Sugar Land

by tammy lynne stoner

  I sat there, shaking like a beaten dog, trying to breathe. I didn’t realize it right away, but I was crying—slow, hot, quiet tears. Rhodie said, “Please—”

  “Please what?” Her mother stood firm, framed by the closed bedroom door. “I can’t tell your father. He would throw you out, and you would never see the inside of a college, much less the inside of our home again.” She paced briefly in a short line. “But I can’t send you away, not like this—not when I know that this is what you might be out there in the world.”

  Her mother had strong arms; you could see their muscle through the wet fabric. With all that strength, she slapped the post of Rhodie’s bed until the whole thing wobbled. I pulled the covers up to my neck, scared she was going to beat us.

  “Please,” Rhodie said again.

  “You are going to the preacher,” her mother said. “You are going tonight, and you are staying there for the next few days to work through these demons. He will be sworn to silence so your father will never find out. That’s his duty. I am not telling her father either, for fear he’ll tell someone else.” She clutched at her stomach again, as if the pronoun ‘her’ just made her nauseated. “I am not ruining this chance you have.”

  Rhodie nodded.

  “Now you,” she yelled at me, “take that sheet off, you doxy.”

  I didn’t know what that word meant, but the meaning rang clear. With my fingers clutched around the fabric, I lowered the sheet but didn’t raise my eyes.

  Rhodie’s mother walked over to me. Rage shook off her like steam.

  “Thank you for not telling my parents—” I started.

  Her open hand hit me on the side of the head—a hard, solid hit that echoed inside my skull and hurt all the way down to my collarbone. I think she meant to slap my face, but missed.

  I flinched and raised the sheet back up again, stunned and terrified. My head ached, and I cried more. I was so scared I nearly threw up.

  “You get yourself collected and get the hell out of here right now,” she said. “If I ever see you again, I will risk the ruin of my name and go to your parents. This whole town will rise up in scorn against your horrid atrocities. Rhodie is a good girl who is going to college, and you, you are nothing but the work of temptation and sickness.”

  With that she turned and left, slamming the door behind her. Rhodie fell on the bed, crying and rocking her whole body while I got dressed—still shaking. I stuffed my dirty socks and underwear and her picture into my bag, tasting panic like tin in the back of my throat.

  Rhodie looked up. Her face was a wreck of tear tracks. “I love you. I’ll give it all up. You just say the word, Dara.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I will.”

  I nodded, so scared to go out of her room that I couldn’t form any words. Silent, I left her and walked out of the house as fast as I could through the front door, which her mother had left wide open for me, even though it let the rain in.

  Not knowing what to do or where to go, I ran down to the creek and sat in the slick mud on the edge. I let the cool water run over my big, sore feet. I shoved my bag under the grasses to keep it as dry as possible, and let the sound of the rain and the creek and the frogs cover my crying.

  I couldn’t separate out the feelings of sadness over losing my beautiful Rhodie, shame over being caught, anger about being in the situation in the first place, gripping fear over everyone finding out, worry over what the pastor might put Rhodie through, and hatred of myself. The rain trickled over my hair and down my face, giving me more cause to shake. With my head spinning, I finally just fell into my emotions and let myself go to pieces there, alone by the creek.

  × × ×

  I got home hours after supper, and the way I looked must have let Mama know not to dare say anything about me missing a meal. Without telling her or Daddy goodnight, I walked down the creaky hallway and went to bed, my body feeling as if I’d been in a boxing match.

  While I lay there, I pulled out the picture Rhodie drew for me and looked at the two circles with the white spot in between, where they fell over each other. When I looked at the circles, they took on a new meaning. They were black, black as secret evil. While the love they made together might be good and light—it was love after all—the circles themselves were not. And more than that, although the circles kept the love between them safe, they were not safe. They were hanging out in the middle of nothing, vulnerable and somehow alone—separated from each other by this love.

  “Shit, Rhodie.”

  I pushed the picture carefully under my mattress and leaned back against my flat pillow, worried about what the preacher was saying to Rhodie right then. How terrible it must be for her, that shame and exposure. We should’ve stopped.

  All my anger and fear made me want to punch myself hard and deep in the stomach. I thought about Rhodie’s mother, and I wished she would’ve hit me harder. Wished she’d caught my face with her full hand and left a big blue bruise. I wanted my body to hurt worse than my heart did just then, though I didn’t know if that was possible.

  THE PREACHER SAID SIT DOWN, SO I SAT

  On the fifth day after Rhodie moved to school—which was two days after she’d left the preacher’s—Daddy came into my room. “Here you go. Some letter from Sugar Land—the prison there, seems. Something you need to share here?”

  “I applied for a cooking job.”

  “You know you could learn to cook by working with Miss Kendal.”

  Miss Kendal and Daddy grew up together, and she ran a little breakfast place. “Daddy, I want to do this on my own.”

  “Not the kind of place to meet a man,” he said. “Unless maybe a guard or something, I reckon.”

  “No matter,” I said. “This is probably a rejection.”

  He grunted. “We leave for services here in ten. Get yourself ready now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I read the letter. Wonder of wonders: I got the job, though at the time I didn’t think I’d take it.

  Daddy, Mama, and me went to our regular Sunday worship, with me preoccupied with that letter. We walked over and sat as we always did, with me between them, looking like a perfect set of dolls propped up from tall to medium to small.

  Daddy leaned over. “You get an offer?”

  “I did.”

  “Well, now,” he said, with something nearing pride. “We’ll talk later.”

  I looked around, nervous that Rhodie or her mother had said my name to the preacher, though I knew he’d have to keep it confidential.

  All through services, the church smelled the same—lemon polish and incense smoke. Folks all nodded hello the same. The candles burned the same. There was nothing different in the service either—no new people, no drama of any sort, no flarings from the pulpit, as Daddy called them, when the preacher got political about this and that. It all felt pretty ordinary.

  Afterwards, though, in the entryway, it turned the opposite of ordinary—and quick. Daddy, me, and Mama walked out holding hands, as if I was the glue binding my parents together. I overheard the town’s biggest gossip, Mrs. Gigi Turner, talking about Rhodie to a group of six or seven women, most with children playing around their legs.

  Mrs. Gigi Turner, her bulb of brown hair streaked with yellow highlights, leaned into the group. “I heard little Miss Rhodie had to stay with the preacher for a few days, then they sent her off.”

  One of the other women leaned in while the rest tsked. “Why’d they send her away, you suppose?”

  “I don’t suppose,” Mrs. Gigi Turner said, “on account of this being the house of the Lord. But I do wonder.”

  All those terrible women with their terrible hair, sculpted to look like solid whipped cream, nodded as if they knew my Rhodie. They wiped their lips, wet with the blood of talk about some young girl getting pregnant—a hideous sin to be sure, though a far lesser crime than bedding down with another girl.

  One asked, “Where do you think she went?”

  “I think,” said the learned
Mrs. Gigi Turner, “that she simply went away.”

  Somewhere deep inside me must live a small pond of bravery, because at that moment I got nourishment from it. I walked beside them and I said, “Rhodie is in San Antonio, going to college.”

  “That’s what her parents say, true.”

  “She is nowhere else,” I said. “Nowhere.”

  They all turned to look me up and down, the dumpy girl still holding her mama’s hand—the girl who would never marry well.

  I continued, “You might not know, but only eight percent of females go.”

  Daddy and Mama stood back. I could feel Daddy’s pride at seeing me defend my friend. All of the women faced me and continued to size me up, their eyes going narrow.

  I felt a warm hand on my right wrist, and turned to see the pastor. “Miss Dara, you speaking of Miss Rhodie?”

  Mrs. Gigi Turner nodded, hands crossed in front of her like one of those tiny-handed dinosaurs. “She is.”

  The pastor squared me up, toe-to-toe and shoulder-to-shoulder and eye-to-eye. His brown eyes looked hostile. “What I suggest, Miss Dara, is you stop throwing words into the wind and go sit down.” His voice rose a little, enough to send the group of women scattering and everyone looking at us. “I suggest you sit down right now. And maybe you stay there until this righteous congregation empties out. And while they file past, these virtuous people, you think about your life. You worry about your life and not your friend Rhodie’s.”

  He implied enough to cause Mama to cough and cover her mouth before she went back in to pray. Daddy squinted, wondering if he should defend me or walk away. His hands always hurt from working at the lumber mill, and when he got uncomfortable he’d rub them together, just like he did then—round and round.

  All of the women who were in the circle looked over at us from their various posts in the entry as I dropped my head and walked over to the only bench, my back hot with their stares.

  Fear came over me again, gripping with its metal fingers down the inside of my throat. Fear and that now-familiar shame.

  As the churchgoers moved past me, putting on their gloves and hats and giving me strange looks, I sat there acting as if I was just waiting for Mama to finish up her prayers. A minute or so later, I yawned to show how tired I was and maybe that’s why I was sitting down. Then I rubbed my feet through my black flat shoes to let folks know that my big feet hurt! Whew, I sure was glad I had this bench here.

  I know it probably didn’t happen this way, but I truly felt that every person leaving the service stared at me and knew my evil. The whole time, Daddy stood off in the corner by the water bowl with his big, brown-haired arms crossed in front of him, unsure what just happened.

  The scene caused me to sympathize with the way an ice cube feels on a countertop in broad daylight, wanting so badly to either melt away or fall off the Earth entirely.

  By sitting me there, the preacher had dished out just a small taste of the wrath of the world that controlled every inch of my life. I understood his message in my bones—and then and there I decided to take that job.

  At least at Imperial State Prison Farm I’d be able to see the walls of my imprisonment.

  RHODIE LETTER #1

  A week later, I got a letter from the University of Texas, San Antonio.

  My Dara,

  All I want to do is throw college and everything else away and grab your hand and run and run until we are someplace no one will find us. I love you so much. I feel as if I’m never going to be able to get to sleep again without you here. But I’ll have to. It’s just what has to happen in the world. I hate the world. I hate the world almost as much as I love you.

  The preacher was terrible, but I got through it. My mother didn’t look at me during the whole drive here, and my father didn’t ask why. It was all so terrible. But again, I got through it. Now I’m just left with these feelings of missing you.

  Please write me, and tell me where to send you mail at that awful prison. My brother said it’s the talk of the town—you going away.

  I will love you forever.

  Rhodie

  I put the letter in the front of my coveralls and headed out to the egg store as everything inside me drained away. I was the definition of hopeless. There was no point to anything, really, because the love I felt could never find root anywhere and flower. This beautiful, living thing would wither away in the darkness inside me.

  To help me keep my resolve not to go to her, I hung the picture she drew for me on the wall right beside my bed. I reminded myself that I didn’t want to be that black circle with another black circle. I vowed not to be who I was, come hell or high water—or both.

  Rhodie’s letter stayed on my person at all times, even when I slept, for fear someone might find it. I must’ve read it twenty times a day—about the same number of times I looked over at the picture she’d drawn for me to remind myself what it told me.

  I wrote Rhodie twice a day, every day. Each time I finished a letter, I burned it down by the creek. I burned those letters and cried, wanting so badly to have all the emotions I’d written in them go up in those flames too. I knew it would damn near kill her, not hearing from me, but a terrible part of me blamed her for making me be this way. Another part of me made myself believe that it was easier for her to be brave out there. Another part even hated her. And it’s tricky when you hate what you love. It can cause you to do mean things—callous and spineless mean things, like cutting yourself off from someone who’s waiting for you.

  Rhodie wrote me several times a week, as any best friend might. I burned them all, too, unopened. I sat there with the sounds of the creek and the crickets—me fat and sad and empty, watching her hand-drawn hearts and bullfrogs and the words “love” crinkle away in the orange flames until the paper turned black and blew away.

  OCEANS INSIDE

  They say that black holes were once bright stars that collapsed and now sit there, dark as dark can be, trying to suck everything alive and bright into them. That is the best way I can describe my mood after Rhodie left. I didn’t care about reading. I didn’t care about making my bed. I didn’t care about pie.

  Every God damn thing reminded me of her: the bare trees, the sound of water running, dark clouds, light clouds, no clouds, pictures of butterflies. All of it.

  I told my parents I slept so much to be rested for my new job in the kitchens of Imperial State Prison Farm, where I might have long hours, but the truth was that I didn’t want to see or smell or taste anything since it would all lead back to her. I cried every day, mostly by the creek or when I was running our clothes through, telling Mama I got some washing soda in my eye.

  My days went like this: I’d have a cup of coffee with Daddy before he left for work. We’d hardly talk—just clink our spoons as we added cream and sugar. After he’d go, I’d get out the dolly stick and the washboard, to scrub and beat the washing, check the mail, grab too much food for one girl, and retire to my room to eat. I only went down for dinner to appease Mama, who seemed more insightful since that Sunday worship than she let on.

  At night, I’d roll around, unable to get comfortable. For hours and hours, I’d lie there, praying to Jesus to take away those dreams where people are stoning me and Rhodie to death, with the worst part—the part that hurt me so much I buckled—being when Daddy and Mama let them continue on, when they just walked away.

  That’s how January passed.

  By February 1, I had more control of the restless dark ocean I held inside me. I said goodbye to my folks and hopped on the bus with my suitcases—the same ones Mama brought with her when she married Daddy—to start my new life, grateful to be away from those letters from Rhodie that kept coming every few days like yellow jackets attacking the same spot over and over again.

  I’d asked Mama to return any letters from Rhodie, lying and saying that Rhodie would get them and route them to Sugar Land. I didn’t want those letters lying around my house, for fear Daddy might not read who one was addressed
to and open it up.

  I could see him sitting there with a glass of ’shine, all big belly and shoulders, using his thick fingers to tear into my letter from Rhodie. In my mind I watched him lift the glass to his mouth, reading all those words of love that would fill him up with hate. I watched him throw his glass against the wall and stomp over to slap Mama a few times, saying she caused this.

  Those fears and the separation from Rhodie’s charms gave me space to convince myself that I had done the right thing—that maybe I’d even been the strong one to do what had to be done and break this mess off.

  In getting on that bus, I thought I’d escaped. I’d made it. I didn’t know then that the way your body and mind wants to love is the way it needs to love. Nothing can change that. Nothing—though I surely tried a thing or two over the years.

  RHODIE LETTER #31

  Imperial State Prison Farm was situated in the city of Sugar Land, Texas, home to Imperial Sugar. Sugar Land sat all the way down near Houston, or what we in Midland called the “armpit of Texas” on account of its humidity and its tendency to collect strange odors. The ride to Sugar Land was ten hours from Midland—the perfect distance to leave where I had come from without leaving who I was.

  To my dismay, though, all that distance didn’t stop the love. As some kind of compromise, I kept writing to Rhodie. It made the days less lonely, having this pretend relationship that couldn’t hurt me, at least not directly.

  A few months in, I wrote to her about Huddie, who’d I dared to call my friend.

  Dear sweet Rhodie,

  Greetings from Sugar Land! I miss you. I miss you every time I see the sun or the stars or the grass.

  Other than that, things are going well here. In addition to Beauregard, who I told you about, I met the head cook—who is as frightening as Beauregard told me he was. Something evil in him. It scares me, but I try to put on a face.

  I’m also working sometimes with one Huddie Ledbetter. I’m getting to know him pretty well, or as well as I can in an open kitchen with me being a white woman and him being a Negro—and him only here one or two days a month. I like Huddie. You probably would too, maybe.