Sugar Read online

  “Thank you,” he said without looking at them and walked away.

  The house had stood empty for all those years, no FOR SALE sign in the front yard, the fruits, flowers and vegetables dying from lack of love and attention.

  Pearl rose from the rocking chair, her eyes wet with the memory of loss, and turned to knock one last time. The pie was cold now and her heart had cooled along with it. A tall dark woman stood in the doorway staring directly at Pearl, an off-white towel wrapped loosely around her head and short blue robe cinched tight around her long body. Her thighs glistened wet with water.

  She looked annoyed, her face was twisted to one side with irritation and she watched Pearl through her slanted eyes.

  Pearl was startled and stumbled back, her behind hitting sharply against the banister, causing her to cry out with pain and surprise.

  “Yes?” Sugar said as she eyed the woman and at the same time reached into the breast pocket of her robe, pulling out a crumpled pack of Lucky Strikes and a book of matches. Pearl could not respond; she was staring intently at the woman’s face. She wanted to reach out and touch it, scrape away the features that weren’t Jude’s, leaving behind the ones that were.

  Sugar lit the cigarette and it dangled loosely from the corner of her mouth. She squinted her eyes against the rising smoke. “Yes?” she said, louder now, more intense.

  “I—I . . .” was all that Pearl could issue. She was stunned stupid and had forgotten her very reason for being there.

  Sugar stood back on her long mahogany legs and adjusted the towel around her head. “You just come by to use my rocker?” Sugar said. It was more an accusation than a question. She inhaled deeply on her cigarette and let the smoke out in tiny puffs of white.

  Pearl found her voice. She opened her mouth and allowed the words to spill out in a senseless jumble, hoping at the end they would combine and become something intelligent. “I’m s-sorry for rocking in your chair. I just came by to introduce myself—I mean, welcome you to Bigelow.” Pearl looked again at the glistening thighs and then down to the small puddle that was forming beneath Sugar.

  “Did I—I come at a bad time?” she said a bit too loudly. She jerked a bit at the volume of her voice and then halted her babbling, breathlessly awaiting a response.

  Sugar smirked at the short, wide woman in her starched blue dress and stiff white collar. So much perfection in one place was unsettling to her. “Yes, yes you did,” she said, her voice chilled and stiff.

  “Shoot, I sure am sorry, Miss,” Pearl uttered and shifted her eyes away from Sugar. She wanted so much to stare into her face, but pulled her eyes away from those familiar features and concentrated instead on the staircase just behind her. As an afterthought and after a short period of silent awkwardness, she shoved the pie out before her. The movement was hard and fast and it slammed into the half open door that Sugar held ajar with one hand. The impact startled Pearl and she released the plate; it went crashing to the floor, sending bits of crust and sweet potatoes across the porch.

  They stood there looking stupidly at the mess that had been made. Pearl went down effortlessly to one swollen knee, picked up the pan and began gathering up the broken pie bits, apologizing as she did.

  Sugar did not move, but continued to draw on her cigarette as she watched the old woman’s head bob up and down and listened to her Lord have mercys and For goodness’ sakes.

  Sugar shook her head in surrender. “C’mon in ’for I catch cold. Leave it be, the ants will take care of it,” Sugar said and walked into the house, leaving Pearl to catch the closing door before it slammed and bounced back on its rusty hinges.

  She followed Sugar into the gray darkness of the foyer and then the living room. Pearl was uncomfortable with the dim lighting and the heavy smell of stale cigarette smoke. The room needed sunlight and a good airing out, but she sat down without comment where Sugar had indicated she should sit.

  Sugar took a seat directly in front of her. An old wooden coffee table, its polish long gone, separated the two women.

  Pearl recognized the furniture. It had belonged to Mrs. Wilks. A battered green sofa, its cushions not looking as if they could withstand another heavy dust beating, and two wingback chairs made of the same material of putrid green.

  Nothing much had changed, except the cross that once hung directly over the fireplace was gone, although a clean imprint of it remained. It seemed to glow in the gloom of the room.

  “Will you replace it?” Pearl asked, knowing full well she’d started the conversation off ineptly.

  “Replace what?” Sugar asked, bewildered.

  “The cross,” Pearl said and pointed to the empty space on the wall.

  Sugar looked in the direction of Pearl’s pointing finger and stared at the space for a while. She hadn’t noticed it before. “No, I don’t think so,” she said as she smashed the finished cigarette into an ashtray that held what looked to Pearl like hundreds of butts. She glanced again at the space and then absently pulled another cigarette out of the pack and lit it. She turned her attention back to Pearl just as the yellow and blue flame from the match illuminated her face. Pearl caught sight of Sugar’s almond-shaped eyes, high cheekbones and smooth dark skin. Her heart leaped from her chest and to her throat.

  My God, she looks like Jude in so many ways, she thought to herself as she fought to retain her composure.

  “Well,” Sugar said in a long drawn-out exhale of breath and smoke. The “well” came as an interlude to a lulling conversation, but there had been no real conversation so far.

  Pearl shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I’m real sorry ’bout that mess. I really wish you would let me clean it up.” Her voice was uneven and she wanted to leave that dark, cigarette-choked room and return to the sunshine and clean fresh air outside. She wanted to move away from the face that looked so much like her Jude’s.

  “Ain’t nothing,” Sugar replied in a long lazy drawl, and then she took another long drag on her cigarette.

  “Well it sure is nice to finally meet you. I been trying to get over here for a while, but you know how it is, you get caught up doing one thing or another and before you know it, it’s bedtime.” Pearl laughed at the end of her sentence, a small girlish giggle that she hadn’t heard herself use since her youth.

  No, Sugar didn’t know. But she shook her head yes anyway.

  “Well I best be going, I done taken up too much of your time already.” Pearl stood abruptly and pushed her hand out toward Sugar. “Nice meeting you,” she said without looking directly at her.

  Sugar stared at the hand that was extended before her. She didn’t offer her own. “You didn’t tell me your name,” Sugar said quietly and drew again on her cigarette.

  “What?” Pearl said stupidly, her hand beginning to ache from its suspended position.

  “Your name?” Sugar said, making sure each word came out crisp.

  “My name?” Pearl was confused. Hadn’t she given her name? She tossed it around in her mind. She realized she did not know the woman’s name and evidently had not given her name either. Or had she?

  “Oh dear! I’m Pearl. Pearl Taylor,” she said all flustered and took a step closer to Sugar, her hand still extended, now in greeting instead of good-bye.

  “Sugar. Sugar Lacey,” Sugar responded and lightly took the old woman’s hand in her own.

  There was electricity when one hand enfolded the other. It caused both of them to jump and they snatched their hands apart.

  “Damn static electricity,” Sugar mumbled and wiped at the palm of her hand. She pointed down to the old faded section rug that at some point had been a bright rose, but now had been walked on and spilled on so many times it was more like a ragged maroon.

  “Sugar? Well, that’s an interesting name. Is it a nickname?” Pearl asked, finding a conversational tone now. The shock had done something to her insides, jump-started her voice and quelled her nervousness. She could look into the woman’s face for longer moments, and although
she still saw fragmented pieces of Jude hiding there, it seemed not to upset her as much now.

  “No, that’s my Christian name. Why? Don’t you know sugar is brown first? White folks couldn’t stand the fact that something so sweet shared the same color as the people who cut the cane, slopped the hogs and picked the cotton. So they bleached it to resemble them, and now they done gone and fooled everybody. You included,” Sugar said with a laugh. May Lacey was famous for telling that little story, and now here Sugar was repeating it.

  “Oh,” Pearl said, blushing at Sugar’s chiding.

  Another thick awkward silence hung between them.

  “So uh, you family to Mrs. Wilks?” Pearl asked.

  “Who’s that?” Sugar asked, getting up from her chair. Sugar was quite familiar with the name but preferred to play dumb. This woman was asking too many questions and Sugar had no intention of giving up as many answers. The robe slid open a bit and revealed a corner of her thick, bushy triangle. Pearl saw this and turned her eyes toward the bright cross space on the wall. “The woman who used to live here, she been dead for some time now. You her granddaughter, maybe?”

  Sugar pulled her robe close around her again and removed the towel from her head to reveal a short snatch of thick black hair. It held tight to her scalp and looked as if it would resist even the hottest straightening comb. “I don’t think so,” Sugar replied with no real interest in the subject.

  Pearl was confused. Since there had never been a FOR SALE sign on the house, the only logical conclusion would be that it was willed to a family member, most likely her son. But here was this woman saying “she didn’t think so,” which made no kind of sense to Pearl. Either you know who your grandmother is or you don’t know.

  “Your daddy wasn’t Clemon, Mrs. Wilks’s son?” Pearl pressed.

  “Miss Pearl, I don’t know who my daddy is or was,” Sugar said and walked out of the living room and to the front door. She swung it open and waited for Pearl to appear. Pearl pushed her head out from the living room into the hall and realized that her visit had come to an end.

  Pearl cleared her throat and smoothed her dress; she lifted her head up a bit and started toward the door. She stepped over the threshold and turned to face Sugar. “I’m sorry ’bout everything and excuse me if I offended you with my questions. It’s just that Bigelow is a small place and we all like to know who our neighbors are. You understand, don’t you?” Sincerity was gleaming in Pearl’s eyes.

  “Sure do,” Sugar said sarcastically and firmly closed the door in Pearl’s face.

  Pearl stood there looking at the closed door that was only inches from her face. She’d never experienced in her whole lifetime the humiliation she had encountered in this one day.

  She looked down at the drying bits of pie and sure enough, the ants were hauling tiny loads of it away.

  Chapter Five

  “So you went in there ... what it look like ... what she look like. . . I only seen her once from afar . . . she look black, though, black like tar. What she sound like . . . she use all them big city words . . . what she got . . . more coming or just her one?”

  Shirley was talking so fast it sounded like one long, bad soprano note. Shirley and the heat was not a good combination, not at all.

  Shirley Brown was older than Pearl, probably by about a good twenty years. She wore a wig that seemed to defeat the purpose of wearing a wig. It was a stiff, bluish gray mass of horse hair that looked more like tangled piano string. It should have been discarded a long time ago, but Shirley loved it to death, preferring it to her head of soft gliding gray that resembled spun silk. Shirley wasn’t frail, although she appeared that way. Time had bent her over a bit and life had kicked her in the behind on more than one occasion, so she walked tilted forward, looking as if she would tumble over at any moment. She was medium built and walnut colored. All in all, she was a comical-looking woman; her face was long and thin and she wore large black-framed glasses that magnified her eyes to ten times their normal size. You couldn’t look dead at Shirley without wanting to laugh. So just to keep the peace, you didn’t look dead at Shirley.

  Shirley had been married three times, buried two husbands and was now alienating her third with her rumormongering ways.

  Shirley Brown had been Shirley Brown twice in her life. At birth she was born into the name, and then she gave it up at twenty and became Shirley Jenkins. Twelve years after that she became Shirley Atkins. The name Brown was reinstalled when she married her third husband, Parker Brown.

  Pearl and Shirley were friends by association. Shirley worked alongside Pearl’s mother, Belle, in the McHenry house for more than thirty years, so Pearl had known her her whole life. Shirley moved to Bigelow with her second husband and had been there ever since.

  And now there she sat spilling out word after word, sounding like a squealing pig going to slaughter.

  “What were you doing ’round here anyways?” Pearl asked for the umpteenth time. Shirley was exemplary at picking and prying, but she was also the queen of evasion.

  “Oh . . . I was coming over here to see you.” Shirley was lying, Pearl could see it in her big magnified eyes. Shirley didn’t have a car, and neither did Parker. They begged for rides to town. Pearl lived on the opposite side of Bigelow, a good twenty minutes’ walk for a person still holding on to his youth; more than an hour for an old body with one foot slipping into the afterlife.

  “Shirley Brown, you would not walk all this way to see me,” Pearl said as she placed the kettle on the stove to heat.

  “Sure I would, honey,” Shirley said without looking at Pearl. Her eyes drifted to the open kitchen window. “So, her hair really blond?” Shirley asked, trying hard to keep the eagerness out of her voice.

  Pearl gave a little laugh and shook her head in surrender. She sat down across from Shirley and folded her hands loosely on the table. “No. Her hair is short, black and nappy like the rest o’ us.”

  “Uh-huh,” Shirley grunted and dug deep into her oversized, overused black pocketbook, pulling out a bag of peanuts. Without being asked, Pearl got up and retrieved a plate from the cabinet. Shirley was a peanut fiend. She ate them the way people smoked cigarettes and she put them in her Pepsi and drank them. Pearl set the plate down in front of Shirley and turned to remove the kettle from the flame. At that moment a flutter of red and yellow moved quickly past Sugar’s open window. They both saw it and each reacted in her own way. Pearl stood motionless, the kettle in hand, suspended in mid-air. Shirley stood up from her chair, so slowly it was comical. She moved as if at a baseball game, watching in amazement as the winning ball went sailing over the heads of onlookers and out of the stadium.

  They stood there, frozen, holding their breaths, waiting for her to pass again. Waiting for the bright yellow and red to dance briefly in the window once more.

  Nothing.

  Shirley sat down. Pearl poured the hot water into the waiting teacups. They sipped in silence, both watching the window.

  The first thing Pearl heard after she saw the smooth dark chocolate skin was the shattering sound of bone china as it made quick and unexpected contact with the kitchen floor. The second sound was Shirley’s quick intake of breath, and the last and final sound was her own voice whispering, “Sweet Jesus.” It was said not in prayer, but in total and complete disbelief.

  “Oh, my God, she’s stark naked?”

  Pearl was sure that Shirley wanted her words to form a statement, but it came out as gauche as the situation at hand.

  Sugar had returned to the room and now she was sitting, as naked as the day she was born, in front of her window. One leg swung lazily over the arm of the chair and the other stretched out before her. A magazine rested on her lap and she flipped idly through the pages with one hand while the other languidly moved her cigarette to and from her mouth.

  Curtains, white and transparent—nothing like the heavy drapes that graced the other homes of Bigelow—moved in and out like waves guided by a soft summer gale. Th
ey did not hide her, or Sugar’s dark triangle of pubic hair.

  Pearl stared at Sugar’s pussy. But she did not see it as it was, she saw a memory of a day when a man came to her, head bowed, and unfolded a handkerchief that held her daughter’s cootie-cat. That’s what Pearl called it and her mother before her and so that’s what she taught Jude to call her own. Cootie-cat.

  Pearl had avoided looking at her own cootie-cat for fifteen years. And Joe, well, he wished he could say that he had touched it or caressed it within all those years.

  He longed to be able to say it was so, but that would be a blatant untruth. If asked, Joe would say: No, I have not seen it since spring 1940. All I have is my memory of it.

  John Lee Hooker’s “Burnin’ Hell” quickly filled the background and replaced the fog that shrouded her whenever she was forced to remember. She heard Shirley talking fast and she lifted her head above the fog, thankfully being able to tear her eyes away from Sugar.

  “I ain’t never seen no mess like this in my entire life! Who the hell sits ’round butt naked for all the world to see!? Lord have mercy, Pearl, what kinda trash you got living next door to you?”

  Shirley was crouched down on the floor, her dress hiked up over her knees. Pearl could see her stockings, rolled up around her varicose-ridden thighs, choking them. She spoke in a conspiratorial whisper and her eyes were like globes behind her thick glasses. Pearl just looked down at her. She was horrified at what she’d just seen and at the memory it forced on her, but seeing Shirley crouched down below the windowpane, peeking up every three seconds to snatch a look at Sugar’s privates, well it was just too humorous a scene and Pearl had to bite down hard on the inside of her cheeks to keep from laughing.

  The guitar and harmonica were dying, the sound of John Lee Hooker’s voice faded and Sugar was gone.