Sugar (25 page)

“Seth! Oh, my God, Seth!” Sugar heard Pearl’s squeals of surprise and concern. Her trembling legs brought her slowly back down the stairs. “Oh Joe, look what you done!” Pearl and Joe stood huddled over the heap on the porch. Sugar saw Joe shake his head and then reach out to help the man up and then she heard a deep laugh. Pearl turned and Sugar saw that there were tears rolling down her face, but she was smiling. Closer still, she saw Seth’s strong jawline, a nose that at the moment was bleeding, long thick eyelashes and wide-set eyes that were so dark and deep, she was sure that women had lost themselves in them forever.

She was staring at him, his long fingers and the strong large hands that she wanted to lay on top of her own. She shook her head against her thoughts.

“Sugar, this here is Seth.” Pearl plucked him on the back of the head and went to retrieve the ice trays from the freezer. “Seth is my son and a fool!” she said with a laugh. “Seth, this here is my friend, our friend, Sugar Lacey.”

His head was tilted back in order to thwart the flow of blood. He held a handkerchief to his nose that obstructed his view of her. “Hey,” he said and raised his hand in a hello gesture.

“Hi,” Sugar said and dropped her eyes.

“He is the biggest fool! Now what kinda person gonna jump outta nowhere like that? When you gonna grow up, Seth? I done told you over and over again that everything can’t be a game. Now suppose your daddy would have had the shotgun? You woulda been dead already!” She plucked him again on his head.

“Ow, Mamma! Daddy, tell her to quit!” Seth yelled in mock pain. Joe just chuckled and stood with his arms folded across his chest in fatherly admiration.

“Why didn’t you call and tell us you were coming, Seth? We could’ve met you at the station.” Pearl wrapped four blocks of ice in a new dishtowel with a red and yellow turkey on it and placed it on Seth’s nose.

“I wanted to surprise ya’ll and—”

“But how did you get here from the station? You get a lift? Oh, Seth, don’t tell me you walked here, in this fog?”

“Mamma, no, I—”

“Well how did you get here then—”

“Pearl, would you let the boy talk,” Joe firmly intervened. Pearl threw an exasperated look at him, but said nothing else.

“Thank you, Daddy. I drove here, Mamma.”

Pearl did not seem to understand what Seth was saying.

“In a car,” he added and shot Sugar a look of mild interest.

“A car? Whose car?” Pearl asked.

“My own. I done bought me a car, Mamma!” Seth was excited and looked at his beaming father for approval. Joe patted him firmly on the back.

“You did what!” Pearl screamed with glee, finally understanding what Seth was saying. “Oh, that’s wonderful!” she said and kissed him on the cheek.

“It’s right outside. I cut the engine when I was halfway up the street and coasted it the rest of the way, that’s why you ain’t hear me pull up.”

“Sure ’nuff. My baby done bought himself a car. You doing okay then, huh? What else been going on with you, baby?” Pearl asked excitedly and pulled up a chair to sit next to her son.

Sugar listened for a while as Seth talked about New York and Harlem. He told them about the trains that moved hundreds of people all over the city and into Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. “Underneath the water?” Pearl said, her eyes wide with amazement.

Sugar was uncomfortable. She felt forgotten by the people who had, over the past few months, become more than friends, but family. “I gotta be going now,” she whispered beneath the laughing and talking sounds that emanated from Seth and his parents, and moved quickly on tiptoe to the door. Once again, just as her hand was about to grasp the doorknob, Pearl’s voice blocked her escape. “Sugar!”

She stopped cold. “Yes,” she said, but did not make any attempt to turn around.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Sugar knew the tone. She knew that Pearl was standing behind her, her hands placed firmly on her hips, her lips a straight line.

Sugar spoke to the door. “I got to go, Miss Pearl. Uhm. Things to do, you know?” Sugar felt the air move and then Pearl was beside her, speaking into her neck. “You said you wasn’t gonna be doing
that
for a couple of days.”

Sugar had agreed that she would not take in any work for the next week. She had enough money to live on, and anything she needed but couldn’t afford, Pearl would supply. “I want you to stop this foolishness. You got other talents that don’t require you to lay down and spread your legs.” Sugar listened to Pearl and half heard her. She’d been told this before but all it got her was a small, big-teethed Jewish man chasing her around his desk, trying to take advantage of her.

Sugar knew it was useless to argue with Pearl. The energy involved was more than enough motivation for Sugar to just nod her head in agreement.

Pearl had asked Joe to ask around about other places in the county that offered what the Memphis Roll offered. To Pearl’s surprise there were quite a few. But the places there were, were only willing to let Sugar sing for tips or were too high up on the chitlin circuit to consider an unknown.

“Don’t worry, baby, you keep doing what you do at the Memphis Roll. Word gets around and those people who said no will be banging on your door begging you to come sing at their place.” Sugar had wondered when Pearl moved from Bible-carrying Baptist to music industry mogul.

“I ain’t doing
that,
” Sugar hissed back now. “Ya’ll don’t need me around. I know you all want to catch up with one another.”

“You stay right here. You are family now so you and Seth need to get acquainted.” She grabbed Sugar firmly by the elbow, ignoring her rejections, and led her back to the kitchen where Seth and Joe were in deep conversation.

“Oh,” Seth uttered. The smile that held his lips wavered, faded and then reluctantly reappeared. Sugar knew that look. It was the same look the good Bigelow women threw at her. A look that made it quite clear that she was not wanted or needed. A look that said: Clutch your children, watch your men and don’t let your pocketbook hang too loose from your shoulder when she’s around.

Those looks, the ones from the women, did not bother Sugar. She’d worn blinders against that sort of intimidation for far too long.

But from a man, from Seth Taylor, the look was wounding. Sugar staggered and almost doubled under the intensity of it. “Just wanted to say good-night,” she said quickly and turned to rush out of the house.

“So mamma, what you got to eat?” Seth said, rubbing his palms together.

The gray wall began to recede against the stubborn rays of the high morning sun. Slowly, slowly the thick rays of light sliced through it until it was nothing more than fine, thin strips of mist and then nothing at all.

Thanksgiving morning had ushered in a winter chill that took all by surprise and sent people scurrying to chop firewood for heat, squirrels scampering to gather food for the winter and Sugar wondering about her life in Bigelow.

Seth’s reaction to her had haunted her for most of the night, causing her to twist and turn through small intervals of sleep, until finally her unrest sent her from the bed to the top drawer of her dresser and the joint that awaited her there. The marijuana muffled the noise in her head, fragmented the looming face of Seth Taylor and allowed her to sleep. But her sleep was filled with Jude. The haunting pictures of a child that looked so much like her. And Jude, as always, spoke to her from those black and white still lifes, pleaded with her to go away from Bigelow before a tear would fall from one almond-shaped eye and roll down the glossy photo finish, leaving blue and pink scars in its wake, finally falling off the rippled white border and into the vast darkness of Sugar’s dream.

She woke with that very same tear in her own eye and wiped it quickly away. Why was Jude coming to her, asking her to leave? Was it jealousy? Sugar balled her hands into fists and beat at her head and yelled at the walls of her room, “What! What! What!”

It could be jealousy. A jealous spirit looking in from the great beyond. Pulling back the layers of time and space and seeing that her mother’s pain had finally lifted. Sugar supposed that Jude’s spirit felt threatened. If the pain had lessened and become a distant memory that brushed against your thoughts every blue moon, then a memory of a child taken could walk in pain’s retreating footsteps.

Sugar was a fighter, had been all of her life, but how do you fight the soul of a dead child and her brother?

If eating was a sin, then all that sat around the Taylor table would surely have been sentenced to hell. The table creaked beneath the weight of heavy ceramic bowls filled with sweet sausage dressing, collard greens, potato salad, macaroni salad, chitlins, candied yams and roasted potatoes. A turkey, baked to golden perfection, sat beside a glazed ham adorned with bright red cherries. Biscuits, so light and flaky they threatened to rise to the ceiling if not for the melting sweet butter that dripped and ran across their swollen bellies, restraining their flight. Music filled the background and the temporary voids that opened up when talk and laughter were put aside for a forkful of macaroni and cheese or a sip of plum wine.

Sugar smiled on top of the festivities, never quite feeling a part of them. No matter if she was quite often the subject of conversation. Seth and Joe retired full-bellied to the living room to watch the football game. Sugar and Pearl sat quietly at the table, picking at bits of sweet potato pie, their ears tuned in to the heavy male laughter a room away.

“Mamma, seeing that you cooked all this here food, I figure the least I can do is wash the dishes.” Seth stood at the doorway, his arms expanded as wide as an eagle’s wings. He yawned loudly. “If I don’t do something, I’m gonna fall asleep.” He smiled and walked toward the sink piled high with dishes. His eyes never touched Sugar.

“Joe asleep?” Pearl asked as she removed her apron. She didn’t seem to notice Seth’s apparent aversion to Sugar.

“You know he is.” Seth laughed and twisted his hand up to his mouth in a drinking motion. “I think he had too much plum wine.”

Pearl tied the apron around Seth’s waist and kissed him lovingly on the cheek. “Well, then I will certainly take you up on the offer.” She swatted him smartly on the behind and went to clear the remaining dishes and casseroles from the table.

“Miss Pearl, I’ll take care of that,” Sugar said and grabbed the plate from Pearl’s hand. She didn’t want to help. Would have been perfectly happy going home, running a bath and smoking a joint or having a tall glass of pike aid. But she wanted to show Seth that she was useful and not just a piece of garbage his mother had dragged in off the street.

“Well, okay,” Pearl said with a wink. “I’m going to sit down and watch myself a little television.”

At first the silence that surrounded the flowing water and clinking silverware was uncomfortable. Seth washed and Sugar dried. No talk. No eye contact. No brief smiles. Sugar reached to grab a plate from Seth and their fingers brushed, finally their eyes met and held. There was nothing for a long moment. Just a soundless circle around them. They could only hear the beating of their hearts. Not the rushing water or the static sounds of the television. Seth’s lips moved and the sound came rushing back in. But it was warped and confusing and Sugar found herself leaning closer to Seth, desperately wanting to know what those lips were trying to communicate.

Seth’s eyes widened and he pulled his head back. He too had been hurled into a zone of soundlessness. “What?” they both said in eager unison.

“You look a lot like Jude,” Seth said. His eyes walked carefully across Sugar’s face, pausing to examine her nose or to rest in the dip of her lip. Sugar returned to the table, answering him over her shoulder. “Yes. I know. I saw pictures.”

“I guess that’s why she likes you so much.” Seth cut the water off and turned, leaning his back against the sink, crossing his arms over his chest. He watched her walk away, sway away. Her movements brought a slight smile to his face. “She talks about you all the time.”

She smiled in spite of herself and was glad to hear the softness in his voice, the calm that for some unknown reason stirred and heated her insides. She did not respond; if she had her voice would have been light, her words a swirl of pink and white cotton candy on a May day. She couldn’t risk the silly in her, answering for her.

“Daddy seems to like you too,” Seth added and she heard his approaching footsteps. “Got my mamma to dye her hair and paint her fingernails,” he noted in mild amusement. He was beside her now, looking down on her, through her. His eyes voicing so much more than his mouth was prepared to say.

Sugar nodded her response but kept her eyes lowered, staring hard at the table, as her hand continued wiping at the invisible crumbs.

“I like it.” He leaned in and spoke close to her neck. She could feel his hot breath heavy with the scent of sweet potato pie. “I like it a lot. She looks twenty years younger. I think Daddy likes it too, although he probably ain’t never said nothing to you about it. Just ain’t his way.” And then his breath was gone. Sugar closed her eyes and longed for its return.

“Mamma says you from Short Junction, but spent most of your time in St. Louis.” He was sitting down, his long legs stretched out before him, his hands crossed over his chest. He was looking at Sugar, wanting her to look back. “She says you a singer. Is that so?”

“Why would your mamma tell you a lie?” It was out before she could stop it. She almost slapped herself right there in that kitchen. Right in front of Seth Taylor. Why couldn’t she just answer the question like a normal human being? She was being malicious for no reason. She raised her head to look at him, to apologize. But then she remembered his reaction toward her the night before and most of that afternoon, and decided he deserved it.

His eyebrows were hitched so high up on his forehead that they were touching his hairline. Her lashing words had caught him off guard. “W-well no, to the best of my knowledge, my mamma ain’t never told me a lie.” His words were surrounded by light laughter. He sparkled when he laughed. Sugar smiled.