This Bitter Earth Read online

  Gloria’s eyes flew wide. “I’m family,” she screeched and Sugar winced at the way her words clawed at her neck. “And she ain‘t,” Gloria spat, pointing a finger at Sugar.

  “Yes, she is,” Joe said, releasing Seth’s shoulders and turning to face his daughter.

  Chapter 18

  Sugar was suddenly back at #10 Grove Street, the remaining days of 1955 closing in on her. She was propped up in the bed, the sound of nothingness around her, and Jude peeking at her from everywhere and nowhere. The box she cradled in her hands must have been there for days before she’d noticed it.

  She remembered that the brown paper reminded her of skin and that thought stayed with her as she tore through its layers, always expecting blood, but only coming upon the blue gray of the box.

  “She ain’t no family to us?” It was a statement and a question all at once and Joe could do nothing but brace himself as his son’s words bounced off his back.

  “Daddy?” Seth said, his anger draining away, slowly being replaced by astonishment.

  Sugar saw herself lifting the top off the box, taking a deep breath and inhaling the sweet scent of lavender.

  “I—I—” Joe’s words tripped over his tongue.

  There were dozens of envelopes, filled with just as many letters, and then there was the picture of her mother and Joe Taylor, the father she was never supposed to know.

  “She, she—” Joe began again and then swallowed hard. “She’s your sister.”

  Sugar’s shoulders dropped and she felt her head go light. Had he always known, and for how long?

  The gratitude she felt toward Joe brought tears to her eyes, even though she knew she needed to do something other than cry. She needed to holler.

  “She’s my what?” It was clear from the sound of Seth’s voice that he believed his father had lost his mind. “You hear what you saying, Daddy?” he said and took a concerned step toward Joe.

  His right hand went up as if to check his father’s brow for fever, but then he changed his mind and stepped backward so he could get a good look at this man that seemed to be admitting to something that was sure to tear them all apart.

  “I said she’s your sister,” Joe repeated himself, raising his voice so that everyone around could hear. “She’s my daughter,” Joe said, looking as proud as he did when he held his grandbaby.

  What’s left after truth? Sugar knew. She’d beheld plenty of truths and the same things had always occurred: tears, broken hearts, balled fists, angry words ... death.

  Seth stomped off past his wife and child, cuss words trailing behind him.

  His hand snatched at the door handle of the car numerous times before his frustration overwhelmed him and he turned around and yelled.

  “Do Mama know?!”

  Joe took a deep breath before answering.

  “I think she knew from the beginning,” Joe said to his feet, and then lifting his head and raising his voice, “I believe she know in her heart.”

  Pearl knew there wouldn’t be enough time to bake a whole pie, not even time enough to boil and peel the potatoes, so she wouldn’t even think of getting the flour out of the bag to start the crust.

  But she had to do something, prepare a little bit of anything that had some sweetness to it. Hands clasped together at her navel, Pearl paced the kitchen floor, thinking so hard it made her head hurt.

  She should have started preparing for her early in the day, but she wasn’t sure she had dreamt right, wasn’t sure she had heard Jude clear enough to bother herself with baking a pie. But as the day progressed and the fog that swam around the dream dissipated, Pearl was able to decipher what Jude was trying to tell her.

  Pearl spun ‘round and ’round in the center of her kitchen wondering what she could make, mix or mash that would substitute for what had first brought them together. There was nothing, nothing that would do and time was running short.

  What would she do?

  “I guess this is a good thing, we need to get to the bottom of this anyway,” Seth spat at his father from alongside his car.

  “It was before I married your mother,” Joe said in his defense.

  “It don’t matter when it happened. What matters is you knew all along.”

  “We both knew,” Joe breathed.

  “I don’t believe that. Ain’t you man enough to carry the blame on your own, why you gotta share it with Mama?”

  Seth’s words were so heavy with disgust, Sugar felt the weight of them.

  Joe’s chest swelled and his back straightened. “You still my son, Seth.” His voice was steel, but Seth didn’t even flinch.

  “You sure ‘bout that?” Seth shot back.

  Joe lost his patience quietly and soberly. There were no threats or physical fanfare, just one hard, clean punch that connected beautifully with Seth’s jaw and laid him out flat on the ground. Joe Louis would have been proud.

  Seth looked up and blinked at the moon that balanced itself perfectly over Joe’s head. Were the stars laughing or was his mind playing tricks on him?

  “Seth, oh my God!” Gloria screamed.

  The last time Joe had laid a hand on his son in anger Seth was eight years old and had crossed the line. Now at the age of thirty-seven he had made the same mistake again.

  “Why you do that, Joe, why!?” Gloria screamed at him. “Baby, you okay? Can you stand up?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Seth said as he struggled to his feet and rubbed his jaw.

  “I know I’m your daddy,” was all that Joe said before turning his back on him and opening the car door. “Get in.” He was looking at Sugar and Mercy when he spoke. Seth didn’t dare object.

  Sugar stepped out of the car on shaky legs. She felt her teeth begin to chatter and so she pressed her lips tightly together to keep the noise inside of her mouth. The moon was in full bloom and had positioned itself like a heavenly spotlight over the spot where #10 once stood.

  “Burned down in ‘56,” Joe said before Sugar could even ask. “Don’t know how,” he added.

  It didn’t matter that the wood frame and concrete foundation had perished, the ghosts were still there. Fire can’t burn away memories, she thought.

  “C‘mon,” Joe said as he hoisted the luggage up the stairs of the front porch. He set the bags down and started fishing in his pocket for the house keys when he saw it.

  “What the—” he started and then stopped.

  Sugar couldn’t see what had snatched at Joe’s attention. He bent over and picked up two sweet potatoes. She could see the paper bag—colored skin of the potatoes and the massiveness of them; Joe could barely hold one in each hand.

  “Who in the hell would put these here?” Joe wondered out loud.

  Sugar nodded. She knew who had placed them there and why; she swallowed the thought and ignored Mercy’s probing eyes.

  There would be talk later on about Sugar’s reappearance in Bigelow, the fact that she was staying in the Taylors’ home with a child that looked nothing like Sugar but was probably her child even though they’d heard that it wasn’t. Well, whores lie, they would say.

  The buzz started as soon as Sugar and Mercy piled themselves into Seth’s car and would go on until the murder took place, giving them something else to talk about.

  Joe quickly pushed open the front door. Sugar saw him take a deep breath before he stepped over the threshold and into the house. She would have taken one of her own but she had no breath left.

  “Pearl?” Joe called cautiously. “Pearl, we’re back,” he said and motioned for the rest of them to come inside.

  Gloria pushed past Mercy and Sugar and stepped on Joe’s foot in her haste. Seth hadn’t even moved from the confines of the car. He just sat there, hands gripping the steering wheel, face screwed up and eyes staring straight ahead.

  Joe threw him a look and then shook his head before moving left and into the kitchen. “C‘mon,” he said and all three women followed.

  The kitchen table was covered in bowls filled w
ith food worthy of Christmas dinner.

  “What the—” Joe started for the second time that evening.

  The stairs creaked from out in the hallway and Sugar stiffened. Mercy blinked at her and then looked back at the table of food. She didn’t know exactly what was happening, but she did know she was hungry and wanted to eat.

  “Miss Pearl cook all of this?” Gloria said, moving the baby from one hip to the other before leaning over to look into one of the pots. “Well, I thought she was sickly?”

  Joe didn’t answer her; he was too busy trying to understand what had happened in the hour he’d been gone.

  “Y‘all wash your hands before you eat, hear?”

  And there it was, Pearl’s voice right at Sugar’s back. Everyone except Sugar swung around at the sound of it. Sugar was stone, except for her knees, which were knocking.

  “P-Pearl, baby, you ... you ...” Joe wanted to say something but there were too many things knocking around in his head. Questions bumping into statements and then there was the truth he had been carrying around for ten years, sitting right smack in the middle of it all.

  Pearl moved around Sugar and into the kitchen. She seemed shorter to Sugar. Her hair was all gray now and her hips were gone.

  Sugar took her in quickly and then lowered her gaze.

  “Miss Pearl, you do all this?” Gloria said, standing over the table, eyeing the biscuits and the sliced ham they sat next to.

  “Some. But I called down to JJ and told him to bring some food by. Told him we would have quite a few mouths to feed.” Pearl smiled and Joe almost stumbled at the light that came off her face when she did.

  Pearl’s eyes moved slowly over Mercy. “Child rail thin,” she said almost to herself before turning toward Gloria.

  “Is this my grandbaby?” Pearl glowed.

  Sugar chanced a glance at Joe, who was looking at Pearl as if it were his first time seeing her. Had they forgotten she was there? Sugar thought about snatching Mercy by the elbow and backing out of the door and onto the porch. She could make her escape before anyone even noticed.

  “She sure is a cutie,” Pearl said as she took Jewel from her mother and began to gently rock her. “Don’t you think so, Sugar?”

  All eyes were on Sugar and all she could do was stand there trying to be invisible.

  “Well?” Pearl pushed.

  Ten years tumbled down on both women. Long, restless nights and days when the tears never seemed to stop falling. They had dreamed of each other, seen each other’s faces in the faces of strangers and had spoken each other’s names to the sky, hoping the wind would carry their words to the other’s doorstep.

  Sugar looked at Mercy, then Gloria. She was afraid to look at Pearl, afraid that she would come apart under her gaze.

  “Pearl, uhm, I gotta tell you something—” Joe started.

  “Joe, I’m asking your daughter a question. Don’t be rude, let her answer.”

  Joe’s eyes stretched as wide as saucers.

  He had never told Pearl that Sugar was his daughter. The day he found the picture of him and Bertie Mae, he had had every intention of telling her. But the moment his feet hit the porch all of his courage fell away from him and all he could do was take his wife in his arms and hold her.

  He had tried again, hundreds of times over the past ten years, but never could get up the nerve to say it and so he’d finally resigned himself to keeping that secret along with one other, locked away inside of his mind, hoping that he would be able to take them with him to his grave.

  Now here Pearl was speaking to Sugar as if he’d sat her down and had reeled off for her every explicit detail.

  Pearl bounced the baby on her hip and stepped past Gloria before coming to stand in front of Sugar.

  They were so close that the tips of their shoes kissed and Pearl could smell the musky scent three days and nights of bus exhaust and black tarred highways had left on Sugar.

  Sugar looked down into those dark wells Pearl had for eyes and saw Jude swimming in the blackness.

  “Well, don’t you think she’s the cutest thing?” Pearl said, holding the baby up in front of Sugar.

  “Yes,” Sugar blurted out.

  “Uh-huh.” The smile that covered Pearl’s face was so sweet it was wicked and Sugar thought about her grandmother Ciel and the madness that ruled her life. Ciel probably smiled the same way when she was alive.

  “I’m gonna take this little one on up and take her out of these clothes. Y‘all go on and dig in, I’ll be back shortly and we’ll talk about everything.”

  Pearl pressed Jewel to her bosom and the light in her face went brighter. “Yes, we’ll talk about everything and your new friend too,” Pearl said, her eyes swinging between Sugar and Mercy.

  With that Pearl stepped around Sugar and began to climb the stairs.

  Seth was in the hallway by then, standing around looking mean and mad at the world.

  “She sure is fine, Seth,” Pearl threw over her shoulder at him.

  They were all silent for a while as each of them digested what had just occurred.

  “I don’t think she well at all.” Gloria shook her head as she spoke.

  A dazed Joe walked into the living room and sat down heavily on the couch.

  Seth followed him, but took a seat in a chair that sat close to the window. From there, he could observe Sugar, Mercy and Joe as if they were all wanted criminals.

  Chapter 19

  FAYLINE had been expecting a bit of a crowd. Well, it was Friday and there was some hot band out of Jericho that would be playing at Two Miles In that night. The young girls that had come into her shop for Shirley Temple curls a few years ago were now women that were on the look-out for men.

  They wanted their hair relaxed, bumped, flipped and streaked. They all wanted to look like The Supremes.

  The first person to step through her door was Handy. Fayline knew that Handy always traveled with Ike, but Ike was a few years older than him and moved ten times slower. They were the oldest things walking and spoke as if they’d been around when the founding fathers installed the first marker that would become Bigelow.

  “Boys,” Fayline greeted them even though Ike hadn’t even reached the door yet.

  “Fayline.” Handy spoke in a heavy whisper, making the word sound as if it were spoken with his last earthly breath.

  Ike shuffled in and lifted his hand in greeting to Fayline before sitting down in one of the old green-and-cream chairs she’d salvaged from her last dinette set.

  “Y‘all come in for a wash and set?” Fayline teased and sat down in one of the dryer chairs.

  Ike made a noise that sounded like a laugh, while Handy just grinned his toothless grin.

  “No, we just coming from the station,” Handy said, and couldn’t help but lick his lips when Fayline crossed her thick legs.

  “Uh-huh, y‘all down there playing dominoes?”

  Ike grunted and Handy nodded his head.

  Fayline waited for Handy to offer something more, but he just stood there, old, crooked and grinning.

  “So y‘all stop in to take a rest before heading home?”

  “Yeah, and we saw that girl that was here before.”

  Fayline raised her eyebrows and sat up a bit straighter.

  “What girl?”

  “What they call her again, Ike?” Handy said, turning to Ike, who was beginning to nod off. “Ike!”

  Ike twitched and opened his eyes.

  “What the name of that woman we saw down at the depot tonight?”

  Fayline leaned in and strained her ears best she could but could not make out a thing Ike was mumbling.

  Handy turned back around to face Fayline. “Susan?”

  “Herman Powell’s girl?” Fayline said, losing interest. “She back in town from college?” she said, getting up to get an emery board from a table packed with bottles, jars and nail polish. Handy had to wipe the drool that developed around his mouth from watching Fayline’s behind bounce beneat
h the material of her peach-colored polyester pants.

  “No, not Susan. Uhm, Sally ... Sylvie ... Sara ...”

  Fayline threw him a look that was filled with disgust. This man couldn’t even remember who he had seen a few hours ago and now he was in her shop trying to gossip about something he clearly couldn’t remember.

  “Sally Epson or Morris? Sylvie Jenkins, the wife of Judd or his first cousin? Sara Cooper, Nathan, James or Brown?” Fayline folded her hands and waited.

  Ike scratched his chin, looked up at the fluorescent lights, cringed and then looked down at his shoes.

  “Well, Ike?” Fayline’s voice was becoming hostile. Gossip was like gold in Bigelow.

  “Sugar.”

  The name seemed to float out of nowhere and both Fayline and Handy turned on Ike in awe.

  “That’s it, all right! Sugar!” Ike said, snapping his finger in triumph.

  “Y‘all sure about that?” Fayline’s eyes were wide. “Sugar? Tall, black ugly thing?” Fayline’s mouth watered.

  “Yup. But she didn’t seem too hard to look at to me,” Handy said, trying to straighten his posture.

  “Well, you old and half-blind. Shirley probably look good to you.” Fayline’s mind was reeling as she picked up the phone to dial the very same person she had just insulted.

  Ike mumbled something else Fayline didn’t catch, but Handy evidently heard loud and clear.

  “Yeah, I think I was married to Shirley once upon a time,” Handy replied.

  By the time Pearl descended the stairs again, Jewel in hand, and went to sit beside her husband on the couch, just about everyone in Bigelow knew that Sugar was back in town.

  The women remembered Sugar quite well and shot their husbands warning looks, while forbidding their sons to go anywhere near Grove Street.

  The Taylor family assembled in the living room, waiting for whatever would come next and not one of them had a clue. They had devoured their food in silence, their eyes playing tag with each other. Of course there was the occasional heavy breath and Gloria had tried to speak, but Seth had shook his head vigorously and had put his palm up, stopping any words that might slip from Gloria’s mouth.