Sugar (29 page)

Then he looked at her, lying there, her dress rolled up to her neck, a pool of blood covering her lower section, and he saw the eyes, wide open and staring. He saw himself in those eyes. He looked down at his life-taking hands and tried to shake away the murderous qualities they now possessed.

Lappy threw the young girl’s vagina beside her, and walked away, looking back once only to see if anyone was witness to his crime before continuing down the road toward Bigelow.

He’d found out the girl’s name a day later when the news of the murder spread like wildfire through ten towns.

Jude.

His hand tightened around Sugar’s throat again and then loosened. He did not want to choke the life from her, he wanted to beat it out of her.

“I’ma do you just like I did her. This time though, it’s gonna be sweeter ’cause you done gone and given me a reason to kill your ass!” He slapped her hard across her face and laughed.

It seemed as though the laughter went on for days. Sugar’s ears were filled with it and then suddenly he stopped. His face changed and he leaned in close to her until their noses touched. “You know,” he said with a slight look of wonder in his face,

“you kinda look like her.” They remained like that for some time. Noses touching. And then he laughed again and yelled, “Jude’s waiting for you!”

Heavy-fisted blows rained down on Sugar’s face until her nose spouted blood and her eyes swelled shut. His hands wrapped around her throat for the third time, stopping the passage of air, causing her chest to swell hot and the darkness behind her eyes to come forward and pull her in.

The howl of a wild animal is what yanked her back from death’s grip and into the swirling gray room. Sugar could not open her mouth and she believed it must have been cut away from her face, because she felt nothingness there. The howling increased and held on until the pitch became unbearable and then it faded, only to gain momentum seconds later. She realized, after some time, that the howling was not that of a wild animal, but the combination of wind and wild man.

Fire gauged itself through her navel, long flaming fingers reached out and ignited her womb so that no life would ever live there. The pain was a hurricane raging through her body seeking release in a scream that would never come.

She saw Jude’s eyes. Those young wet eyes. Like buckets of water, looking down on her. Looking sad for her. She wanted death and asked for it out loud, “God please let me die!”

Pearl saw Lappy leave beneath a black and mournful sky. The moon was hidden and not a star lent light. He left from the front door, same door he came through, except this time he didn’t close it. He left it open, swinging hopelessly in the wind.

Pearl huffed and shook her head in disgust. She’d not slept. Not even one wink. First sadness kept her awake, then anger, then concern and finally dread. Joe would not leave her, and so he settled himself in the living room on the couch.

Pearl looked out the window again. Lappy’s skin was glowing dim in the vast dark purple of the departing night. Red splattered his back, neck and hands, giving the illusion that
he
was wounded. Pearl watched, wondering if the lack of sleep was playing tricks on her eyes.

Lappy was whistling, his shirt thrown over one bare shoulder as he walked slowly toward his car. He stopped short of the driver’s side door and bent over and puked. Pearl’s hands came quickly to her mouth and her eyes widened. He turned around, feeling her presence, her watching eyes, and stared directly at the curtain that hid her. Puke dripped from the sides of his mouth and clung to his lower lip. His eyes seemed to glow, and the sight of them sent icy shivers up and down her spine. He smiled and then waved gaily at her.

Pearl’s heart was beating so loud and fast, she thought she would faint right then and there. He looked up toward the silent second floor of Sugar’s house and then climbed into his car and drove off.

Fear should have kept her welded to the spot behind the curtain. Fear should have sent her running to Joe’s sleeping side, but instead fear sent her running from the safety of her home and straight through that open front door up to Sugar’s room.

Pearl stood at the threshold of Sugar’s bedroom as the pre-dawn light melted away the gray of the room. There was a smell like wet steel lingering in the air. Her heart began to sink, sink deep into her chest, trying to hide from the sight it was sure awaited. She stepped in, and a feeling so familiar and horrible took her by the hand and led her to a place she had been fifteen years earlier.

Among the crumpled, blood-soaked sheets lay Sugar. Pearl reached down to touch the purple, swollen face of her friend and it was 1940 all over again.

This time, however, Pearl’s sanity was saved, by the grace of God, her sanity was saved. Sugar’s eyes fluttered and then opened.

Her voice found her, after fifteen years her voice came and Pearl screamed until her throat closed up and Joe stood beside her, shotgun in hand.

Hours later, Sugar heard voices around her. “She needs to be in a hospital.”

The voice came from above her. It was a stern disinfected voice. The sharp snap of rubber gloves followed the stringent words and then she heard Joe. “Well this here is the way we want it. No hospital, just home.”

“She could set up an infection in any number of places on her body. Was the police notified?”

“Dr. Williams, maybe you’ve forgotten where you are. This here is Bigelow. The law don’t care none about us and what we do to one another. It just don’t make no sense getting them involved in something they could only make worse, now do it?” Joe’s voice was calm, but his annoyance at the doctor’s ignorance was evident.

Sugar could hear footsteps and the voices of Joe and Dr. Williams fading as they traveled down the stairs and out the front door. She felt a cool wet cloth move slowly across her forehead, a hand constantly brushing against her own and the sound of rapid prayers.

She was alive. For some reason God had spared her. But Sugar would never look at it that way. She had asked God for only one thing in her entire life, and he had not granted it.

God had sent Sugar to the brink of death, dangled it before her and then snatched it away, hurling her back to Joe and Pearl Taylor. Three weeks and four days passed before Sugar was able to stand. Lappy had done a job on her. Cutting deep into her stomach, but somehow missing her vital organs. Bruised purple fingerprints remained wrapped around Sugar’s throat, broken skin around her cheekbones and the soft underside of her eyes would heal and scar blacker than her midnight skin.

She dropped down in weight, unwilling or unable to eat. She did not speak or let her eyes wander across the soft faces of her saviors. Joe’s strong arms lifted her from her bed and carried her gently from the room and into the bathroom. He sat her on the toilet, holding her body erect as Pearl undressed her, before he placed her into the warm soapy water of the bathtub. They washed her together. Husband and wife. Father and mother. They washed her as if she belonged to them.

They took turns feeding her or speaking small words of hope, faith and encouragement. The hugs came often accompanied by quiet easy kisses on the slope of her cheek and the brim of her head lulling her to sleep or waking her to the breaking day.

Time’s seamlessness enwrapped her and when the blue haze of hopelessness finally faded away into the morning mist of the twentieth day, Sugar decided that her time in Bigelow had come to an end.

“Miss Pearl.” Sugar’s words were not spoken, but seemed to be a part of a weary breath taken years earlier. Pearl turned slowly toward the dark living room and her heart stopped and started again with the first step she managed into the room.

“S-Sugar?” she said warily. “What you doing out of bed child.” She tried to make her tone light and rushed as if she had better things to do, but would take the time anyway. “C’mon, back to bed, you ain’t near well enough to be—”

“Pearl, please.” Sugar’s words came stronger now. “You look worse than me.” Pearl half-laughed, and moved into the small light that spilled in from the hallway. The swelling had gone down in Sugar’s face but it was easy to see it had been used as a punching bag. Her brown eyes were nothing more than brown pools of water. Her lips were puffed and black.

“You, well, you and Joe have done all you can for me. Look at you, here all day every day. All night every night. You got your own to worry about.” She coughed and Pearl took a step toward her. Sugar raised her hand to keep her away. “Stop, Pearl. You been doing for me for a long time. I don’t even know how long, but I knows it been a while. I want to thank you.” Her voice cracked. “Ain’t many people would have taken the time to care for the likes of me, and at first I gotta say that I was mad at ya’ll for doing it. Dead was the only place I wanted to be, but in time I realized that no matter how much I wanted it, I wasn’t getting it. Life’s funny like that sometime. I also wanna thank you for keeping the law outta this. It would have made no sense, really. Lappy like to be the devil himself, reporting what he done to me could only bring more harm than good. Thank you.”

She moved slowly to the couch and sat down, leaning forward briefly to put out her cigarette. Pearl was shaking. She had wanted with all her heart to call the police. She wanted Lappy Clayton to be hung from the nearest tree and his body left to whatever would have him. But Sugar had whispered no in her ear so many times after Pearl found her that she’d dreamed the word dancing around her for two nights straight. And so she did nothing, but hoped that Sugar, after she healed, would think differently and want justice to be done.

“I’m better now, not good as new, but I ain’t never been new, just borrowed, lent and given like secondhand things usually are. I am who I am, Miss Pearl, can’t no amount of soap and water change that.”

“Sugar.” Pearl felt despair clogging her throat, forcing tears from her eyes.

“I ain’t deserve a lot of what I got here in Bigelow,” Sugar continued. “I mean the good things, the things that made me smile, laugh and sing. I ain’t do much good for people in my life and so I really don’t know why so much good has come to me.” She shook her head in disbelief. “But I suppose that will all end now, seeing what I went and done to Seth.” Sugar found it hard to say his name now. Saying it was like a blade being dragged across her heart. “I ain’t get a chance to say sorry.” Her voice choked with emotion.

“You planning on leaving. To go where?” Pearl asked, trying to sound casual, to masquerade the panic that was growing inside of her. She wiped at her tears and forced a smile.

“Don’t know yet.”

“When you thinking about going?”

“Soon.”

Pearl looked around her. She tried to imagine herself without Sugar. She didn’t know who that might be, the person that existed before Sugar’s arrival was buried deep into the hard, dry memory of Bigelow next to the rotting bones of her baby girl. How could she be anything more with the loss of two in her life now?

It would do no good to beg against Sugar’s decision. Just as it had done no good to force Sugar into a role that she was unprepared for. Look at the damage that had been done already. Pearl could have kept Sugar close and not changed a thing about her, she was really fine as she was. Dark, loud and full of energy and song. Who said she had to be demure, low-key, with an unpainted face and a Christian clean soul? Does that make a good human being, a good and decent friend?

They would all have to learn to live with the misjudgment they’d made.

Sugar had another burden to bear, another secret to hide. Every time she looked at Joe or Pearl she heard Lappy’s words echoing in the forefront of her mind. Her decision had been made as soon as the words rolled out of Lappy’s mouth. If she lived she would never tell. Telling would only open old wounds that were still healing. Pearl and Joe didn’t deserve that kind of pain.

Jude was there all the time now, popping up beside her, hiding behind her eyelids and inviting herself into her dreams. The mirror reflecting her face, sometimes with those sad eyes, sometimes just her sweet face with deep black holes where her eyes should have been.

She was always there. A piece of lint on the blanket, a moon ray on the wall. Just there, floating and waiting. Taunting Sugar with her presence.

Sugar didn’t know whether she was trying to get her to stay or push her away. “What!” she would yell. “What do you want from me!” Those sad, wet eyes just stared back at her.

Sugar sat slumped on the bed. Staring at nothing in particular. Her sight was turned inward. Every once in a while her body would quiver and tremble, but just for a moment. And then her head would lift and she’d survey the room with quick darting eyes. She was afraid to take too much of it in at one time. The room where she carried out the business of pleasure, the room where Lappy Clayton had tried to carry out the business of killing. She blinked back the memory and shuddered.

It was during one of those episodes that she spotted the box. Small, wrapped in brown paper, resting on the dresser. Probably brought in by Pearl or Joe during one of their vigils. She walked over and examined it. It was a package, delivered through the mail. Her name and address was scrawled on top:

Sugar Lacey
#10 Grove Street
Bigelow, Arkansas

In the far corner, the return address was written:

Mae Lacey
Duncan Road
Short Junction, Arkansas

Sugar stood there for a moment, not sure if she should open it or not. She cocked her head sideways, trying to help her mind tell her what to do next.

She felt the room cool. The wind suddenly died outside her window, but she felt a breeze pick up around her ankles. It swirled slowly, almost lovingly around her calves, edging its way up her thighs, hips and waist, until finally she was enwrapped.

“Mama?” Sugar muttered and then jumped at her own voice. Her hands went up to her mouth and her fingers touched her lips in awe.

With trembling hands she tore at the brown paper that secured the box. Tore through its many layers—layers that at times seemed like skin—until she reached the lid. She removed the top and her nose was accosted with the scent of lavender. Dozens of aged yellow envelopes that carried her name in delicate, fading black ink lay before her.