Sugar (4 page)

Now this white soldier lay clinging to the last threads of life, his insides scattered around him, war sounds echoing in his ears and turns to Joe. “Please,” he utters, because he’s scared of death and does not want to die alone among bombs and bullets. It no longer matters to the soldier that Joe is Negro or colored. All that matters is that he is there.

Joe has read the Bible and the Good Book says: Forgive and forget and love thy neighbor. With these words in mind, Joe lays his gun down and takes the dying man in his arms. Carefully, tenderly like a fragile newborn he rocks and shushes the man as the soldier whimpers at the sight of his blood running from his open wounds and seeping into the earth. Joe lulls the man into the afterlife, places his head gently on the ground, closes the lids over his empty eyes, retrieves his gun and continues to fight for a freedom he would never be fully entitled to.

It was back in the evenings, when Pearl made her way home from washing, ironing and cleaning all that wasn’t hers and would never be hers, she’d stop and stand for hours as close to the men as possible to listen in on their talk.

They gathered in small bunches outside the Rib Shack, spitting distance from the hat shop where Pearl stood, pretending to admire the hats in the window, while eavesdropping on their conversation.

Pearl had listened to Bigelow’s young men tell their stories of war and love. She smiled as they imitated the
oui oui
s and
Bonjour
s of the pale thin-lipped French women who would do what the colored women wouldn’t.

She listened, while her stomach twisted and turned as Mickey Johnson described how they sawed off his ravaged leg while he watched, a block of wood clenched between his teeth.

Izzy Cox told of a man who fought for two days, his intestines hanging from his stomach like snakes. “How the hell did that boy fight like that, Izzy?” a doubtful voice from the crowd asked.

“That nigga put his guts in a bowl, took the nylons he was gonna bring back home to his woman, and bound it tight around his waist.” No one said a word. “That boy had some Indian in ’im,” Izzy added, and used his finger to make a swirling motion near his temple. The crowd of men nodded knowingly. A man was bound to do anything once he had some Indian in him. Everybody knew Indians were crazy.

After that story, Pearl didn’t go around them for a few days. She couldn’t get the picture out of her mind and had a hard time eating out of a bowl.

It was during one of those late afternoons that she first heard Joe Taylor speak. She’d seen him standing tall. Always quiet, maybe brooding. She did not know.

He spoke with a voice so low and deep, it reminded Pearl of rolling thunder before a late summer storm. His voice, like the thunder, caught you off guard, and before you knew it lightning bolts were dancing among the clouds and painting the blackened sky with streaks of bluish gold. That’s how Pearl remembered it. His voice shook her and she unfixed her gaze on a wide-brimmed black hat with white imitation ostrich feathers. She tilted her head slightly to the side and snatched a quick look at the man that caused her soul to quake.

“Yup, that sure was some pretty countryside. Rolling hills and all. When I was there it reminded me a little of right here. I had a mind to just keep on going after it was all done,” he said while studying the palm of his massive hand.

“Black men ain’t never been nothing but chattel to these here white folks. Always been that way, always will be that way.” The men fell quiet around him, lost in the thoughts brought about by Joe’s statement.

Joe continued, “I can’t say that I was proud to fight for my country, not say it and be truthful ’bout it. But I can say I felt proud when I looked around and saw the white men fall, bleed and die just like the colored.”

One of the men, Benny Parks, who’d lost an eye in the war, cocked his head sideways so he could take all of Joe in with that one good eye, and asked in total bewilderment, “Now why would that make you feel proud, Joe? How death gonna make you feel proud?” The rest of the men kind of leaned in closer in anticipation of his answer.

Joe started off in the slow easy manner he was accustomed to. “I felt proud because there was the proof right there on the battlefield that we was men just like them. Not monkeys or some ornery creature that hid its tail in its pants. But men that bled the same red blood.” The men milled Joe’s words around in their minds for a bit, digesting each syllable and allowing it to restructure itself within them. Each of these men would repeat these words in separate company, claiming them for their own.

“I guess that is something to be proud of, Joe. Yup, hadn’t thought of it that way,” Benny Parks said.

Their stories propelled her to approach the group. She knew most of the men. “How ya’ll doing this afternoon? Benny. Char-lie. Gibson.” She called off the names she knew and nodded a greeting to those she didn’t. When she got to Joe, she nodded and fixed her eyes on his for what seemed like an eternity. Gibson spoke first. He was a scrawny man, smallest one of the group. Only action he caught during the war was the hard sole of a soldier’s boot making contact with his jaw as he bent to remove a slop bucket full of shit and piss.

“Why, Miss Pearl, ’bout time you stopped staring at them hats and come over and say hello. How’s your mamma and daddy doing?” Gibson asked, taking in Pearl’s Coca-Cola-bottle figure.

“Oh they just fine,” Pearl said, glancing back at Joe. A wry, knowing smile briefly surfaced on Gibson’s lips. “Pearl, you remember Joe Taylor, don’t you? This Mike and Cora Taylor’s boy from down round Hancock way . . . near Jessie’s farm.” Gibson turned to Joe and continued, “This here is Henry and Belle Mason’s girl.”

Joe squinted at Pearl. “Yup, sure do remember you. Your daddy drive for the McHenrys, don’t he?” He continued, answering his own question, “Yup, I seen him in that shiny fancy car, carting them look-alike girls through here to wherever.” His attention turned back to the palm of his hand. Just as Pearl was about to agree with him, Joe looked up to meet her gaze. “Yup, you the one usta come to church with all them pretty dresses on. I sure did think you all was rich. You and them fine dresses.”

Pearl gushed with sweet embarrassment. “Oh, yeah. I mean, naw we ain’t rich. But you remember that?” She sure didn’t remember him.

“Yup, I remember when we was leaving, me and my family, going down to Florida, you know, for work and all. I remember you was standing down underneath that old maple tree that usta be near Boones Ridge. Whatever happened to the tree? Anyway, we was on our way out, and you was standing there trying to keep from getting wet, the rain was just starting to fall. Pink bows. Pink shoes. You sure was small. My mamma saw you, pointed you out to the rest of us. I remember she called to Papa, told him to look at that pretty little bit of a girl dressed in pink under that maple tree.”

Soft chuckles floated up from the group of men like small butterflies. Joe just said whatever came to mind, didn’t care who heard it or their thoughts or opinions on it.

“Uh-huh, I remember that day like it was yesterday.” Finished, he turned back to examining his palm. Pearl was speechless for a minute or two. She could not even recall that day. She couldn’t have been more than four or five years old. She could feel red warmth climb from her bosom up to her neck and then spread across her face. “Well,” she said in a voice that sounded a bit too high. “I best be going. It was nice talking with ya’ll,” she said as she hastened to depart the company of the man that seemed to say all the right things.

“I believe you best be going.” Joe agreed and looked up into the darkening sky. “Sun is dipping pretty low. I think it best if ’n I escort you home.”

He didn’t ask, he just said it and there was no trying to talk him out of it. And Pearl didn’t want to. He moved to her side and fell into step.

That was the first of many walks home. Joe claimed her. Claimed her petite build and brown skin. Full bosom and long lashes. The crease behind her knees and the scar under her chin. They all belonged to him. He didn’t have to say it aloud. Everyone knew she was his and respected it.

He came to her one day with a bouquet of wildflowers, and handed it to her on their fourth walk home. He told her it was time for him to meet her parents and explain his intentions.

Joe took a job with the railroad to supplement the money he was making at the cannery. He wanted to marry Pearl and place her in their own home as soon as possible. The extra money would enable him to do just that.

He got down on his knees, right in front of Henry and Belle Mason, and asked for Pearl’s hand in marriage. He pulled a pink silk ribbon from his pocket with a tiny gold band with a wisp of a diamond tied to the end. Belle Mason broke into tears and Henry Mason nodded his approval and with a big grin and wet eyes, he slapped Joe hard on the back.

They were married in the one-hundred-year-old Baptist church and celebrated steps away in the area where the old maple once stood that shielded Pearl from the rain and allowed Joe Taylor the first look at his future.

Chapter Three

S
UGAR
sat still in the darkness of her living room and looked through the window at the approaching dawn. She hadn’t been able to sleep a whole night since she arrived in Bigelow, and for the past eight mornings she had sat smoking and watching the sun slip up and over the horizon and settle itself snugly into the sheltering sky. She would remain there long after noon, her mind wandering through a jungle of memories until sleep finally took her.

She shifted and lit another cigarette. The smoke danced in the thin stream of light that filtered through the window and Sugar felt self-pity slip into her soul as she reminisced on her life so far.

It seemed to her that getting ahead was something reserved for people that already had their feet placed one in front of the other. Sugar, well, she guessed she was just born with both feet turned backward, ’cause every step she took placed her one step closer to where she’d been instead of where she was trying to get.

Her mother gave her up before the cord had stiffened and fallen off.

She was born just thirty miles down the road, in Short Junction. A town not unlike Bigelow; tract houses, and a general store that carried everything you wanted and some things you didn’t. A bank that was barely open twice a week since colored folk deposited their money in jars, buried it in their yards or stuffed it in their mattresses. They hid their money in a shoe or hat box and placed it on the top shelf of their closets, behind the box that held the family mementos. Most often, though, they placed it between the pages of their Bibles, believing God would watch over it. No, wasn’t much need for a bank in Short Junction, but it was there anyway.

There was a church that doubled as a school during the week. Sugar never went there to learn or pray. But it was there just the same.

People in Short Junction grew their own vegetables and slaughtered their own hogs and chickens. They washed their clothes by hand in large tin tubs, scrubbing them clean with lye soap that ate at your skin long after your hands were through using it. People hung their clothes out on ropes that ran from their houses to the buckeye trees that could be found in everyone’s backyards. The noonday sun bleached their whites and nurtured the spinach, tomato and potatoes that grew in their gardens.

Short Junction’s residents traveled ten, fifteen and sometimes twenty miles a day to work. They worked in nearby Sunflower, Beacon and Jamison counties, cleaning white folks’ homes and raising their kids. And at night they’d travel back to Short Junction to clean their own homes and raise their own children.

On Sundays, there was church service and a lot of whooping and hollering in the name of Jesus Christ and after service they would gather on the lawn in front of the church and devour fried chicken, macaroni pie, baked sweet potatoes and potato salad until the sun went down.

I guess you would say Short Junction was a family town, filled with people that cared about one another, but Sugar was never a part of that family.

Three sisters, the Lacey women (as they were known), took Sugar in and called her their own. Their history became her history.

They owned a big house that sat right outside the city limits of Short Junction. This house was willed to them by their mother, Gwen Lacey. Gwen was a half-breed, the product of her slave mother, Abbey, and slave master, John Lacey.

It was said that John Lacey purchased Abbey for eight hundred dollars, outbidding two others who also wanted the strong backed, ebony beauty. John Lacey had stood before Abbey, pretending to examine her teeth for decay and her gums for disease, but his eyes never once left hers. He was smitten immediately and his knees went weak at the closeness of her. His hands trembled as he passed them over her long, strong arms and down the sides of her thighs. To him, her skin felt like silk and her scent was like newly turned earth. His heart beat hard in his chest and his manhood, dormant for so many years, strained against his fine wool slacks.

He did not intend to fall in love with a Negroid woman; he had tried to find love in the simple smiles of the lily white virgins of Short Junction and the other surrounding towns. Tried until he could no longer stomach the gardenia perfume that rose like smoke from their cleavage. He feebly campaigned against other bachelors that matched his wealth and status (it was required, otherwise he might have been labeled a queer) for the arched wrists and dainty hands of blond-haired, blue-blood maidens whose mouths promised eternal love. But John knew their love would run gone if he could no longer provide the gold, silk and jewelry these women claimed were necessary for their survival.

He loved Abbey as a man should love a woman, no matter the color. He gave her his name, his seed and the left side of his bed for twenty years. And when he died, he left her and their daughter everything he’d ever owned.

Gwen Lacey was nearly grown when John Lacey died, and his relatives came and pillaged what they could. Fine linens, furniture and jewelry. They cussed Abbey and spit in Gwen’s face as they tore the fine velvet curtains down from the windows and removed the silverware from the kitchen drawers.