Shaking the Sugar Tree (24 page)

Is that why she wouldn’t come to see me?

I don’t understand.

She died. Is that why she wouldn’t come visit me?

She was sick,
I repeated, not wanting to answer his question.

She was sick and she died?

Yes.

Where is she now?

She has to go to heaven and talk to Jesus.

When people go to heaven, it means they’re gone and won’t come back.

I know.

She’s not coming back?

No.

Why?

She can’t.

Is it because of me?

No, sweetie.

Will she come back if she doesn’t have to see me?

She’s gone now. She can’t come back.

But….

His words failed at that point. He could not find the right signs to ask what was on his mind.

Is she mad at me because I’m dumb?

You’re not dumb. And she’s not mad at you.

I don’t understand.

She had an accident and she died. It’s not your fault. She wasn’t mad at you.

He was quiet for long moments, trying to work this through in his mind.

Are you going to die too?
he asked.

No,
I said, lying again.

I don’t understand because I’m stupid.

Don’t say that!

It’s true
, he insisted
. I
’
m stupid! I’m a big big stupid!

You’re a little boy. There are many things you don’t understand yet, but someday you will when you get older and bigger. When I was young like you, my grandmother died and I didn’t understand either. Your Memaw told me she had to go to heaven and talk to Jesus.

Did Jesus take care of her?

Yes,
I said.
He’ll take care of your mother now, too. She won’t be sick anymore. He’ll make sure she’s all right. You don’t have to worry about her now. Someday we’ll go to heaven too and we’ll talk to Jesus and we’ll see her again and she’ll be fine.

His face was full of concentration as he thought about this.

Okay,
he said at last.
But I miss her.

I know.

Does she miss me?

I know she does, sweetie.

I sat on the couch and pulled him close. He rested his head on my shoulder and began to cry softly. His tears quickly became bewildered, full of pain and confusion and hurt.

Better out than in, is my motto, so I let him cry and didn’t interfere. Seeing him in such pain, I cried a little too, and that’s how my mother found us about forty minutes later when she let herself in the front door to the apartment and offered a worried, anxious look.

She sat down on the recliner and Noah went to her like the little boy that he was, crawling onto her lap and throwing himself at her mercy, burying his face against her bosom.

“You told him?” she asked.

“Of course. I’ll fix us something for dinner. When he quiets down, maybe you can give him a bath. He’s been playing with Keke all day and he’s a bit stinky.”

“You should let him bathe himself.”

“Normally I do,” I said, “but rather than just telling him you love him and care about him and you’ll be there for him during this painful, difficult period of his life, why not show him? Why not just get all kinds of extravagant with your affections and pretend like you really love him?”

The sarcasm in my voice was painfully evident.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I promised myself I wasn’t going to fight with you.”

“Then don’t.”

“The problem is that you’re just like me.”

“I doubt that,” I said.

“In many ways, you are,” she said. “You always know what you want and you don’t know how to give in. And of course, you know best.”

I was going to say that wasn’t true, but actually it was. I
did
know best, and I never gave in.

“Does this mean
you
don’t know how to give in?” I asked.

“I’m learning. You?”

“If I hadn’t learned to compromise and give in, y’all would have burned me at the stake a long time ago. I still have to watch my back.”

“Is that how you feel?”

“Well, yes,” I said. “I’m the one with the busted lip.”

“How is it?”

“Customers keep asking who beat me up.”

“What do you say?”

“I tell them my mama did it because I said her fried chicken tasted like KFC.”

She laughed in spite of herself.

“I
would
hit you for that,” she agreed.

Noah was quiet now, his thumb in his mouth. Mama noticed it, frowned.

“Leave it,” I said. “He does that when he’s upset.”

“But he’s almost ten!”

“Leave it, Mama. Honest to Christ!”

“Fine,” she said. “Maybe you know best.”

I don’t think I had ever heard her say such a thing.

“Kayla’s being handled by Mortimer,” she added quietly, referring to Mortimer Funeral Home in New Albany.

“You’re coming with me?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

“Her dad will be pissed off.”

“Let him,” she said. “I wouldn’t pick my nose for that man.”

“I think Noah’s going to sleep,” I said.

I moved him so that he could stretch out on the sofa and sleep, his head on my mother’s lap. His eyes looked especially dark from crying. I put the fan on rotate.

“I’ll get a pillow,” I said.

“I’ll just sit here with him,” she said, stroking his hair. “How did he take it?”

“He got really upset.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s not like he knows her.”

“It didn’t bother him until he started going to school and realized other kids had both mothers and fathers. I think it’s the idea that bothers him, the concept of having a mom. He doesn’t know how to talk about it yet.”

“Whoever heard of a mother rejecting her own child?”

“You reject me,” I pointed out.

“I do not!” she exclaimed.

“You don’t accept me as I am. You love me because you have to, not because you like me.”

“Is that what you think?”

“It’s the truth.”

“I want you to be happy.”

“You want me to experience your version of happiness,
or
what you think happiness is, or is supposed to be. To me, your kind of happiness is complete hell. I’m not attracted to women. The thought of having sex with them makes me a little sick, to be honest. You keep telling me that’s what God wants from me, and I keep telling you that’s a bunch of crap because it is. That can’t possibly be what God wants from me.”

“You had sex with Kayla,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, and I thought about guys the whole time just so I could get it up.”

“Wiley!”

“It’s true.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“No, I’m not, Mama. It was embarrassing. I felt stupid. It just wasn’t right, and I knew it wasn’t right. My conscience told me it was wrong, and we stopped after a couple of months because I just couldn’t do it any longer.”

Her mouth fell open.

“Don’t be surprised. I
do
have a conscience.”

“I often wonder,” she said.

“My conscience tells me it’s wrong to have casual sex with anybody and everybody. And I never have. Well, at least not very often. I think you should love somebody before you get your willy out.”

“I would hope so.”

“It’s kind of weird talking about sex with you,” I said.

“Don’t make a habit of it. I’ve got enough gray hair as it is. How is your friend?”

“Jackson?”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t talk to him anymore.”

“Why on earth not?”

“He’s a drug addict. I found a bunch of prescription medications in his bathroom. They didn’t have labels so I’m assuming he stole them from the pharmacy at the hospital.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Yet more proof that I have a conscience,” I said. “I would never in a million years let someone like that hang around Noah. He was a good kisser, though. Have to give him credit for that.”

“You really broke up with him?”

“Of course.”

“But you haven’t dated anyone in so long.”

“Like you care.”

“Well, maybe I do, Wiley. He seemed like a nice enough fellow.”

“Are you feeling all right?” I asked, surprised she would say something positive about one of my boyfriends.

“I’m not the wicked witch you make me out to be,” she said primly. “I want you to be happy.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Don’t fight with me, Wiley,” she said earnestly. “I can’t stand it when you fight with me.”

“Stop judging me and hating me, and I’ll stop fighting with you.”

“I’m trying,” she said simply.

I was at a loss for words, so I said nothing.

“I talked to Father Ginderbach about you and Noah,” she said quietly. “I went to confession, actually.”

“Why?”

“Because I feel like it’s all my fault.”

“What’s your fault?”

“You,” she said. “Noah. I always wanted the best for you. For both of you, you and Billy, and you and Noah. But I feel like I failed, like I did something wrong and I just don’t know what it is.”

“That’s bullcrap.” I said.

“That’s what Father Ginderbach said.”

“Really?”

“Really,” she said. “He said you were an adult now and you had to make your own moral choices, that you seemed like a nice man, that Noah seemed like a really nice boy, and it was time for me to stop getting in your way and be supportive and help you as best I could.”

“He said
that
?”

“He’s not like Father George, that’s for sure.”

“Thank God for small favors,” I said. “I’m sure altar boys all over Union County will sigh with relief.”

“He’s a bit liberal,” Mama admitted.

“Maybe God is too,” I suggested.

“Maybe,” Mama said.

T
HERE
ARE
days when I quite enjoy my job, when it’s fun to take care of customers and make sure everyone is happy, when there’s excitement and energy in the air as we collectively struggle to cope with steady streams of customers.

This was not one of those days.

This was one of those Saturdays that seemed to go on and on, as if my five-hour shift had suddenly become five hundred. Glancing at the clock only made it worse, only pointed out how the minutes crawled by like a bug in molasses. This was a day when every customer had a problem, or a bunch of coupons, or a complaint, or an item that needed a price check. Everyone was in a desperate hurry. Three of my customers “forgot” their debit cards and ran off, leaving my register stuck in the middle of a transaction with no way to bail out of it except to call over the duty manager. Every other customer, it seemed, had to end the transaction by laboriously writing out a check and taking their sweet time about it as if they were doing the world a favor by remaining true to checks and not simply getting a debit card like normal people.

It’s hard work to run a countless stream of items through a scanner, especially when many of those items are heavy or bulky, like bags of dog food, or cases of soda and beer, or big fat watermelons, not to speak of those Christless boxes of cat litter that weigh a frikkin’ ton.

I glanced down my line at just past noon, saw a big queue, and sighed.

Tyrone bagged my groceries, looking so mad I’m surprised none of the customers complained to Mr. Owen.

I turned to him and drew a smile on my lips.

He bared his teeth.

I grinned.

I thought I might actually die before two o’clock rolled around.

At five minutes to two, Jackson Ledbetter showed up in my line carrying a dozen red roses and a box of chocolates.

Oh hell
, I thought, my heart sinking.

“Hi,” he said.

“How are ya?” I asked automatically.

“You’d know if you returned my calls,” he said easily.

I ran his flowers and chocolates through my scanner.

“Will that be all for you?”

“They’re not for me, they’re for you,” he said, opening his wallet and finding a credit card.

“You don’t have to do that,” I said.

“I want to.”

“You misunderstand me,” I said. “‘You don’t have to do that’ is a Southern expression for ‘stop embarrassing me, you frikkin’ bastard you.’”

“Is it really?” he asked with a smile.

I handed the flowers to Tyrone, put the chocolates in a bag myself, and handed them to Jackson, along with his receipt.

“You have a good day,” I said.

“These are for you,” he said, taking the chocolates out of the bag and putting them on the bottom end of the conveyor belt.

“Are you really going to do this to me, right here on my job?” I asked.

“Well, you won’t call me.”

Tyrone grinned for the first time that day. When I glanced at him somewhat angrily, he drew a smile over his lips and raised his eyebrows.

Bastard.

“Jack,” I said quietly. “Take your flowers. Take your chocolates. Take your prescription medications that you probably stole from the pharmacy where you work, and take your excuses and your phone calls and your messages and everything else and stuff them straight up your bony Yankee ass and don’t bother me while I’m working. That’s Southern for fuck off.”

“I quit the pills,” he said. “Please, Wiley. I need your help. I know you’re mad, but won’t you at least talk to me?”

“Take your things and go, and I’ll think about it,” I offered, wanting to get him off my line.

“Who knew you were such a bitch?” he asked, offended.

“Who knew you were a drug addict?” I countered.

His face clouded over with embarrassment.

Tyrone continued to stand at the end of my line, grinning like a Cheshire
cat.

“At least talk to me,” he said. “I’ll wait for you outside.”