Sugar (30 page)

She removed the envelopes, one by one, first bringing them close to her nose and smelling the lavender, then moving them across her cheek and down her neck. She could feel her mother. For the first time she could really feel her mother. She laughed, a tearful sorrowful laugh as she opened the letters.

Each envelope held thin sheets of paper that carried words so unbelievable, yet so believable that there would be no decision for her to make. It had been made while she lingered in her mother’s womb, a wisp of balled flesh, a secret not yet known.

They all began the same: “My dear sweet child.”

And closed simply: “Mother.”

The letters revealed a life filled with suffering. They told of a sliver of time when Bertie took love for herself beneath the watchful eye of the moon and her glowing children. It explained her choice to abandon a perfect ebony child because of her fear of inherited madness and the cancerous guilt that manifested itself into the tumor that consumed her body and finally extinguished her life.

“. . . He knows nothing about you and I hope he never will.”

Sugar’s hands trembled violently as she held each letter and read aloud the life of a woman she never knew. She hoped her father’s name would be revealed to her among the words that spilled out in jagged black ink. But it never was and then she came upon the picture.

There was her mother, young and beautiful, her hair pulled back, her skin glowing, a shy smile across her face, nothing like the sadness that blanketed her in the first picture Sugar had. A young man stood bashfully beside her, tall, dark and incredibly handsome. Their bodies didn’t touch as they posed awkwardly for the camera. Sugar pulled the picture closer to her face, even though it was quite evident who the man was. She saw her own features sketched in his face. She saw Seth’s features in his face. She turned the picture around and her mother’s handwriting confirmed what she already knew to be true:
Me and Joe 1939
.

Days later, Sugar set her bags just inside the entrance of the church doors. Visible for all to see. She wanted them to know that they’d won. Their God had heard their prayers. She was leaving.

“On the eve of our Lord’s birth.” That’s what the Reverend called it, and that’s the way Sugar would always remember it.

Pearl looked up in surprise when Sugar appeared beside her. She nudged Joe to scoot down some so as to make room for Sugar in the pew. Even when the space was made Sugar stood staring at them for a good long while. Her focus moved slowly from Pearl to Joe, resting on him for some time before it moved back to Pearl.

She looked as she did when she waltzed into Bigelow behind the crazed winter of ’54-’55, except her skin was the color of what flames leave behind after they danced across the walls of a poor man’s house. Her eyes, never much to sparkle, were now black holes.

Pearl’s hands went up and across her mouth. Sugar looked so vulnerable and at that moment she looked more like Jude than ever before.

Whispers filled the spaces between the Reverend’s words as the people of Bigelow muttered under their breath. Word had gotten out about the attack, and no one was up in arms about it. Who was Sugar? Certainly not a Jude. She belonged to no one and nowhere. A whore.

At the height of the Reverend’s sermon, Sugar stood up. Tiny waterfalls of sweat spilled down his face and his voice rose to a holler while his hands gripped the sides of the podium, steadying his Jesus jumping. He caught sight of her and stopped dead. The congregation was thrown and turned to see what he was looking at. Sugar was walking now. Straight toward him. Her feet hit the floorboards hard and with great intent. The Reverend had taken more than a few steps backward. His heart raced. His thoughts filled with the memories of the wicked, stolen pleasures he’d shared with the woman that was now in his face. He held his breath and felt the blood drain from his head down to his feet.

Sugar was looking at the Reverend, but not seeing him. She turned on the congregation. A combined breath was taken and for a moment, there was no sound at all. Sugar looked down on the people of Bigelow and they looked back at her. Waiting.

Then suddenly, like a fledgling breeze before an approaching storm, whispers rose up from the pews, filling the emptiness until the church walls groaned and the whispers became a raging gale of shouts and screams.

“Sit down, girl!”

“You done lost your mind? The Reverend is preachin’!”

“Lord, she ain’t got the good sense God gave her.”

Sugar stood before the congregation, her head hanging heavy on the stick that was her neck. And then she spoke with a voice that betrayed her grief and disguised the hopelessness that was eating away at her senses.

“Ain’t but two of ya’ll in this church ever made me feel welcomed here,” Sugar began. She raised her hand and pointed a shaking finger toward Joe and Pearl.

Clair Bell, Minnie and Shirley twisted uncomfortably in their seats, and pulled at the collars of their dresses. “I’m leavin’ here tonight,” she continued, “but not without sayin’ some things that need to be said.”

The men who’d laid down with her squeezed their legs shut and scratched at the spaces behind their ears and beneath their chins, bracing themselves against the truths they thought she would tell.

“I wanna say to Joe”—she raised her head high and looked directly at him—“and Miss Pearl, that ya’ll been like family to me. I appreciate you looking on me with warm eyes, talkin’ to me like I was somebody, treatin’ me like I was your own.” She choked on “your own,” giving it all the meaning it deserved. The sound of those two words placed together caught some people’s attention as they slipped from her mouth.

Sugar’s eyes did not welcome those faces into view. Her eyes rested solely on her Joe and Pearl. Her words were meant for those two only. “I wanna say sorry for the things I did and the things I didn’t do and I wanna thank you, for everything.”

Anna Lee smiled and turned her head to exchange a triumphant glance with Fayline.

Sugar walked slowly down the aisle, away from the pulpit and toward the door.

A quiet peace had settled over Sugar. A peace she had never known in all her years. Even as she walked past the sad staring eyes of Joe and Pearl, the good-riddance looks from the Bigelow women and the forlorn glances of the Bigelow men, she was not fazed. Her hurt had been replaced with tranquility. The anger that had laid heavy in her heart for so many years was no longer present in her mind and soul. It had dissolved with each step she took toward the pulpit and each word she spoke to those who cared for her.

Pearl willed herself to stay seated. She kept telling herself, “She ain’t yours. Let her go.” She repeated these words over and over in her mind until they escaped from her mouth in a moan. She dug her fingers deep into the soft underside of Joe’s arm and rocked herself back and forth.

Joe’s eyes teared for the third time in his adult life. The first time was when he promised himself to his wife. The second time, when he lifted the cold, dead body of his baby girl, and now. He could not give reason as to why he felt so impassioned. It would be one year later before he would understand why his heart had opened and allowed his emotions to slip down his face.

Pearl was losing another one. Only this time, she would not have to bend over a pine box to say a final good-bye.

No, this was worse.

This time the sound would come like a flood. It started deep in Pearl’s belly and rose in her throat like lava; hot and steaming. Fifteen years of loss. Fifteen years of grief. Fifteen years of anguish finally spewed forth and shook the church’s insides and everyone who had the misfortune of being there.

Black John braced himself. He did not have the comfort of his straw hat. His hands moved around his lap, searching for consolation, until finally clasping on to those of his neighbor.

Sugar, already out the door, never heard the great wail of emotion released at her back. If she had, the depth alone of Pearl’s sorrow would have spun her around.

Sugar barely noticed the biting cold and brutal wind that had its way with her as she walked down the path that led from the church to the street that would place her firmly back onto the familiar road of her life.

One step forward, two steps backward. Two steps backward. One step forward.

AFTER

FALL 1956

I
GOT
some people from over in Carnery wanna come on over here and check out the house.” A white man with a beet-red face and a tan plaid jacket looked in at Pearl through the screen door. It was barely ten o’clock and the temperature had already soared to eighty degrees. “They told me that you all got the keys to the place,” he continued.

Pearl couldn’t tell if the heat was making him uncomfortable or the fact that he was talking to a black woman with a blank face. She looked him over and without a word, turned and walked away.

“Ma’am?” The white man was confused. He took out his paper and looked down at the name and address again. He was at the right place. He cussed under his breath and was about to turn to go back to his car when Joe came to the screen door. The white man was short, so he had to tilt his head way back to meet Joe’s eyes.

“You need the keys to number ten?” Joe pushed the door open a crack.

“Uh, yes,” the man said, scratching his head.

“Just a minute.” Joe let the screen door close again. When he came back he had one lone silver key in hand. “Lemme come on over there with you, the lock is a little funny, you gotta jiggle it just right.”

The white man nodded and pulled his handkerchief out of his back pocket to wipe at his forehead and the back of his neck. He had to half run and half walk to keep up with Joe’s long strides. He finally caught up and stuck out his hand. “Tommy Cathers,” he said. Joe considered his sweaty palm and then took it into his own. “Joe Taylor.”

“Uh, this house been up for near a year now. We just got this listing two weeks ago. You had a lotta people out here looking at it?”

“A few.” Joe hesitated before he took the steps up to #10.

“Really. You know the people that usta live here?”

Joe didn’t answer; he was jiggling the lock. He hadn’t been in the house for almost as long as Sugar had been gone. A month after she left someone came and placed a FOR SALE sign in the front yard.

The door was open and Joe stepped back to let the man in.

“Thanks . . . Joe,” the man said and hesitantly stepped into the house.

Joe stood, peering into the dusty emptiness. He half expected Sugar to come swaggering around a corner or down the stairs. He closed his eyes and wished it hard, because Sugar had taken part of his wife with her. But when he opened them all he saw was the white man’s red face staring back at him. “You okay?” the man asked, genuine concern in his voice. That’s all he needed was this colored man to pass out or drop dead with no witnesses. Not with all of the civil rights stuff going on down there; he didn’t want to be blamed for anything.

“Yeah,” Joe said and turned to leave.

He was halfway back to his house when the white man came out to the porch, calling to him. Joe looked down and realized that he still had the key clutched tightly in his hand. “Probably want to keep it,” he thought to himself and turned back toward #10.

The white man was grinning and holding something in his hand.

“It was laying on the floor near the fireplace. Burnt a little ’round the edges, but still clear.” The white man’s voice was excited. “I almost threw it in the trash, but I looked at it and realized it was you.”

Joe sighed. The heat and this man’s babbling were toying with his patience. He took the picture from the man and stared at it. His heart skipped a beat. His breath shortened and then he turned and sat heavily down on the stairs.

It was him. Him and Bertie Mae.

“That’s you, ain’t it?” the man bellowed and slapped his knee in triumph.

Joe stared long and hard at the picture. Stared into the truth he’d tried to avoid the whole time Sugar was there. He didn’t need a picture of him and Bertie Mae to see that she was a clear product of the two of them—he’d thought it the first time he saw her, but had convinced himself otherwise. Now he stood, his stature a bit stooped, and placed the picture safely in the breast pocket of his shirt.