This Bitter Earth Read online

  She wanted to embrace her, hold her close to her and tell her that everything was going to be all right, but she couldn’t because she didn’t know if everything was going to be all right.

  Sugar managed to get Mercy up, dressed and out onto the street.

  Mercy hadn’t said a word the whole time Sugar dressed her, not a peep when Sugar wiped away the dry spittle from around her mouth or the crust from the corners of her eyes.

  After she was dressed, Sugar stood her up in front of the mirror so that she could get a good look at herself. Mercy’s eyes widened. “My—my hair?” she said as her hands ran over the soft thin curls that covered her head.

  “Had to cut it off. Couldn’t comb it, it was so matted and dirty. Had lice too.”

  Mercy pinched her lips together and balled her small hands into fists.

  She hated this woman.

  She was still weak and the first steps she took were as unsure and off-balance as a newborn doe’s. But Sugar held her by the crook of her arm and kept telling her that she could do it.

  Sugar dressed her in one of her own dresses, one that she’d acquired during her stay in Bigelow. It was sleeveless, beige and covered in daffodils.

  The dress all but swallowed Mercy and Sugar’s first thought was of a child lost in a field of flowers. Her second thought was of Jude and how her life had been taken in one.

  Sugar guided Mercy down the flight of stairs that led to the front door. They were greeted by the dry steady sound of straw brushing against wood.

  It was an insistent sound that may have lulled Sugar on a day when her mind was at ease and she didn’t have so many decisions to make, but now it plucked at her nerves and pulled at her scalp.

  “Afternoon,” Sugar greeted Ms. Countess, the owner of the four-story walk-up.

  Ms. Countess was a tall woman with a large belly and beefy arms. She had a thick crooked scar across her forehead and a similar one down the side of her cheek. She barked her words and always smelled of liquor and cigarettes.

  “ ‘Noon,” she replied and stopped her sweeping to look down at Sugar and Mercy. She rested the broom in a small space between the wall and the radiator and positioned her hands on her hips. “She the one you bring in here the other night?” she asked, as she looked Mercy over from head to toe.

  “Yes,” Sugar said, starting to step around her, but Ms. Countess sidestepped as well and they ended up facing each other again.

  “Dress too big for her,” Ms. Countess said, pointing at Mercy.

  “Yes, it is.” Sugar stepped a bit to the left, blocking Ms. Countess’ view of Mercy.

  “Uh-huh,” Ms. Countess said, tilting her head. “I told you that room was for one person. One person only, and you got two,” she said and put up two long dark fingers in Sugar’s face. “Now, two people means more monies.”

  Sugar looked at the fingers and swallowed hard. “I know, I don’t have a problem with that and I told you so the night I brought her here,” Sugar said, trying hard to keep her tone low and respectful.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We leaving on Sunday, but I’ll pay you through next week for your kindness.”

  “Uh-huh,” Ms. Countess sounded again before moving her eyes from Mercy to Sugar. “She family to you?”

  Sugar nodded her head yes.

  “She yella and you so dark, seem unlikely you two would be kin.”

  Sugar bit down hard on the inside of her mouth, but said nothing.

  “She been sick?”

  Sugar nodded again.

  “I ain’t seen no doctor. I ain’t seen you come in with no bags of medicine from Krutnick’s. What you giving her?”

  Sugar twisted her mouth. She didn’t like this inquisition.

  “We fine,” Sugar said.

  Mrs. Countess gave her one last steady look before turning and grabbing the handle of the broom. “No, I ain’t seen none of much, but I done heard plenty.”

  Sugar grabbed Mercy’s hand and started toward the door.

  “Sweet Jesus!” Ms. Countess gasped. “It look like somebody been driving nails through your arms, chile!”

  Mercy moved to the other side of Sugar and let out a small whimper.

  That sound did something to Sugar and she turned on Ms. Countess and bared her teeth.

  “Look here, you don’t worry ‘bout her arms, or the color of her skin or anything else that don’t have nothing to do with you. You don’t worry ’bout what you ain’t seen or heard when it comes to her and me. You just worry ‘bout getting paid through next week even though I’m leaving on Sunday.”

  Sugar resisted the urge to snatch the broom from Ms. Countess’ hand and bring it down over her head. “You worry ‘bout that, okay?” Sugar leaned in so close that their noses touched.

  Miss Countess’ cheek twitched and her eyes wavered and then dropped.

  “You just make sure y‘all are gone by Sunday,” Ms. Countess mumbled under her breath as Sugar and Mercy stepped through the doorway.

  Mercy looked at Sugar only when her attention was taken away by the sound of a bird or the rolling black of the truck tires that traveled up and down the main street. Sugar always seemed to be talking to herself, mumbling things beneath her breath in between the puffs she took on her cigarette.

  She looked at people funny, stared at them long after they’d passed her as if she knew the face but had forgotten the name and was trying hard to recall it.

  Mercy decided that Sugar was crazy.

  “How you like these?” Sugar asked Mercy as they sat in the shoe store. Mercy glanced down at the shoes and then turned her head back toward the large glass window that looked out into the street.

  The saleswoman, a slight woman with freckles, stood patiently aside and waited for Mercy to respond. She tried hard not to stare at the marks on the girl’s arm or the short curls that lay lopsided on her head, and forced a smile when Sugar looked back up at her. “She’ll take those,” Sugar said with a sigh and reached down into her purse.

  It had been the same in every store they’d gone into. Sugar would point out a dress, a sweater or a pair of pants all of the young people seemed to be wearing and Mercy would just drop her eyes or turn her head away from her. By the time they returned to the rooming house, Sugar’s arms were aching from carrying the bags of clothes and shoes she’d purchased for Mercy.

  Sugar’s head was hurting from being out in the sun and having to deal with so many different people in such a short space of time. Her body yearned for the soft comfort of the bed, but she would have to do without that small luxury and settle for stretching out on the small pallet she’d fashioned for herself on the floor.

  Mercy sat down on the bed and stared at her hands as Sugar moved the clothes from the bags to the suitcase. It was nearly seven by the time they returned and the house was buzzing with tenants coming in from work.

  Doors opened and closed and radios were turned up loud enough to drown out the sounds of the AME congregation preaching out on the sidewalk below. They’d gotten hold of a microphone this week and even the closed windows and loud radios couldn’t keep their message of faith out.

  Sugar could hear Ms. Countess yelling obscenities at them from her window and then the laughter of the neighborhood kids as they passed by.

  “You should eat something,” Sugar said as she sat down on the floor and leaned her back up against the wall. There wasn’t a chair in the room, just the single bed and the small bureau. “You need your strength. You don’t have to talk to me, but you gotta eat,” she said and began picking at her own plate of greens, ham hocks and macaroni salad. “There’s cornbread in the bag there,” Sugar said between bites.

  Mercy’s stomach growled and her mouth watered at the sight of the food.

  The beads of sweat that moved down the side of the Coca-Cola bottle that Sugar had rested next to the food all but drove Mercy mad with temptation and she was reminded for a moment of the feeling she got when the heroin went thin in her blood and she nee
ded to get money to get it thick again.

  She licked her lips and told herself she would starve before she gave the crazy woman any satisfaction.

  She twisted her body around and lay down in the bed, pulling her knees up and into her belly, trying to push the hunger away.

  Sugar just shook her head. “You ain’t hurting nobody but yourself,” she said before taking a long swig from her bottle of Coke.

  Sugar was dozing, swinging in and out of sleep, grappling with her dreams of Jude.

  Mercy lay watching Sugar, closing her own eyes whenever Sugar’s rolled open. Sugar had stretched herself out on the floor, blocking the doorway. There was no way Mercy could get out without moving her first.

  Bitch, Mercy thought to herself.

  The food was still on the dresser, cold now, but the smell of it hung heavy in the room, taunting her empty, growling stomach.

  Mercy sighed and pushed her head into the thin pillow. She wanted to get away from this place and back to Prophet, Mary and home.

  The thought of her grandmother made her flinch and then ache. Mercy realized that she hadn’t thought about Mary at all and now the thought of her made Mercy feel sad and lonely.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated real hard, but all she could remember was waking up and being here in this place with the woman that called herself Sugar.

  Everything before that was black. Something was definitely wrong.

  “Where’s my grandmother!” Mercy’s scream snatched Sugar from her sleep.

  “Huh?” Sugar’s reply was groggy.

  “Where’s my grandmother! Where is she!” Mercy was hysterical.

  Sugar pulled herself up. “I—” she started but nothing else followed.

  “Grandma! Grandma!”

  Mercy was on her feet, jumping up and down and screaming like a small lost, scared child.

  “Shut that girl up!” Ms. Countess screamed from below.

  “Mercy, Mercy.” Sugar stood and moved slowly toward her.

  “Grandma!”

  “Your grandmother is ... is gone.” Sugar couldn’t allow herself to say “dead.” “Gone” seemed better, less final.

  “She’s gone?” Mercy asked the question as if Sugar meant she’d just missed Mercy’s visit.

  Sugar saw that Mercy didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand.

  “She’s gone. Dead,” Sugar went on ahead and said it.

  “Dead?” Mercy repeated.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Mercy eased herself down to the bed and allowed Sugar’s words to run through her. When it hit her stomach, she buckled and began to moan.

  “She go easy?” she asked quietly.

  “Easy enough,” Sugar lied.

  “Did you tell me when—when I was sick?”

  “Told you some. Told you she was gone, but you ain’t wanna hear any of it. So I guess you didn’t.”

  Mercy looked down at her feet for a long moment before lifting her left foot up and into her lap.

  “She ask for me?”

  “Yes.”

  Another lie.

  Mercy looked at the bottom of her foot and then up at Sugar. “I got a splinter.” Mercy’s voice was small the way Sugar remembered it before she left St. Louis back in ‘55. “You got a pin?”

  Mercy cradled her foot in her lap and pressed her fingers around the red swell of flesh.

  Sugar lifted her head up and shook it slowly from side to side. “Nah, ain’t got no pin.”

  “Grandma always had a pin,” Mercy said and the dam burst. She cried for nearly an hour. Sugar tried to hold her, brought her arms around Mercy in an embrace that neither one of them felt wholly comfortable with, so she backed off and left Mercy to her sorrow.

  They left the rooming house beneath a hazy dawn. The streets were quiet except for the clicking sound of their heels against the pavement and the haggard and tired cough of the old man that unlocked the doors of the New Hope AME for Sunday morning service.

  Mercy stayed at Sugar’s side, keeping time with her quick pace, trying hard to keep her head up even though the misery she felt kept pushing it down.

  They walked five blocks before a cab finally moved up alongside them and Sugar opened the door and motioned for Mercy to get in. They rode in silence, each lost in their own thoughts.

  The bus station made Mercy feel worse. It was dark and dirty, with rows of wooden benches filled with people heading to all points south and east.

  Old and young sat side by side with greasy brown paper bags filled with fried chicken, pork chops and buttermilk biscuits resting in their laps.

  It was loud, too loud for a Sunday morning. Restless children ran here and there, ignoring the threats of their parents and the stern looks of the ticket agents.

  “You want something to eat? Maybe some coffee and a donut? You drink coffee? Maybe tea? Too early in the morning for a Coke, but I’ll get you one if you want.”

  Sugar was rambling and moving her hands over her knees as if she were rolling dough.

  Mercy shook her head no.

  Mary was dead and she never wanted to eat another bite again. She didn’t want to breathe, speak or even see another sunrise.

  “Uh-huh,” Sugar sounded and her hands stopped moving. “We gonna be traveling a good four to five hours before we stop. It’ll be near noon before you’re able to get something to eat.” She paused and looked up at the large round clock that sat on the wall above the ticket window. “You ain’t gonna be able to relieve yourself for that long either, so you better go on and use the toilet before we pull out.”

  Again, Mercy shook her head no.

  The bus was full, except for the first three rows of seats that were left empty; left empty for whatever white people they might pick up along the way.

  The first passenger to board the bus went straight to the back, and the rest of the passengers followed suit.

  Sugar stepped aside when she reached the fourth row and motioned for Mercy to step in and sit down. Mercy lifted her head from her chest for the first time since leaving the rooming house.

  “Sit down. There, by the window,” Sugar said, ignoring the wide-eyed looks of the people that were waiting behind her.

  “There’s still room farther back,” someone whispered.

  Sugar ignored the comment and sat down.

  The bus driver, a white man who was balding and carried a gut two sizes bigger than any nine-month’s pregnant woman Sugar had ever seen, threw her a look and grunted something before shaking his head and easing himself behind the wheel.

  It was quiet almost immediately as the bus driver checked and rechecked the lights and meter readings.

  The passengers were quiet for now. There would be plenty of time to talk. Three days’ worth of talking needed to be stretched out and sectioned off in proper intervals. Sugar leaned back into her seat and wondered what stories Mercy had to tell.

  The bus slowly pulled away from the curb and Sugar looked out the window and saw the dark, heavy clouds that moved south ahead of them.

  She wondered if it was raining in Bigelow. Something told her that it was.

  Chapter 14

  WHEN the rain began to fall on the twenty-fifth day of

  April, no one knew that it would rain day and night for the next fifteen days.

  No one even really noticed the unrelenting showers until the fourth day. That’s when the pictures that came across the televisions started acting up—going gray, fuzzy, all squiggly lines or just black, blocking out the war that was being fought thousands of miles away, a war that had practically emptied Bigelow of all its men.

  Tired of slapping the sides of their televisions and messing with the antennas, people pressed their ears to their radios, watched for the mailman and waited for the phone to ring bringing them word that the war was over and Bigelow’s boys were coming home.

  Thunder bellowed through the darkness and lightning burnished behind the black clouds. The lights dimmed and then went bri
ght again, but the pictures on the televisions never came back clear and after five minutes Claire Bell started to cuss and slap the sides of her Zenith so hard that the crystal candy jar flew off and sent the red-and-white striped peppermints all over the floor.

  Josephine was there and helped her gather them up for the trash bin, keeping one back for herself and popping it in her mouth when Claire Bell wasn’t looking.

  Across town Anna Lee didn’t even notice that the pictures were gone again. She could care less about the television and kept it on only for the light. The volume was turned down and all she could hear was the sound of Edgar Wallace in her ear saying: “Your snatch sweet like syrup, baby.”

  On the other side of town Shirley Brown had made herself comfortable in a lawn chair Fayline kept in the back of the beauty shop. Her face was set in a grimace as she stared at the squiggly lines that moved across the old black-and-white portable.

  Since her sister Minnie passed on Shirley spent a lot of time at the shop. She came over daily, except Sundays when Fayline’s was closed. Shirley went for the company, because her cat was a good listener, but never had anything to say. So she spent her days at Fayline’s even though the gossip had gone flat and the women preferred to talk about the war and about whose son, husband or uncle had been killed, injured or listed MIA.

  Shirley didn’t have any interest in what was going on over there. All her family was dead and gone. She wanted to talk about what was happening on The Young and The Restless and Peyton Place.

  But lately she preferred to hide herself away at the back of the shop, among the bottles of shampoo, dye and containers of relaxer. She liked the cool, cluttered darkness of that space. Back there she could hear what was going on up front and think about her life and the end that was quickly approaching.

  There she could recall her sins and imagine the warm wrinkled face of the child she’d brought into the world. The child she’d named Ciel and then given away.

  “I wonder where she at?” she asked aloud once when she was so deep into her memories she hadn’t known she’d even spoken it.