Sugar Read online

  Sugar paid a young, broad-necked boy to fetch her bags and to bring them on to the Lacey place. She wanted to walk. She needed to walk. Walk Chicago, Detroit and St. Louis out of her soul.

  She made her way down Route 4. The rain had come during the night and left the road muddy in some parts. Sugar’s heels sank deep into the earth, holding her hostage for short periods of time. She removed them, allowing the cool earth to seep through her nylons and kiss the soles of her feet.

  She stopped to admire a field of wildflowers, resting her head against the damp wooden post and plucking at the barbed wire that entwined it. She recalled her childhood and the easy joy she’d experienced among those brilliant flowers.

  She stopped two or three times to ask for directions to the Lacey home. Not because she was lost, but because she wanted to exchange words with the people of Short Junction. She needed to re-connect with what she was before she’d become Sugar the whore.

  They never answered immediately; they’d have to take her in first, allowing their eyes to travel down the blue silk dress with the Chinese collar. The one with the tiny red embroidery around the neck and hemline. The one that held Sugar like a calfskin glove, one size too small. They had to take in the six-foot woman with the jet black skin, heavily shadowed eyes and blood red lips. Only after they had traveled the world that was Sugar would they point or nod (in that way country people do) in the direction she needed to go. She’d thank them and begin walking again, leaving an overall-clad old man staring after her, watching her behind roll and wiggle beneath the dress.

  As she traveled farther down Route 4, moving closer to the outskirts of Short Junction, Sugar noticed that where sprawling fields of cotton once grew, now stood large homes. Great white structures with windows that traveled from the floor to the ceiling.

  Her mouth fell open with astonishment. “When the hell did this all happen?” she said aloud as she stopped to marvel.

  A colored woman opened the front door and stepped out, waving at Sugar as she did. Two small dogs, barely taller than her ankle, rushed out behind her and started to jump and yelp happily about her legs. The woman waved at Sugar again, smiling broadly.

  Sugar stood staring. The thought of a colored woman living in a house this fine in Short Junction, Arkansas, was overwhelming.

  The woman was walking quickly down the long walkway that led up to the house, trying not to step on the small dogs that encircled her feet. As she came closer, Sugar could see that the baby blue dress the woman wore was not a dress at all, but a uniform. Sugar understood now.

  “How you?” the woman said breathlessly, a genuine smile resting on her lips. The dogs stopped their yapping and sat obediently at her feet, watching Sugar with their small black eyes.

  “Lord have mercy, it’s gonna be a hot one today and only April,” the woman in the blue uniform exclaimed and pulled a handkerchief from her bosom, dabbing quickly at the perspiration forming above her lip. She gave Sugar a sweet smile.

  “You the new girl?” she asked and snatched a quick look at Sugar from the neck down. The smile remained, but not as sweet.

  “New girl?” Sugar repeated stupidly.

  “Yeah, new girl. This here is the Floyd house, we expecting a new gi—maid today. You her?” The woman’s smile was visibly crumbling. “If you ain’t the new girl then what you doing ’round here?” The smile was completely gone and the voice was turning rancid like week-old milk.

  Sugar leaned back hard on her heels. “I ain’t nobody’s girl or maid. I was just admiring the house, is all,” Sugar said, falling back into the Southern twang she’d so easily let slip away.

  “Well, we don’t need the likes of you sniffin’ ’round here, so off with you,” the woman said and waved her hand at Sugar as if she was a bothersome fly.

  The likes of you.

  There was that phrase again.

  “You live too far South to be so damn uppity. You and me, we the same. The likes of me is the likes of you!” Sugar said, her voice gutted with anger. She threw her bare arm out before the woman’s face so that she could see that their skin color was nearly identical.

  The woman folded her arms across her bosom, rolled her eyes and clucked her tongue in disgust. Sugar’s words had left her agitated and speechless. She swung around and started back up the long walkway to the house. The dogs, startled by her sudden retreat, began yelping and jumping about her feet again.

  As the woman turned, Sugar was struck by her sharp features and small slanted eyes. Like a brick, it hit her. This was the same little girl who’d questioned her so many years earlier outside Short Junction’s general store: Ain’t you got a mamma?

  The words stirred like a whirlwind in her head, preventing her from walking away. “Yeah I got’s a mamma!” she yelled to the back of the woman and waved the aged telegram like a victorious flag.

  The woman turned, giving Sugar a brief puzzled look.

  Later, Sugar found herself standing on the porch of the Lacey home. The once-white paint was now graying with age and peeling in large thin slices. The porch, in desperate need of repair, slouched heavily to one side.

  The yard was absent of the roaming, clucking chickens that once filled the front and back yards. Sugar bent her head slightly to the left and could see that the pen that once held Shelby the hog was now empty and overgrown with weeds.

  The windows were open, allowing the light spring breeze to flutter the old lace curtains. Soft music sailed out and for a fleeting moment hung in the air over Sugar’s head.

  Pots and pans banged and clanged nosily inside as they were placed, moved and filled. This caused a slight smile to tickle at the ends of Sugar’s mouth. It was a familiar and expected sound for a Friday—fish fry day.

  Sugar rested her hand lightly on the door and then pulled quickly away when she realized, as if coming out of a trance, why she’d come in the first place.

  She wanted to run. Run back to the bus and board it, begging the bus driver not to stop until they reached St. Louis.

  She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t ready to meet her mother. Coming had been a big mistake.

  The broad-necked boy came up behind her, pulling a makeshift wagon filled with her belongings. He smiled, not at her, but at her legs and hips. He moved slowly and placed each case down carefully on the porch. All the while not raising his eyes past her neck.

  “Ma’am,” he said, his tone curious and strangely sexual at the same time.

  Sugar nodded and dug into her pocketbook, pulled out a quarter and tossed it to him. The boy thanked her and took one last look at her long fish net-clad legs before he started down the stairs.

  “Boy,” Sugar said, not turning to face him.

  “Ma’am?” The voice came from behind her.

  “You got a mamma?” she said, her legs quivering now.

  There was a long pause.

  “Yessum,” the boy said.

  “You live with your mamma?” Sugar asked.

  “Yessum.”

  “She expecting you soon?” Sugar said, just wanting to keep him there with her, until strength came and moved her forward.

  “Yessum, but if you needs me to . . . uh . . . do something else I’ll be right able to do it,” he said. His voice closer now. Hopeful.

  Sugar said nothing.

  “No. Don’t keep your mamma waiting,” she said more to herself than to the boy. He stood there for a while, bewildered by her strange questions. City women were funny that way, he thought to himself as he trudged away, his cart squeaking noisily behind him.

  Sara Lacey, still small and fragile, but now wrinkled and gray, came to the door and swung it wide open. The sound of the retreating wagon had brought her to investigate who was on her property. Or perhaps it was the deafening sound of Sugar’s heart beating hard inside her chest.

  “Who you?” Sara asked, wincing her milky eyes.

  Sugar just stood there, unable to utter a word.

  “Who you, I said. Are ya deaf, dumb or both?�
� Sara demanded, taking a bold step forward.

  Sugar parted her lips to speak and still nothing came.

  “Gal, we don’t like no strangers hangin’ ’round this here house. Now, if you lost, say so. If you hungry, I’ll be glad to feed ya and send ya on ya way.” Sara paused, tilting her head slightly, trying to get her eyes to focus on the person in front of her. “If you selling somethin, I probably already got it, can’t afford it or don’t need it at all.”

  “Sara, it’s me, Sugar,” Sugar said in a small voice.

  Sara winced again as if stung, and then took a few steps closer. At her tallest, Sara had only reached Sugar’s chest; now, old and slumped, she stood up on her tiptoes until she was nearly face to face with her.

  “Sugar? Well, lookee here . . . it sure nuff is you, ain’t it! Good God almighty, come on in this here house.” She snatched at Sugar’s hand and led her into the large foyer.

  The dilapidated exterior masked the beauty and order that remained within the Lacey home. It was just as Sugar had left it. High-polished dark wooden floors. Massive mahogany furniture. Nothing had changed, and Sugar felt like she’d stepped right back into 1940.

  As they made their way past the dining area and on to the kitchen, Sugar saw that the large oak cabinet that sat in the wide hallway still held the stolen pieces of china.

  The smell of frying catfish and simmering turnip greens accosted her senses and she was overcome with nostalgia.

  When she was a child these food smells were always accompanied by hard-drinking, heavy-smoking men and women. Clinking glasses filled with white lightning, clay ashtrays overflowing with lipstick-stained cigarettes. The sound of a palm coming down hard on a thigh intertwined with glorious laughter.

  The bedrooms may have made most of the money in the Lacey house, but the kitchen was its lifeline.

  That was 1940, when Sugar walked away from Short Junction. That was 1940, when Joe Taylor had mistakenly placed his new shoes on the dining room table and sweet Jude lost her life. That was then and this was now.

  Sugar did not find loud-laughing, good-time people in the kitchen. Instead what she found were two old women crouched over the large wooden table, peeling potatoes and fussing about something that only carried meaning to them.

  When Sara and Sugar entered the kitchen, they stopped bickering and briefly observed the two women. After a short moment they went back to what they were doing, as if the two women were merely a passing wisp of air.

  Sara left Sugar standing in the kitchen’s entrance and joined her sisters in their potato peeling and bickering.

  They don’t even know who I am, Sugar thought to herself, as she watched them ignore her.

  Sugar composed her thoughts and prepared to speak. But May, the eldest sister, beat her to it.

  “Sugar, ’bout time your black ass got here,” she said without looking up from her work. “I sent that telegram four whole years ago. Had I known that Western Union moved like a turtle I would have sent it regular mail,” she said sarcastically, looking up to meet Sugar’s gaze.

  May spoke quick and emphasized each word by jabbing the air with the small pointed knife she held.

  Like Sara, May’s face was weathered and her hair gray. She now wore thick, black-framed glasses. From what Sugar could see, Ruby, who’d said nothing so far, was the only one who still had perfect use of her eyes.

  “Go on and wash your hands and git with these here potatoes,” May demanded, as she stared over the rims of her glasses. “It’s Friday, gal, or have you forgotten what Friday is in this house?” she said and smirked.

  Sugar hadn’t forgotten. But she wasn’t there to peel potatoes or fry fish. She was there to see her mother. There were no signs that another person was living there but she hadn’t been upstairs yet. Her mother could be resting, Sugar told herself as she went to the sink to wash her hands clean of the road dust and perspiration.

  She decided to humor the Lacey women and sat down to do what she had been told to do.

  The Lacey women spoke amongst themselves, each sister picking up where the other left off. They were completely immersed in a world that Sugar had long ago lost her place in. She peeled potatoes and sat quietly, glancing up every once in a while to watch at their gray bobbing heads.

  Sugar thought that the steady activity of potato peeling would keep her calm and focused until her mother came in, but it wasn’t working. Distress clung to her like syrup, causing her, at times, to become short of breath.

  Sugar stood up abruptly and the table rocked a bit as her knee hit into the side.

  The other women gave her a quick look.

  Sugar half walked and half ran into the parlor. The air seemed lighter there. She gulped it down like fresh well water and leaned, panting, against the wall.

  There were beautiful crystal decanters, filled with rich dark brandies and whiskeys, set along the mantel above the fireplace. Sugar snatched one up, removed its bulb-shaped lid, held her head back and allowed the liquor to flow freely into her open mouth.

  The liquid hit her stomach like acid and she staggered at the fire it lit there. Tears welled up in her eyes as she broke out in a sweat.

  She sat down heavily on the velvet chaise, her legs wide open, decanter, half empty now, still in her grip. She leaned back and closed her eyes against the day.

  May’s calls from the kitchen for her to return pulled her back and she half walked, half stumbled out of the parlor, taking up a cheap tin ashtray from the table. At the center there were brightly colored letters written as palm trees screaming CALIFORNIA.

  Sugar placed the decanter and the ashtray down on the table and moved to the cabinet to retrieve a glass. The women kept their heads bowed as they worked feverishly. Two large bowls were already filled with skinless potatoes.

  She sat down and reached into her pocketbook that hung lazily on the back of her chair to pull out a wilted pack of Lucky Strikes. One stick remained and she breathed heavily at the thought of spending the coming hours without cigarettes.

  She lit it and pulled deeply. Cigarette dangling from the side of her mouth, she tilted her head slightly as she poured a tall glass of whiskey. She was calming down now. The even flow of the brown liquid and the cigarette smoke that curled above and around her head helped her move into her old self. The Sugar that wasn’t scared of much of anything or anyone. The Sugar who had worked the streets of Chicago and Detroit with just a switchblade and her own hard-hitting hands.

  The women stopped to look at Sugar and then at one another. Disapproval coated their faces as they watched Sugar knock off three quarters of the whiskey she had just poured into her glass.

  Sugar slowly licked her lips, savoring the warmth that spread over her entire body. She took a few more drags of the cigarette and then began peeling potatoes again.

  The sound of the sharp blade removing the thick brown skins of the potatoes was the only sound to be heard for some time.

  The day stretched into a smoky purple evening. The crickets started up a chorus that would last until dawn. The Lacey women had finally broken their wall of silence. A conversation erupted, filled with low tones and clucking tongues, as the Laceys spoke of Short Junction, past and present.

  Sugar realized that their lives had settled into a grandmotherly pace. Friday and Saturday nights no longer found their home filled with loud music, men, women and sex.

  They too, like Mary Bedford, had aged and changed. Their famous fried fish and potato salad was now served at church functions and sold at Friday night bingo games.

  Sugar, who had finished the decanter of whiskey and who should have been stone drunk, experienced instead a type of relaxed hysteria. She said very little, attempting to keep her composure.

  The back door swung open and an aged woman walked in shouting her “Good evening”s and “Howdy do”s.

  Sugar stood bolt upright, toppling the decanter and sending the last drops of whiskey sailing the length of the table. The woman gave her a quizzical smil
e and handed May the town newspaper, exchanged a few pleasantries and left. They hadn’t even bothered to introduce her.

  Sugar felt like an idiot and told herself to stop watching the door. Stop waiting. You’ve been without her this long, a few more minutes won’t kill you.

  The Lacey women were nowhere near to giving an explanation about Sugar’s mother. No, they wanted to know about Sugar’s life away from Short Junction. They wanted to know why she never took the time to write. They wanted to know how she got a chipped front tooth and what about that split earlobe?

  But they especially wanted an explanation for the long crooked scar that ran from beneath her chin and disappeared behind the small collar of her dress.

  There was concern in their voices when they asked, but their eyes revealed other thoughts.

  Sugar was ashamed to share her ordeal with them. Stories filled with abusive men, broken limbs and nights when her belly burned empty with hunger, her soul with loneliness.

  She spoke quickly and briefly about her time in St. Louis, Detroit and Chicago. She avoided the true stories that would explain her scars and made up tales that construed them as light mishaps instead.

  The Lacey women eyeballed her and shook their heads as she spoke. They did not give birth to her, but she was their child just the same. They had raised her from a babe, and although she did not suckle at the breast of any of the three women, they knew her well and knew she was lying.

  In the end, when Sugar was done talking, she looked up at them and tried to decipher what she saw in their eyes and what she saw frightened her.

  Ruby was the first to speak. She started off slowly and softly.

  “Sugar, I believes we’ve kept you waiting long enough. We know why you here and what you come for. But this was our way of letting you feel the way we done, when you ain’t come four years ago. Now, we know that you weren’t there in St. Louis when the telegram come. But we raised you, and your whereabouts should have been known by us. You should have kept in touch.

  “Now, before we go on and tell you ’bout your mamma, let me just say this: We did the best we knew how to raise you. We saw that you ain’t go hungry, cold or unclothed. We treated you like you came out from inside of us.”