the end though, Pearl did nothing but watch until the bodies tired of spinning past the windows and fell to the floor. She saw him leave, a full satisfied look on his face. He turned once to survey the house on his way out to his car. He put the automobile in neutral, released the hand brake and let it coast to the end of Grove Street. Only then did he turn on the ignition and the headlights.

  Pearl couldn’t sleep after that. It was near three in the morning when Carlus left. Another man showed up less than twenty minutes later. He came on foot and wore a large brimmed straw hat. The moon was bright but not so much so to glare or burn your brow. He came across the field, head low, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his overalls. He did not knock at the front door, but moved like a snake between the houses and entered quietly through the back door. Pearl watched for the spinning bodies to appear at the windows, like performers on stage, but no one showed. The man left twenty minutes later, head still hung low.

  Pearl waited for another. Maybe one would approach by bicycle or mule, drop from the sky or crawl from the earth. She wouldn’t be surprised or even gasp with astonishment.

  That Sunday’s service was less than uplifting. The strength Pearl usually claimed from the Reverend’s words and the sweet sounds of Gospel singing was absent this day. Instead, her spirit had drained from her body, her faith had been torn from her soul. She sat there barely aware of the thumping feet and the hand clapping that filled the church before butting its melodic head on the rafters. Her Bible lay closed on her lap.

  Joe sat stoically beside her, one hand resting gently on her knee. His eyes, dark with concern, darted from pulpit to Pearl and lingered there on her stricken face. He’d expressed his concern, more than once, in between the “Halle” and the “lujah.” A squeeze of her knee or just a searching look into those vacant eyes. He did not know what had upset her so, and she would not tell. He’d found her still seated at the kitchen table, just as she was seven hours earlier when he stumbled in from his Saturday night poker game and planted a wet, sloppy kiss on her cheek. He noted she was still dressed in her sleeveless yellow and white summer dress, the one that reminded them both so much of Jude. “You been up all night, Bit?” he said through a yawn. “Yes.” Her response was insipid. “You feeling okay?” Joe’s question had a casual concern about it; he knew how much Pearl hated being fussed over.

  Joe said church could lose them for one Sunday, but Pearl shook her head no and moved by him like a woman twenty years her senior.

  Carlus Harden took Joe’s hand in his, greeting him as he did every other Sunday morning after church. They were Mason buddies and before that, childhood friends. He tipped his hat to Pearl, who would have, on a normal day, smiled and placed her hand gently on his shoulder as a gesture of kindness and warmth. Instead, Pearl averted her eyes. She wanted to point her finger and call him a fornicator, but ignored his greeting instead, preferring not to lay her icy stare on him.

  If Carlus was a fornicator, what would that make Sugar? Pearl wondered.

  She bit her tongue and kept her mouth shut. Her eyes fell on Alberta Harden. She was big again. This was her fourth child in five years. A young thing, she was barely eighteen when she married Carlus. A beauty, that’s what people said about Alberta. The color of honey with large brown eyes, thick, long dark hair that curled like a pig’s tail at the end. A vision of loveliness, but as dumb as the day was long.

  It seem
ed the only thing she was good for was making babies. Carlus cooked all the meals, cleaned the house and sent the wash out to be done. She could barely control the three boys she had. They treated her like a doormat, and she just smiled her doltish smile while they walked all over her.

  Alberta leaned back against one of the eight trees that grew around the tiny church. She needed the shade, and the rest. Her three sons, Carlus Jr., Frederick and Edward, ran circles around the tree, beating their open hands against their mouths and whooping like Indians. Pearl walked toward her, intention bitter on her tongue. Alberta smiled and slipped her hand behind her to push her weight away from the tree and to meet Pearl halfway. She wiped at her brow, “Hello, Miss Pearl, how you this fine day?” She did not speak, but sang her words. Pearl nodded. At first she seemed to have forgotten how to smile, how to bend her lips to form a happy face. “You look like you due any day now,” Pearl said. Her face was expressionless and her voice flat. Alberta’s perpetual smile wavered. “Sure is. Overdue, in fact,” she said and shooed at Edward, who was pulling at her pocketbook and whining “Want candy.”

  “Hmmm,” Pearl said and looked over her shoulder to make sure that Carlus and Joe were still engaged in conversation. She stepped closer to Alberta, taking in her swollen belly and innocent smiling face. Her heart pained her. Did Alberta know she shared a bed with a man that shared himself with another?

  Pearl’s face twitched and her mouth opened to spill the baneful wisdom she had acquired overnight, but when she opened her mouth to speak, only silent words floated out, mingling with the bright morning sunshine and jasmine-kissed air.

  She smiled at Alberta’s waiting face posed before her, fixed with inquiry, waiting to absorb Pearl’s words. “Hmmm,” Pearl sounded again and laid her hand softly on Alberta’s belly. “Somethin’ fixing to give soon,” Pearl said assuredly and turned to walk back toward her husband. Alberta fixed a quizzical look on the back of the old woman, not sure whether she referred to her impending labor or something else. “I sure hope so,” she responded, not sure if her response was needed at all. She placed her hand over the moist imprint left behind by Pearl’s own small hand. “Sure do.”

  Later that afternoon, Pearl sat quietly sipping her Coke, watching Sugar move and glide in front of her. Ass slipping out like syrup from her hot pants. Breasts, loose and swaying beneath a T-shirt that said “Memphis.” Chuck Berry was singing from the transistor radio that rested at Pearl’s crossed feet. “Need more ice, Miss Pearl?” Sugar called to her over her shoulder. Pearl uttered a solitary no, even though the ice had melted long ago and the heat had claimed the sweet, dark liquid making it unbearable to drink. For now though, Pearl would bear it, the act of sipping kept her from speaking her mind.

  Sugar tugged at the weeds that threatened the colorful life that Mrs. Wilks had worked so hard at cultivating, the fragrant spirits she’d died among. Pearl sat quietly in the backyard on one of the two chairs Sugar had removed from the kitchen table and placed in the yard.

  Pearl was seething. She wanted to kick the transistor radio over, leap from the chair and pounce on Sugar. Instead she sat quietly stewing in her own fury waiting for Sugar to say a word, one word, that would prove or disprove what she saw and what was being said about her.

  “You sure is quiet today, Miss Pearl,” Sugar said, still not looking at her. She had a grip on a particularly tough weed. Her words came in jerks as she fought with the weed. “The sermon must have been something else, so good it took your breath away, huh?”

  Pearl said nothing.

  Sugar pulled the weed free and held it up like a trophy, waving it back and forth over her head. She came and flopped down beside Pearl’s feet, stretching her long brown legs out before her; they glistened beneath the sun and seemed to illuminate the grass beneath them. Sugar bent her head back to smile at Pearl. She was feeling particularly good today, elated even. She couldn’t put her finger on the reason, perhaps because she only turned two tricks the previous night instead of three or maybe because the last one just wanted to caress her breasts.

  She looked into Pearl’s face and saw misery there, but selfishly she refused to ask what the problem was, she refused to allow this rare feeling to be condensed by Pearl’s foul mood. She arched her back and raised herself up on one arm while the other reached into her back pocket and pulled out a crumpled pack of Luckys. She examined the package for a while, not wanting to look back at Pearl’s disapproving eyes. Pearl let out a sigh and Sugar lit the cigarette, grateful for the calming smoke that filled her lungs and encircled her head.

  “What kinda work you do?” Pearl asked. Her voice was her own but embroidered with fierce hostility. Sugar refused to react and in fact said nothing.

  “Where you get your money from?” Louder now. Sugar blew large smoke circles from her mouth. The heat was tearing at her scalp, making her head feel like an inferno beneath her wig.

  “What you say?” she said, daring Pearl to repeat her forbidden questions.

  “I said, I wanna know what kinda work you do?”

  “What kinda work you do?” Sugar reversed the question.

  Silence.

  Pearl watched Sugar cock off the smoke.

  “Why you gotta dress like that for?” Pearl continued, her tone becoming more spiteful.

  “Why you dress like that?” Sugar was mocking her now.

  Pearl let out a heavy sigh. She stared at Sugar’s neck, at the thick scar that healed ugly and crooked like a dead tree branch. She stared at the false hair that adorned her head, at the skimpy T-shirt and tiny shorts that molded to her body like second skin instead of cloth. Who else other than a whore would dress this way?

  Sugar stood and walked away from Pearl, cigarette smoke trailing behind her like a wedding veil. “I’m tired,” she said and her voice carried a lifetime of weariness in its tone.

  “You can’t answer a simple question?” Pearl said, standing and taking two steps toward Sugar’s back.

  Sugar stopped, dropped her burning cigarette to the ground and placed her hands on her hips. She turned to face Pearl. She had had enough. “Why you so suddenly interested in what I do?” She spoke through clenched teeth.

  “There’s been talk, talk about what you do and who you doing it with. I just wanna know what’s true and what ain’t.”

  Sugar stepped close to Pearl. Pearl could smell her stale breath and heard the pounding of her heart. She held her eyes with her own. “I seen you walking ’round your house buck naked . . . windows open and all . . . I ain’t the only person that seen you either, half the town done seen you too,” Pearl continued, her voice shaking with the adrenaline that pumped through her body.

  Sugar smiled, a half smile that made her look wicked. Pearl watched as Sugar transformed back into the woman that had walked into Bigelow three months ago. She leaned back on one leg and looked Pearl over from head to foot.

  “What the hell gives you the right to question me about what I do, where I do it and who I do it with? Huh? I can walk around my house naked if I want to, upside down and naked if I choose to! You know why? Because it’s my goddamn house, that’s why! Do I ask you about your business? Do I ask you about your life? I didn’t even invite your sorry ass into my life. You pushed yourself into it, you and your damn pies!

  “Just ’cause we spend some time together don’t mean it give you the right to question me about my habits of living or working. You done heard some talk? Fine, people gonna talk come hell or high water. Shit, even if there ain’t nothing to talk about, they gonna make shit up. They’ll make shit up about me and they’ll make it up about you, that’s just the way people is, Miss Pearl. Ain’t nobody safe from small-time bullshit talk!”

  Sugar turned and stormed into the house. Pearl was dizzy—the combination of her pulse, Sugar’s swirling words and the bobbing and weaving of her head as she spoke had done a job on Pearl, but her question hadn’t been answered, so she followed Sugar into the house.

  “You answer my qu
estion. You answer my question, Jude!”

  Pearl had referred to Sugar by her dead daughter’s name before during light conversation. It would just tumble out, innocently, like cotton candy, sweet and light. Sugar never commented on it, she herself had called Pearl Mary on certain occasions. Hers was a slip of her tongue. Pearl’s blunders went much deeper than that.

  “Jude, people saying you allowing mens to have their way with you. Have their way with you for money!” Pearl’s eyes were vacant, her face wet with perspiration and she shook uncontrollably. Sugar’s heart skipped a beat. Was this old woman about to have a heart attack? She wanted to go to her, move her to the coolness of the living room and lay her to rest on the couch, but her feet were like stone and would not allow it.

  “I ain’t raise you like that, Jude. Me and your father ain’t raise you to be loose! So you tell me now, tell me if it’s true.Tell me!”

  Sugar made a move toward her friend. “Miss Pearl?” She spoke softly, afraid that even the slightest lift of her voice would have a traumatic effect on the already bad situation. “Miss Pearl, you need to calm down. You need—”

  “I need an answer!” Pearl pumped her fists up and down in the air, spit flew from her mouth. Sugar stepped back and clutched at her heart.

  “S-some of us make our living breaking our backs and some of us in this world make our livings on our backs.” Sugar didn’t know why she put it that way. A simple yes would have been sufficient. She supposed she needed, in some small sick way, to sting Pearl, just as she had done to Sugar with her own words.

  Pearl’s arms dropped down to her sides. She stared at Sugar with eyes that held years of tears. “Why?” she uttered. Pearl was not seeing Sugar, but Jude. “Why,” she said again as one small tear worked its way down her cheek.