This Bitter Earth Read online

  Fanny looked once and then her heart stopped and she fell over. She did not crumple, but tilted forward like an ailing oak cut down with one hard whack of an axe.

  Alberta covered Mercy’s eyes with one hand, while she cradled her with the other.

  The children that had been dragged along by curious parents began to cry. Some screamed and ran away into the thick brush or back toward home, their mothers crying and chasing behind them. The men remained, heads bowed or turned east toward the approaching storm.

  The men would have to be strong to stomach the sight of Grace Ann, because it would be them who would have to dislodge her body from the thick mud beneath the bloody waters of Miracle.

  Fanny and Grace Ann’s greatest fear was realized when Miss Ross walked up the path, past the wash bucket and the peach tree that had not borne fruit since 1912 and into the tiny Bedford house.

  If Fanny weren’t already dead, her heart would have surely stopped when Miss Ross walked into her bedroom and pulled from the top drawer every single letter that Mary had sent over the past five years.

  And while Miss Ross’ only intention should have been to retrieve Mary’s return address so she could send a telegram advising Mary that her presence was needed, no demanded, in Rose immediately, she took the liberty of settling herself on Fanny’s bed and reading each line of every letter Mary had sent.

  In the end, when Mary arrived, her eyes red from crying and her cheeks pink with blush, the townspeople could not and would not rub her shoulder in remorse or grab her hands in woeful loss. Instead they stood off to the side and watched her, satisfied that Mary Bedford had gotten her just rewards.

  But when it came time, they forgot about their black hearts and dark thoughts and stepped forward to help pass Mercy between them and over the open mouth of her mother’s grave, so that the child would not grieve or soon follow Grace Ann into the afterlife.

  Mary never shared that story with Mercy. But Mercy had been there and the memory of it had been buried away in her young mind, where it had remained until the day the dope caused her nose to bleed.

  Prophet looked at her blankly and then reached down between his legs. His hands patted around for a while. Mercy could hear his palms slapping against the floor and the insides of his naked thighs before finally locating his penis.

  Grabbing hold, he began pulling at the loose skin, slow at first and then with more urgency until Mercy thought it would come loose from his torso, slip from his hand and go flying across the room.

  “Prophet!” Mercy screamed in frustration.

  She could hear Mary cursing below her and banging her cane at the foot of the stairs. It wouldn’t be long before she would venture out to the stoop.

  Mercy’s body wouldn’t allow her to wait any longer and so she got up from the bed and walked over to Prophet and snatched the ball of heroin from his other hand.

  Mary went quiet as she listened to the floor above her tell her what she already knew to be true.

  “Mercy!”

  Mercy pinched off a piece of the black ball and dropped it into the blue-and-white speckled tin cup that was waiting on the nightstand. She hurriedly flicked open the top of the gold-plated eagle lighter she’d lifted from the tobacco shop a year ago. Holding the flame steady beneath the cup, she watched the black piece of heroin begin to melt and then bubble.

  She inhaled the thick white smoke that floated up from the cup before resting it down on the nightstand beside the syringe.

  By the time Christopher James, a neighbor from down the street, burst into Mercy’s room, her chin was kissing her chest and the drug was already coursing through her veins.

  Christopher looked down at Mercy. He saw her arms, speckled and bruised, laying dead in her lap and was saddened. He was a church boy and had lost an uncle to smack. He wanted to drop down on his knees and lose himself in prayer, but his eye caught something across the room and Christopher turned to see Prophet, naked and rolled in a ball, snoring happily on the floor.

  Chapter 12

  WHEN the bedroom door in her dream slammed open it sent Mercy reeling back to the waking world. Her eyes flew open and she let out a weak yelp of surprise. Sugar was leaning over her, baby bottle in hand.

  She thought she must have been asleep for some time because the sun was gone, leaving the room filled with shadows. She tried to move her hands again, but they were still bound.

  “What you doing?” she asked as she tried to shrink away from Sugar.

  Sugar gave her an odd look and then she sighed heavily. “I was getting ready to wake you so I could get some nourishment into your body.”

  Mercy’s eyes moved between the bottle, Sugar and the door. If she screamed, someone would hear her and then they would come. She was about to set her mouth to do just that when her stomach grumbled and she realized that she was indeed hungry.

  “What the bottle for? I ain’t no baby, you know.” She spat her words at Sugar.

  Sugar leaned away from the foul smell that came from Mercy’s mouth. She had given Mercy a sponge bath every day, had cleaned all her limbs and every crevice of her body while she whimpered through her dreams and fought with the dope that didn’t want to let go of her body. But she did not brush her teeth, too afraid that the child might gag or go into convulsions. Now that same child that she had worried about was using that same mouth to sass her.

  “How you think I been able to feed you over the past week? You think you been sitting up and gobbling down fried whiting? Or maybe you think I cooked up some steak and mashed potatoes real soft-like so’s you can chew and swallow at your leisure?” Sugar could feel her temper rising. “I been feeding you broth from this here bottle,” she said and shook the bottle in Mercy’s face before walking away.

  Mercy followed her with her eyes, but would not turn her head. When Sugar returned she was standing over her with two more baby bottles. “I got water into you with this one here!” Sugar said and propelled her right hand forward so Mercy could see that the bottle was half-filled with water. “And with this one here,” Sugar said now, pushing the bottle in her left hand forward, “I feed you tonic. And you know what, you pulled on them nipples like a newborn baby.”

  The word baby dripped with sarcasm and Mercy swallowed hard behind its fire.

  “Not only did I have to feed you with bottles, I had to wrap your behind in sheets to catch your piss and mess, because like a baby, you didn’t have the strength or the sense to ask for the toilet.”

  Sugar was on a roll now; her frustration with Mercy was boiling over.

  “But I should have known you ain’t have no sense to begin with, sticking them needles in your arm and pumping that shit into your veins!”

  Sugar stormed away from her and back to the dresser, banging down the bottles and then snatching up her pack of Luckys.

  Sugar had had her first cigarette since Bigelow the day May and Ruby died. She had refrained from smoking in the room around Mercy, but now the child had gotten her all riled up and she lit one and began inhaling on it deeply.

  “You little piece of shit. You think this is somewhere I want to be? You think I enjoy taking care of ungrateful, junkie grandchildren of my friends? Well, I don‘t!”

  Mercy didn’t dare look at Sugar, not when she began to rant and rave above her or when she crossed the room to scream obscenities at her. Mercy was scared, so she kept her eyes on the ceiling and she was even careful not to take a breath that was too deep.

  “You ought to be ashamed.” The last words hit Mercy in a place she thought was dead, because it was the same exact words Mary had uttered to her the first time she found out Mercy was shooting dope.

  Mary had been going to church on a regular basis by the time Mercy was sixteen, but she wasn’t saved because she still liked to take a taste every now and then.

  The sisters in the church did not welcome her with open arms. They knew who she was and what she had been.

  Mary had lost three children in her lifetime, a son n
amed Noah at birth, a daughter called Nell at the young age of two from tuberculosis and finally Grace Ann.

  If she could handle the loss of her babies and still have a whole heart (scarred but whole), she could deal with the chill that came off of the church sisters. Wouldn’t always be like that, Mary thought. They would warm in time.

  Mary persevered and arrived at every church function with a smile, a whole scarred heart and her silver platter ladened with loaves of sweet potato bread.

  The sisters placed Mary’s bread at the back of the table, behind the trays of cookies and plates of pies. Few people saw Mary’s bread, so few people ate Mary’s bread.

  In time the sisters’ numbers dwindled and were replaced by new sisters who did not grow up in St. Louis or had never heard of the Bedford house on the south side of town and the dealing of flesh that was carried out there.

  Those women smiled warmly at Mary, sat beside her in church and helped themselves heartily to the sweet potato bread, even asked Mary for the recipe.

  Mary was happy that she’d finally been accepted by the congregation, so happy that she didn’t notice the dazed look in her granddaughter’s eyes or the odd way her head rolled and dipped on her neck as they sat alongside each other listening to the sermon.

  “Chile, you sleepy or sick?” she whispered to Mercy. “I think, both,” was all Mercy offered her as she rested her head on Mary’s shoulder.

  Mercy was sick, sick from the drug that soured her stomach and pulled at her skin like a million tiny claws. Prophet had told her it would be fine, that the nausea would pass and the feeling that followed would be worth it.

  And it was. Somewhere between the offering and the closing words from the preacher, Mercy’s body fell apart. Her skin let go of her bones, and then her bones disconnected and all slid into a heap somewhere she could not see. Her skull split in two and her brain became maple syrup and oozed out gooey and sweet before disintegrating into smoke and floating away.

  Mercy smiled at the feeling, at the carefree sensation that had taken hold of her. Nothing mattered, not her lessons, not church or the words the preacher spoke over the pulpit, not even her grandmother, Mary.

  “Sweet girl,” Mary said with a warm smile and patted Mercy’s knee.

  Mercy was smiling too. Her eyes were half closed as her head bobbed up and down keeping time with the chorus.

  Mercy threw her hands up in the air and lifted her head toward the sky.

  Mary thought her granddaughter was filled with the Holy Spirit, but she would soon find out that Mercy was filled with the most unholy spirit of all.

  “Girl, what’s wrong with you?”

  Mary asked the question weeks after Mercy’s body had become dependent on the drug.

  Mary thought she knew, but she prayed to God that she was wrong even though it was all around her.

  She’d seen it in the young ones, dull-eyed and dirty, looking lost even though they’d roamed just a block or two away from home. She saw them, propped up against walls, stooped over in doorways or stretched out on park benches, nodding, scratching and grinning.

  Mary saw it in the sad swollen eyes of their mothers. She saw their hands, raw and blistered from taking on extra domestic work in the homes on Lindell Street. They had to work harder because their children had stolen the money for the rent, food and light from their purses, Mason jars and the hiding space beneath the sink.

  They had blisters on their hands, those mothers with the sad eyes. But some mothers had blood on their hands too.

  One of those mothers was Millie Cooper.

  Her boy Otis, the second oldest of her children, the one everyone thought held the most promise (his running abilities had earned him a scholarship to Howard University) had removed her television from the house while Millie worked her second job at the barbershop two blocks away. He came back the next morning and pulled the new black-and-white tiles up from the kitchen floor while Millie was at the hospital with his five-year-old sister.

  He’d sold the television and the floor tiles and disappeared for three days, and when he came home—dirty, stinking and sick—Millie took up her straight razor and sliced him right across his throat.

  She told the police she had brought him into this world and had every damn right to take him out of it.

  It was all around them, and Mary knew that when Mercy started to stare at nothing and smile at everything, that it was all around them and inside her house too.

  Chapter 13

  THERE was nothing delicate about St. Louis springs; they were too warm and intense with long brutal rain showers that gave way to heavy, damp heat.

  It was just early May and already the blacktopped street ran like a dead river below Sugar’s window. The heat made her long for Arkansas and its big sky, the heavy scents of jasmine and the easy way the breeze shifted the leaves of the willow trees.

  Sugar was weary and the quick pace of the people that moved up and down the street agitated her.

  The New Hope AME Church was directly across the street from the rooming house. Its whitewashed brick walls made it look out of place between the liquor store and the chicken place. It was an obscure structure and stood out only because of the red brick of the buildings that surrounded it.

  No one was in New Hope at the moment, but by seven o‘clock, its tiny congregation would begin to file into the building. Most came straight from work, the women chatting about the hours they’d spent working in the wealthy homes on Lindell Street.

  Their knees would still be ashy from a day of scrubbing floors, their hands raw from digging away dirty grout from between the bathroom tiles, washing clothes and skinning chicken.

  The men would come too, the groundskeepers and chauffeurs of Lindell Street as well as the ones who worked in the auto plant on the north side of town. They came too, grime thick and visible beneath their fingernails, smudges of oil on their cheeks and the backs of their hands.

  “Lord don’t care how you come or what you wear, ‘long as you get here,” Sugar heard someone say once to a passerby who’d made a comment about their appearance.

  They’d gather outside that odd-looking whitewashed place of worship and sing the praises of God, handing out pamphlets that asked, in bold black letters: ARE YOU SAVED?

  Saved from what? Sugar wondered and chanced a glance at herself in the mirror.

  Worst of all, the songs they sang filled the small space she shared with Mercy, permeating it until all it was, was song and prayer and hardly any room left for air. On those evenings Sugar would have to cover her ears and keep her eyes wide open, because the music seemed to summon up Jude.

  She’d begun to make appearances again. Mostly in Sugar’s dreams or when she’d taken more sips of scotch from her flask than she was supposed to. She’d come to Sugar, just a face with no body and those eyes that belonged to both of them, and she’d stare until Sugar thought she’d go crazy and then and only then would she be allowed to wake up.

  Sugar rubbed at the knot in her neck and the one forming in the pit of her back just as the AME’s congregation started on the first hymn of the evening. She needed to get out and walk, get some fresh air and maybe stop to have a cup of coffee at the diner down the street, but she couldn’t stand the thought of getting one of those ARE YOU SAVED? pamphlets stuffed in her face. And then there was Mercy to worry about now. She was getting stronger every day and Sugar was sure she would try to make her escape while she was gone.

  No, she couldn’t risk it, so she stayed inside and closed the windows, locking in the heat of the day and locking out the Christian songs of hope.

  Sugar sat herself down on the floor, resting her back against the wall as she fanned herself with a worn flap of a forgotten magazine. She could hear people entering the house below; they were laughing as they made their way up the creaky wooden steps. The laughter came again as they reached the landing and moved past her door.

  Sugar wanted to laugh too; she wanted to swing the door open and step out an
d smile at them, call them over and ask what was so funny, ask them to let her in on the joke. Sugar wanted to laugh too.

  A laugh might not make it better, but it certainly couldn’t make things any worse.

  Mercy stirred.

  “I need changing,” Mercy said as she stared up at the ceiling.

  Sugar said nothing.

  “I said, I need changing,” Mercy ventured again, raising her tone some and moving her eyes so that she could take Sugar in.

  Mercy let out a heavy breath and tried to twist away from the wetness that had begun to nip at her behind and the tender skin of her inner thighs. She twisted herself until the makeshift diaper fell away at the sides.

  “Please, please, I need changing,” Mercy pleaded.

  “We leaving here tonight,” Sugar said as she walked over and began undoing the straps that had bound Mercy to the bed for ten days.

  “We going together, you and me, back down to Arkansas. Maybe you got some people left there, maybe not, don’t matter, we going anyway.”

  Mercy lay very still.

  “We going to take the bus. It’ll take ‘bout three days to get down there, but I got money and we’ll be fine. You still weak, but that is to be expected. You gonna have to take in some solid food now; it might not stay down but you gotta start somewhere.”

  Sugar stood back and folded her arms across her breasts and waited for Mercy to get up or say something. But Mercy just lay there staring up at the ceiling.

  “C‘mon now, try and pull yourself up.”

  Mercy still did not move.

  “All right then.” Sugar reached down and touched Mercy’s shoulders. Mercy’s body jerked and shrank away from Sugar’s touch.

  “I ain’t here to hurt you,” Sugar said, grasping hold of Mercy’s shoulders, and Sugar gently pulled her up and into a sitting position. “I’m not here to hurt you,” Sugar cooed as she stroked Mercy’s arms.