Sugar (5 page)

They wanted the house too, but the will was legal and binding and they could do nothing about that.

I, John Lacey, give and bequeath to Abbey, a woman of color, formerly my slave but since emancipated and with whom I have had one daughter called Gwen, the sole and exclusive right to the house and property it sits on as well as the horses, cattle and all the monies of which I die possessed.

John Lacey 1858

“Mark my words . . . that nigga better enjoy this while she can, ’cause she and that beast she calls a child won’t be here for long!” a cousin of John Lacey screamed after a lengthy and heated argument with Samuel Gittens, John Lacey’s lawyer and confidant. The cousin stormed out of the house, but not before grabbing the silver candlesticks from their place over the fireplace.

Abbey Lacey was not illiterate; John Lacey had made sure of that. She in turn taught their daughter, Gwen. Gwen Lacey, who was high in color, with long tight curls that hung about her face giving her a wild, seductive look, was a rebellious child and remained the same way into adulthood. Gwen was courted by many men, black and white, but in the end chose a man named Isaac Thorpe who was half Chickasaw and half black.

Isaac was a gambler and a hustler. He was a smooth-talking, handsome man that wooed Gwen into allowing him to move into her home. Abbey was completely against it, warning her daughter that this man she thought she loved was something less than genuine in his claims of love for her. Gwen fought her tooth and nail, reminding her mother that this was her house too and she had all rights to place under the roof any person or persons she chose.

Abbey and Gwen argued even as Isaac Thorpe’s heavy, muddy boots announced his arrival.

Isaac turned the seven-bedroom house into a brothel, convincing Gwen that this was good business by adorning her with beautiful dresses and jewelry bought with the money he made from the misuse of flesh. In return, over time, Gwen gave Issac three beautiful, bright-eyed baby girls.

As the years passed, he brought in Creole women from Louisiana and Seminoles from Florida to work. “Add a bit of variety for the customers,” he said aloud. And for himself. But he kept that thought secret.

The first time Gwen caught Isaac with one of the women, he explained to her that it was necessary for him to test each and every woman he employed. “Gwen, I need to make sure these here women are doing all the right things to keep the mens ’round here coming back for more.”

Gwen dug her nails deep into her palms in order to control the anger that was growing within her.

“It don’t mean nothing to me, baby. You know you the one I love,” he said and then asked her very nicely to leave the room while he finished handling his business.

She did, her eyes full of hurt and tears.

“What kinda women you is? You gonna let a man lay up on another woman in your own house and not do nothing about it?” At first she thought her mind was talking to her, but then she caught a blurred shape moving past.

“It ain’t none of your business,” Gwen yelled at Abbey before storming away.

Time is something that changes all things and it is true in Gwen Lacey’s case. Gwen had been sent to the edge of madness, but she did not step off into it. She let it mold her and clear the fog she thought was love from her mind. She warned him, as she had before, but her voice carried something other than pain this time. Had he listened, he may have lived his life to the end God had set for him, but he ignored it.

“Isaac, if you lay down with one more woman in my house I’ll kill you dead!” Gwen screamed outside the bedroom Isaac was holed up in with whatever woman he had chosen for the evening.

Gwen took her three daughters and placed them in the barn with the horses. Kissed them all tenderly on their heads and told them to stay put and stay quiet and no matter what they heard, not to move from the barn until she came for them.

The house was full. Men coming and going. Satisfied that they had found some release, some companionship, someone to listen and agree. Gwen walked into her home, her beautiful home, and for the first time in her whole life asked God for forgiveness. She moved slowly up the large staircase, smiling at the men and women that passed her on their descent. She traced the smooth polished oak banister with the tips of her fingers and savored the coolness of the wood. She walked to the end of the hall, past Abbey’s room, stopping to peek in to see her mother sound asleep. Abbey still slept on the left side of the bed, a habit she could not break even though John Lacey had been dead and gone for nearly twenty-four years.

Gwen quietly entered the room, walked over to the side of the bed, went down to her knees and pulled the shotgun from beneath it. Abbey stirred and moaned in her sleep.

Once back in the hall Gwen moved on, stopping only to press her ear against each bedroom door and listen for Isaac’s sounds.

She entered her own bedroom, the one she had conceived and birthed her children in, hoping to find him straddled atop one of the Creole women; this would surely justify her blowing his head off as well as assist in quelling the guilt that was building within her with every step she took.

When she opened the door she found Isaac Thorpe, the father of her children, alone, his throat cut from ear to ear. Gwen looked on, fully understanding and quite disappointed that Abbey had beaten her to killing him.

So the story goes.

Long after Gwen passed away, her children, May, Sara and Ruby Lacey, raised Sugar.

They told her that her mamma just dropped her off one day on her way to some other place with some man that she thought would make her happy.

They said that she was in such a hurry that she didn’t even have time to name her.

“Ya’ll go on and call her anything you want! She belong to ya’ll now!” She was said to say as she jumped into his fancy automobile and waved good-bye.

Only a wisp of truth lay in that story.

Sugar spent fifteen years in Short Junction. Her friends were the wind, sun and trees; her playhouse, the woods and the river that flowed through it.

Her memories, the ones she allowed to remain, often wondered on a day when she and Sara went to town to pick up a few things from the general store. Sara gave her a peppermint stick and told her to wait outside until she was done. Sugar did as she was told and amused herself by watching the comings and goings of the people that lived in Short Junction.

The women smiled sweetly at her as they passed in and out the store, the men ignored her. She knew most of the men of Short Junction; they visited the Lacey home and the Lacey women quite often. Sugar had a jar full of shiny pennies to prove it. The men always gave her pennies. Their way of buying her silence.

On that day, just as the wind was beginning to kick up the dust in the road and a horse brayed loudly in a nearby stable, another little girl joined Sugar outside the store.

She sucked contentedly on her own peppermint stick, watching Sugar shyly from the corner of her eye. Sugar had never been this close to another child, and at the age of five, this nearness caused her heart to clamor with excitement inside her chest.

“What’s your name?” the little girl finally asked, in the way only a little girl can.

Sugar considered her. Her worn dress, bare dirty feet and uncombed hair.

“Sugar,” she said and waited for her reaction.

“Hmmm,” the little girl uttered and looked thoughtfully at her peppermint stick. “That your mamma in there?” she said, pointing in the store. There were only two women in there, Sara and the woman who’d come with the little girl, and neither one of them was Sugar’s mamma. In fact, at that tender age, Sugar had no real sense of what a mamma was. She’d heard the word used in conversation, but its meaning was foreign to her.

She shook her head no.

“Where’s your mamma at?” the little girl asked, her eyebrows raised in surprise.

Sugar shrugged her shoulders.

“She dead?” she asked and her eyes widened.

Again, Sugar just shrugged her shoulders.

The little girl looked into the store again and then back at Sugar.

“Ain’t you got a mamma?” she said with shocked disbelief.

Sugar just stared blankly at her. She had a May, a Sara and a Ruby. She didn’t have a “mamma.”

“What’s a mamma?” she asked, hoping the little girl would shed some light on this thing that seemed so important.

The girl returned the same blank stare.

“Don’t be talking to the likes of her, Caroline.” The little girl’s mother came out and dragged her by the collar away from Sugar. Her bare feet skidded across the dirt, leaving squiggly lines behind. “She a Lacey and we don’t fraternize with those type of people.”

“Those type of people,” Sugar muttered to herself and moved to reach for another cigarette. Her face was wet with tears, but she did not notice. She tried to distract her mind and focus on the dust that swirled in the thin stream of light that filtered through the window. But like a storm, there was no stopping these memories, no matter how painful they were. Sugar leaned back, inhaled, and let them come back to her.

They lived in a big yellow and green house surrounded by willow trees and wildflowers. Sugar spent hours out and about the flowers and trees, trying to block out the heavy breathing and moaning that sailed down to her on the evening breeze.

Friday and Saturday nights found men and women from all over the county sitting in and around the Lacey home, where the good times rolled as long as you had the money to keep it going.

They came for the conversation, corn liquor, catfish and Lacey pussy.

The Lacey women sold themselves a sliver at a time. Leaving some back to fill the years when there would be no lean hard body to press against theirs and whisper sweet syrupy lies into the swell of a breast.

Time stopped and stepped aside to allow Sugar to walk away from the trees, leave behind her wreath of wildflowers and put away the sweet songs she sang aloud to the meadow. Time made way and Sugar strolled right into womanhood.

You see, no one ever told her to keep her legs closed and crossed at the ankles. No one ever said: “Save it for the one you love” or “Good girls say no.”

They’d been watching her for some time. The men. Watching the way her ass grew out and moved up and onto her back. The way her legs lengthened and the muscles strained hard against her skin when she walked. The tight knobs that once struggled against her blouse had suddenly blossomed to something full and buoyant, ready to be held, kissed and caressed.

Her scent told them she was ready.

She went with him into the empty room. Some nameless, faceless him. They went to the same room that saw Isaac die.

She did not get kind words or gentle kisses. What she got was callused hands and boots that were worn thin at the sole. A man who, after he was done riding her, sat on the edge of the bed, his face in his hands, and wept out his guilt.

Guilty—’cause he was laying with someone else besides his wife.

Guilty—’cause he was paying out money he was supposed to use to buy food for his family.

Guilty—’cause the smell of Sugar reminded him of his own twelve-year-old daughter.

It was done and over. Tears mean nothing in the Lacey home. Just the two dollars on the dresser.

A door slammed in the distance and jerked Sugar away from her memories. She looked at her wristwatch; it was ten past six. “He’s running late today,” she mumbled to herself. She got up and walked over to the window, parted the curtains enough to see the tall, dark man bound down the stairs and then turn on his heel and bound back up to place a quick forgotten kiss on the cheek of his wife. Seconds later he was gunning the engine to his old pick-up and was off down the road.

Pearl stood out on the porch, her thin robe pulled tight around her against the morning chill, until the truck faded in the distance. She then turned her attention to Sugar’s house. She stood there for quite some time, straining her neck this way and that way, trying to see whatever it is she thought she would see. Sugar smiled in spite of herself.

Nosy people irritated Sugar, so she began to keep the curtains drawn. Little it did, they still kept coming.

The town women were the worst. A few had ventured over to #10 Grove Street on more than one occasion, sometimes with their children in tow, always with food; knocking at the door and peering in the windows, hollering hello. Sugar would just sit there listening and waiting for them to leave. She did not need nor did she want to be friends with anyone in Bigelow.

Nevertheless, they kept coming. The women of Bigelow in their dainty dresses and light makeup. Some even wore white gloves on their hands and veiled hats usually reserved for Sunday church, weddings, baptisms and christenings. Some even jiggled the doorknob. Pearl watched all of this from her kitchen window and waited to see if the mystery woman would appear, and if she did what would she say?

But she never did and the women would clear their throats, look around, set their baked goods wrapped in shiny tin foil down in the rocking chair, or tuck them back under their arms and walk swiftly away. Some would stop at Pearl’s house, pretending they’d come all that way to see her in the first place. They’d sit and smile, speaking on small things. Family mostly, inquiring about Pearl’s two sons. “How Joe Jr. and Seth getting on up North?” Pearl knew better and accepted their Corning Ware filled with peach cobbler or stewed pears, served them coffee or tea and told them her boys were doing just fine. The women really only wanted to know one thing, and that was if Pearl had met her yet. But they behaved like the Bigelow women they were raised to be and engaged Pearl in light conversation that involved everything and everyone except her neighbor.

“Oh, by the way . . .” they’d say as Pearl showed them to the door and thanked them again for the visit, “have you met your new neighbor yet?” They’d say it with such an air of mock disinterest that it made Pearl want to laugh, call them phonies and point an accusing finger at them. Instead, she bit the inside of her cheek, shook her head and said, “No, I haven’t had the pleasure.”