This Bitter Earth Read online

  Yes, lately she wondered about a lot of things.

  When the pictures on the televisions started to act up, people wandered away from them and onto their porches to look up at the black sky and stare out into the pouring rain. They thought about how bad the mosquitoes would be and how much work it was going to take to bail the water out of the root cellars once the rain finally stopped.

  On the day when the Lord rested and Sugar and Mercy stepped on the southbound Greyhound, the earth below Bigelow went soft like baby shit and Hodges Lake devoured its banks, spilling into town and splitting open the hollowed ground of the cemetery, releasing the gems that had been buried there.

  Cheap wooden caskets carrying chalky-colored bones floated like driftwood through town while the bodies of the recently deceased popped up where tulips should have been or got caught in the tide the sharp curve and sudden dip in the road near the church created.

  Bodies and bones were everywhere, but more so on the south side of town where the land rolled instead of lying flat. The water pooled there and went stagnant.

  There was more mud than anything and so the bodies and bones got trapped in the slow-moving thick of it, mangled in the limbs of fallen trees and caught beneath porches and inside the dog houses.

  Pearl stepped out onto her porch just as the sun broke through the clouds. The sound of rushing water came from all directions, filling her ears like the pounding of a hundred drums. She caught sight of the yellow-and-white material, saw the black of the leather shoe and the glint of gold beneath the water.

  She stepped closer, blinked and then stepped down into the water.

  The water was like fingers, snatching at her ankles, pulling her closer.

  She blinked again and took another step. The water had her calves, caressing them, letting her know they would not be satisfied without her knees, thighs and waist.

  There were bits of skin still clinging to the skeleton, bits of skin that looked like the waxed paper Pearl wrapped her pies in when she took them to the church banquets.

  She moved closer and heard the screen door open behind her.

  “Pearl, what the—”

  Without looking back Pearl raised her hand to quiet her husband, Joe. She moved closer and leaned down to look into the smiling face of the skeleton that stared back at her from beneath the water.

  She knew the dress, the yellow ribbons, shoes, the small thin gold chain and cross. Pearl sucked in the air around her and grabbed hold of her stomach.

  Jude had come home.

  The bus route followed the muddy Missouri river, its thick black waters and gritty gray banks always to Sugar’s right, Jude’s presence taking up residence on her left, filling in the quiet space Mercy had put carefully between Sugar and herself.

  There was a point, over a hundred miles from the Arkansas state line, where the river thinned and cleared almost crystal and the air broke free of the heavy Missouri spring, allowing the bus and Sugar’s nostrils to fill with the sweet fragrance of Arkansas. It was a comforting scent that settled around Sugar like the warm, colorful, patched quilts the Lacey women had taken to making in their old age.

  Sugar’s short time away had not erased from her memory the sweet smell of the South and the beauty that emerged from the greens, blues and floating yellows of the butterflies that settled here and there before suddenly fluttering away in the soft giggle of a breeze.

  Sugar moved herself deeper into the rough vinyl of her seat. She felt ten years slip from her like a long sickness and the calm that replaced it was as soothing and as light as the spring air that filtered in through her open window.

  Sugar wanted Mercy to feel that way, but she knew Mercy was too far into herself and her pain to experience it. Sugar would have her feel something though.

  She looked down at the sleeping Mercy; her arms wrapped around herself, her head resting on Sugar’s shoulder. Sugar wanted to wipe at the spittle that slipped from the side of Mercy’s open mouth and run her hands across the short unruly curls.

  Why did Sugar want so much for this child, want to do so much for her? Sugar supposed that she had had so much done for her, that it was only right that she should do for someone else.

  Not just someone.

  The words echoed in Sugar’s mind and remnants of the dream that drove her to St. Louis flashed through her head.

  Sugar nodded as if agreeing with the thought that swept through her. “Not just someone, Mercy,” Sugar mumbled to herself, still nodding her head.

  “Wake up, I got something to say,” Sugar whispered as she shook Mercy’s shoulder. She needed to say something, explain some things to her.

  Mercy shrugged Sugar’s hand away. Sugar bit her lip and gave Mercy a narrow look before reaching out to her again. She shook her shoulder a bit harder this time. “Wake up, I said. I could tell this just to you or the whole bus. It don’t matter either way.”

  Mercy’s eyelids lifted and she rolled a sleepy annoyed look Sugar’s way. She did not want to be embarrassed. For now it would be best to do what this crazy woman said, Mercy thought to herself.

  “You don’t want to speak to me and that’s okay. Don’t want to share about your life, things that happened that made you do the things you done. That’s okay too. But I think it’s only fair for you to know where you going, although I can’t tell you why, ‘cause I don’t rightly know myself.”

  Sugar stopped talking for a moment as if she was searching her mind to make sure the “why” was still unavailable to her.

  “This place, the people I’m taking you to, they good people. Decent.” Sugar paused again and then looked deep into Mercy’s face. “Loving,” she said, and squinted her eyes to see if that word had had any effect at all on Mercy.

  Mercy just twisted her mouth and gave Sugar a bored look.

  Sugar was deflated. Mercy seemed unreachable.

  Sugar chewed at her bottom lip for a moment, before continuing.

  “Joe and Pearl Taylor, they God-fearing people, like your grandmother was. Take people in when they’re in need, treat them like family even when they not.”

  Sugar waited.

  “Like your grandmother,” Sugar interjected again.

  Mercy’s face began to melt. The reality of her grandmother’s demise had made everything inside of her go dead. Hearing Sugar speak of her was like being prodded with a steel spike. It hurt.

  Sugar leaned back in her seat, satisfied that she had gotten at least a slither of emotion from the child. She was happy that Mercy wasn’t totally numb.

  “These people don’t know we’re coming. But like I said, they’re good people and you need to be ‘round people like that.”

  Sugar breathed.

  “We need to be ‘round people like that,” she said before turning her attention back to the road and the place it would lead her back to.

  The bus rolled along the tar-laden roads of the interstate, carrying Sugar backward to a place and time that still haunted her dreams. A feeling of home gripped her when the gray that lined the outside of the interstate turned reddish brown and then the rich color of newly turned earth.

  When they crossed the Masan-Dixon, the bus seemed to shudder, and by the time they stopped the sun was gone. The ease Sugar had experienced over the past few hours slipped away as she stepped from the bus and down into the dark Arkansas night.

  Mercy followed close behind her, so close that the tips of her shoes knocked at the back of Sugar’s heels.

  A short distance away stood a gas station. A Coca-Cola sign swung restlessly above the doorway and two lone pumps sat ominously before it, their rubber hoses bent like the arms of an impatient mother. The pale white light of the naked lightbulb glowed inside the gas station, permitting the passengers to cut through the blackness, sure-footed and quick.

  Sugar’s bladder was screaming and the soft rain that had started to fall did nothing but aggravate the situation. Mercy was beside her now, eyes wide and alert.

  This was Peckford Co
unty, a place where the Osage once hunted and whooped in triumph when a kill was made beneath a low pregnant moon. That was many years ago, before the white men came and cut through the land, ripping the life from it by the roots. The moon has never come so close to earth again.

  They rounded the station, heads bowed, some chancing a glance at the two white men that sat inside, feet propped up on crates, shotguns resting close by. The men had lowered their voices at the approaching sound of the bus; they heard its engine before the headlights pierced the darkness. Now they sat quiet, watching the line of black faces that passed before them and then out of sight.

  Sugar reached for the doorknob and was about to turn it when Mercy grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her backward.

  “What?” Sugar turned on her. “What is it?” she said, and without waiting for an answer she turned back toward the door. Mercy grabbed her shoulder again. This time her grip was rough and Sugar felt herself almost fall.

  “What the hell—” Sugar started but then stopped.

  Mercy’s eyes were locked on something behind Sugar.

  Sugar turned slowly around and came face-to-face with two words that had ruled her life since she was a child.

  WHITES ONLY.

  She backed away slowly from the sign as if any sudden move would cause the words to reach out and snatch at her skin. Sugar realized that she’d somehow forgotten the ways of the South.

  She turned her back on those white words forged in white paint and retraced her steps, toe in toe, heel in heel, until she rounded the corner and was back amidst the gas pumps.

  Her body shook as her bladder began to give way and even as the cotton of her panties began to go moist between her legs, all she could think of were those words.

  The two white men squinted out at them from behind the dusty glass windows. They stood up and hooked their thumbs through their belt loops and hoisted their pants up and over the swell of their guts.

  Mercy was getting scared, more scared than when she found herself tied to a bed in a rooming house and being cared for by a stranger who claimed to be a friend. She had had very little dealings with Southern white people, but she had heard about the young black boy from Chicago who’d been beaten to death in Mississippi ten years earlier.

  Mercy’s fear swelled as she grabbed Sugar’s hand and yanked her from beneath the blue eyes of the white men who were already coming through the front door.

  She pulled her around the opposite side of the building, past the driver and the three delicate white women that had boarded the bus in Lincoln and on to the line of black men, women and children that snaked along the side of the wall and in front of the door marked COLORED.

  Almost twenty minutes passed before Sugar finally stepped into the tiny room that reeked of urine and shit. There was no light except for the dim glow of the moon that found its way through the ragged hole someone had ripped open at the top of the door.

  Sugar took in a deep breath as she hurriedly pushed her dress up around her waist and yanked down her panties. Relief took over her, and then disgust as she felt the back splash of her urine, and everything else that was in that hole, hit her bare bottom and upper thighs.

  She slapped her hands hard across her mouth, willing herself not to throw up. Instead of toilet paper, old mildewed newspaper had been placed in a stack on the floor.

  Sugar stood and yanked her panties up around her. She would not wipe herself with some white man’s old news.

  A small cracked mirror hung haphazardly on the wall to her left. It caught the light of the moon, revealing the words that had been scrawled in red lipstick across its glass surface: Nigger Go Back.

  Sugar stood for a long moment staring at those words. She imagined that an aged white-haired woman had scrawled this ignorance, someone’s grandmother or even great-grand. In her mind’s eye she saw her sneaking into the bathroom while her son, his wife and her grandchildren indulged themselves in a cold Coca-Cola while exchanging pleasantries with the attendant.

  The day wouldn’t have been too hot and the stench bearable as she lipsticked into place each letter, careful to space them just right so that the people who came in there would maybe put some thought into what she and the rest of this part of the country had been trying to tell them.

  Sugar picked up a piece of the newspaper and wiped the words away.

  She scrubbed furiously until there wasn’t even a dull smear of red left, and then she reached into her own purse and pulled out her own red lipstick and scrawled Lappy did it.

  The doors to the bus were closed when they returned.

  After some time the driver approached, the three white women following close behind, Cokes in hand. They looked over their shoulders and waved gaily at the two white men that stood smiling in the doorway.

  “Thanks again!” they yelled in unison.

  “Y‘all coloreds make sure you move to the back o’ the bus,” the driver said before he reached the mass of people that waited patiently for him. “The back o’ the bus, ya hear?” he said again as he stopped right in front of Sugar.

  “Ya hear me, gal?”

  The white women stepped around him and the crowd parted and formed a pathway for them.

  Sugar was looking down at the ground when the man spoke to her. Mercy saw the muscles in her neck tense and heard the air whistle as Sugar pulled it sharply through her nose.

  “Ya hear?” the bus driver said again and took a step toward her.

  The crowd took a step backward and waited.

  The white women folded their arms across their chests, cocked their heads and arched their eyebrows.

  “Yes.” The word came out thin and sharp.

  “Good,” he said and hitched his pants up around his waist. “You in my neck o’ the woods now!” He boomed with laughter.

  The bus rolled through county after county, steadily slicing through the darkness. It was quiet except for the hum of the engine and the random sound of a throat being cleared. Even the babies were quiet, snuggling themselves closer to the safety of their mothers’ bosoms. No one slept; all eyes were wide, watching the woods for roaming white sheets.

  “Well, hello, Jim Crow,” Sugar said aloud to no one in particular. “Been quite a while. Quite a while.”

  Chapter 15

  SUGAR was repeating something over and over in her sleep.

  Mercy wasn’t looking at her, but she knew that Sugar’s head was twisting back and forth against the green-and-yellow vinyl of the headrest. The shh-shh noise Sugar’s hair made against the material reminded Mercy of secrets, her own and the ones that kept Sugar sipping from the silver flask she kept inside of her purse.

  Mercy rubbed her arms to try to quiet her veins. They screamed out to her as her blood ran hot and then cold through them. Mercy licked her lips and tried not to think about the black balls and needles that danced in the darkness of her mind every time she closed her eyes against the breaking dawn.

  She was trying to think of something else when the bus began to sway, slightly at first and then in large snake-like movements that tumbled people out of their seats and sent one mother’s infant flying from her arms, over the seat and into the lap of an elderly man.

  “God help us!” the driver screamed as he fought to keep the bus on the road. The elderly man echoed his appeal and Mercy’s head slammed up against the window, her ear exploded in blood and pain and then everything went black.

  When Mercy came to, she was stretched out in a field of wild verbenas and yellow jasmine. Above her, the early-morning sun beamed and the pointed peaks of the pine trees pricked the deep blue of the sky. The majestic Ozarks loomed off in the distance and all around her was the curling cry of whippoorwills.

  Mercy was sure she was dead and in heaven until Sugar pressed her palm against Mercy’s forehead.

  “Hi,” Sugar said softly when Mercy’s eyes fluttered and then focused on her face. “Don’t worry, you’re fine. We’re all okay,” Sugar said, giving her a weak smile. �
�One of the back tires blew out ... or something like that,” she mumbled and then looked off toward the bus.

  Mercy didn’t feel all right, her head was throbbing and her ear hurt.

  She closed her eyes and concentrated on the cool dampness of the ground beneath her.

  The three white women had positioned themselves away from the mass of colored people and were kneeling daintily on the kerchiefs they’d spread out on the grass.

  All around them the black people made themselves as comfortable as possible, sitting on top of turned-over suitcases, or spread out on jackets and sweaters they’d placed across the grass.

  After a while, Mercy sat up; her wounded ear popped and then throbbed as she eased herself up from Sugar’s lap and into a sitting position. She felt sticky warmth slide down her neck and when she brought her hand up to inspect it, it came away bloody.

  “Lay back down,” Sugar coaxed, pushing her gently back down. “Turn your head a little, it’ll stop the bleeding.”

  “She need something to block it,” a woman called out from somewhere off to Sugar’s left.

  Sugar looked up and realized it was the same woman whose baby was thrown from her arms. Sugar had noticed her at the bus station in St. Louis. Back then the woman and her child had seemed unconcerned with what was going on around them. She had stayed to herself, preferring to stand near the door rather than sit with the other people who waited to board the bus. She was careful not to let anyone get too close to her or her child and walked with her head tilted slightly toward the sky.

  Her clothes were smart, too smart for the Midwest, and her copper skin was smooth and free of imperfections. Her hair, which was pulled back so tightly it added an artificial slant to her eyes, didn’t hold even the slightest hint of a curl.

  The woman moved her baby from one hip to the other and then looked away when Sugar did not respond.

  She didn’t look as slick and as put together as she had when she boarded the bus two days earlier. Her hair was mussed, her clothes wrinkled and there was a nasty run in her nylons.