This Bitter Earth

by Bernice McFadden

  I bet she don’t feel so high and mighty anymore, Sugar thought to herself.

  The woman shifted the child again and threw Sugar a look before huffing and reaching into her purse. “Here,” she said as she started toward Sugar, white cloth in hand.

  Sugar recognized the accent as Northern, a New Yorker, she guessed.

  “It’s a diaper, all I have, but it’ll have to do,” she said as her eyes rolled over Mercy’s face and then Sugar’s.

  “Thank you kindly,” Sugar said, taking the cloth from the woman. The sun caught the gold wedding band on her finger just as she pulled her hand back and wrapped it around her baby’s shoulder.

  “Right thing to do,” she said, and kissed the fat cheek of her child.

  Sugar folded the diaper in half and pressed it against Mercy’s ear.

  The woman didn’t move away; she just stood there like she was waiting for something. Some more communication, perhaps an introduction or an invitation to sit down.

  “Your baby make it through okay?” Sugar finally said after she realized that the woman wasn’t going to go away.

  “Oh, it seems so.” The woman’s response was eager and grateful. “I’m gonna get her checked as soon as we get to where we’re going, though, just to make sure,” she said before kissing the baby again and adjusting the small pink booties on her feet.

  “Oh, a girl. What’s her name?”

  “Her name is Jewel, because that what she is. Aren’t you ... aren’t you?” the woman said, looking lovingly at her child and allowing her voice to fall off into baby gibber jabber.

  “Nice name,” Sugar said, shaking her head in amusement.

  “Look at that there,” the woman chimed and nodded her head toward the bus. The men were standing around it, sleeves rolled up around their elbows, fingers working through the short hairs on their chins as they considered the busted tire on the bus.

  “Bus driver didn’t even ask if me and my baby was okay, just fussed around them crackers like they were his family or something,” the woman spouted.

  Sugar’s eyebrows went up. “I don’t think he checked on anybody that was colored.” Sugar’s words came out slow.

  “Well, that’s true. But I mean, being that I got a baby and all ...” The woman’s voice trailed off when she saw the look on Sugar’s face.

  “Police came by and picked him up, but I think them boys gonna have that spare tire in place by the time he gets back,” she said and shifted the baby again. It was clear the child was becoming heavier by the minute. But Sugar still did not invite her to sit down.

  There was another long silence between them. Sugar looked down into Mercy’s face. Her eyes were closed, but Sugar was sure that she was taking in everything that was being said.

  “My name is Gloria,” she said, shooting out her hand and catching Sugar by surprise.

  “Oh,” Sugar said and extended her own hand.

  Gloria recoiled and Sugar looked down at her hand and saw that Mercy’s blood was streaked across her palm.

  She wiped it across the damp grass and then along her dress and was about to extend it for a second time, but Gloria had positioned her hand on her hip now. Her nose seemed closer to the sky.

  “Sugar Lacey,” Sugar said, ignoring Gloria’s bad manners. “And this is Mercy Bedford.”

  “A pleasure,” Gloria replied flatly.

  It wasn’t a pleasure meeting them or anyone else on that damn bus. It wasn’t a pleasure riding with them for three days (a day and half from New York to St. Louis) or smelling them for just as long. God knew the love she had for her husband only went as deep as his pockets and this trip would cost him the shoes, dress and pill-box hat she’d seen at Martin’s department store.

  He’d begged her to come, telling her that this might be the last time he’d see his mother alive. Please, he’d cried, I want my mother to see her grandchild before she leaves this earth.

  Gloria hated the South, hated the heat and the slow stupid people that lived there. She hated that she herself had been born and raised there, hated it so much that she had worked extra hard at ridding herself of her southern drawl and told anyone she met that she had been born and bred in New York City.

  Well, Gloria thought to herself, if his mama isn’t dead by the time I get there and lay into him, he’s going to wish she was.

  “Same here,” Sugar lied.

  “Normally we drive down here, uhm, my husband and I. But my sister was getting married and I had to be there ... in New York that is, for the wedding. So I told him to go on ahead and I would meet him.”

  Gloria spoke and her free hand swayed through the air.

  “I would have flown, but we just bought a house and no use in wasting money you understand....”

  Sugar listened to Gloria babble in her proper New York English and her head began to ache.

  “We don’t have the same problems in New York that people have down here ... you know, in the South. Up North we are quite civilized ... by ‘we’ I mean the coloreds and the whites....”

  Sugar listened and watched as Gloria’s hand moved around and around as if she were conducting an orchestra. Her movements reminded Sugar of a lazy bumblebee and irritated her as much.

  Gloria’s words were finally cut off by the cheer that went up from the group of men as the bus fell even again, bouncing once on three good tires and one spare, just as the police cruiser pulled up carrying the bus driver and the town mechanic.

  “I knew them boys would get it done before they got back,” Gloria said, smiling proudly.

  Sugar felt insulted by the sudden kinship Gloria seemed to feel with those southern black men.

  They moved, single file, white women first and then black, back onto the bus. The driver announced that there would be a stop in Jamison, a town fifteen minutes away.

  “They don’t have no toilets for colored folks there, so you all will have to relieve yourself in the woods,” the bus driver announced over his shoulder as he slowed to take a sharp corner.

  “They’ll have cheese sandwiches and Coca-Colas for sale ‘round back of the diner, y’all can collect them there.” The driver chanced a glance in the rearview mirror at the solemn black faces that looked back at him.

  “We gonna be ‘bout an hour and then we’ll head on down to Missionville, Tannery and then Bigelow,” he said as the bus came to a complete stop and he twisted his body around to face them.

  “Now, Jamison don’t have no coloreds here, not a one, so it would be advisable if’n y‘all do what you gotta do quickly ... ,” he said as he pulled to a stop and pointed toward a cluster of trees and bushes on the left side of the road and then toward a small board-and-shingle eatery a few feet away that declared ED’S DINER in bold letters across the front window.

  “... and then go ‘round back and get some food.”

  The black faces remained solemn.

  “It would really be better if y‘all just stay put till me and the ladies here are done.” He gave the passengers one last long look before nodding his head, standing up and hitching his pants and stepping off the bus.

  The three white women followed him off.

  Inside they would consume a hearty breakfast of steak, eggs, toast and two cups each of the steaming black coffee Ed’s wife, Vera, had prepared special for them. There would be pleasant conversation that would at times ring with laughter that would carry out and over to the bus.

  Pushing their plates away and saying, “Thank you kindly,” to the slices of apple pie Vera placed before them, they would lean back to stretch and notice for the first time the fine white fans that whirled above their heads.

  “Uh-huh, my Ed done at least one thing right,” Vera would proudly announce and look lovingly at the fans as if they were the children she and Ed never had. “We had these installed last summer. Sure do keep it cool in here.”

  “Sure ‘nuff do,” the bus driver would say while the white women nodded in agreement. Vera would invite them to touch the lo
ng gold braids that hung from the fan, and they would, rolling the silky yarn between their fingers and caressing the clear balls that covered the ends.

  “They sure are some fine fans,” the bus driver would say when Ed’s back was turned. “Finest fans I ever did see,” he would reiterate as he stared at Vera’s full bosom.

  Vera, she just blushed and smiled.

  The heat from the sun crept inside the bus like a thief, stealing away the air and even managing to pilfer the cool thoughts the passengers tried to fill their minds with.

  The heat was thick and pulled at their skin, causing scalps and crotches to tingle and itch. People fanned the air with their fingers and the folded slips of paper from jacket pockets and purse bottoms, while looking longingly at the block of shade a cluster of red haws provided a few feet away.

  But no one would venture from the bus. It was clear to all of them that what the driver had said was much more than a piece of information, a little-known fact or a bit of historical trivia. It was a warning that needed to be heeded and so there they remained, trying their best to deal with the heat and the baleful eyes of the people that were gathering outside and around the bus.

  “This is a damn shame.”

  “See how the white man treat us.”

  “What he mean by ain’t no coloreds here?”

  “Colored folk everywhere!”

  “Everywhere, but here.”

  The passengers spoke through clenched teeth, their words sounding like the hissing sounds of snakes.

  “Look at them.”

  “Don’t look at them, act like they ain’t there. We don’t need no trouble.”

  “Won’t be none if none don’t come looking.”

  “You calm yourself, young buck. Your skin black, it ain’t bulletproof.”

  “They must not have had a lynching for some time ‘cause they sure do look hungry for one.”

  Someone let out a nervous laugh and then Sugar heard someone else whimper.

  Thirty minutes came and went. Five, eight and then thirteen white people gathered around the bus.

  Forty-five minutes and Gloria’s baby started to fuss. The young buck, his new wife by his side, decided he couldn’t play Sambo no more and turned his head left, toward the road.

  His brown eyes locked with the cobalt blue ones of a white boy who had decided to take a piss right beneath Young Buck’s window.

  “Oh, hell no!” Young Buck yelled and leapt from his seat. His shirt was off and lying in the middle of the aisle before he even reached the front of the bus.

  “You turn ‘round and sit right back down.”

  The old man had moved from his seat just as quick and smooth as the fan blades in Ed’s Diner. The old man pressed his Bible hard against Young Buck’s chest. His hand, the Bible and his forearm trembled against the heavy breaths and quick pace of Young Buck’s heart.

  “Sit. Down,” the old man said again and shoved Young Buck backward.

  “Get outta my way, old man. Don’t let me knock you down,” Young Buck yelled.

  “Please, Nathan, please,” his new wife cried.

  “Sit down, I said,” the old man said again and gave him another shove that rocked Young Buck back on his heels.

  “They will take you, beat you and hang you.” The old man spoke matter-of-factly.

  “He pulled out his privates in front of my woman! He dis respected my wife!”

  The old man’s head nodded and every tired line he carried on his face cut deeper into his skin.

  “She ain’t the only woman on this bus, not the only woman and not the only wife. But you the only fool who think that he can make a difference by trying to beat some ignorant white boy that probably can’t even spell his own damn name.”

  The other men on the bus mumbled.

  “Sit down,” the old man said again and Young Buck backed off.

  “Chicken nigger!” the white boy sang after he watched Young Buck take his seat again.

  Sixty-five minutes and a truck rolled up with six white men with rifles. Sixty-five minutes and the old man began to recite, out loud, the Lord’s Prayer.

  “Hey, well, what we got here?” The bus driver was surprised to see that nearly thirty people had encircled the bus. Gloria’s baby was screaming at the top of her lungs and was still unable to drown out the prayers that spilled from the old man’s mouth.

  The passenger windows had been defiled with saliva, dirt, and manure. There were three tiny cracks in the front windshield, from the rocks the small children had been encouraged to pelt.

  The bus driver stepped in closer and saw that two boys, about twelve and fourteen, were about to go at the bus tires with the hunting knives they were given for Christmas last year.

  “Whoa-whoa!” the bus driver yelled.

  “Oh, you know we don’t get niggers through here. Them boys just having a little fun is all,” Ed said as he slapped the driver on the back and let out a hearty laugh. The white women smiled nervously, but their faces could not conceal the horror they felt at the sight that lay before them.

  The women looked up at the rows and rows of dark brown eyes that stared back at them and they suddenly felt ashamed of their race.

  The white women swallowed hard and brushed at the wrinkles in their skirts.

  They had been concerned for their safety since they boarded the bus, had avoided the dark faces that sat behind them and had raised their eyes and smiled expectantly whenever the bus came to a stop and its doors swung open to receive another passenger. They held their breath, hoping, wishing and praying that another one that looked like them would step on, hand their ticket to the driver and joyfully greet them.

  But none ever came and their expectant smiles melted away with every blue-black, black and brown face that stepped onto the bus.

  Yes, they had been concerned for their safety, but now, now they were afraid for it and their hands began to flutter about their waists and midsections like nervous birds.

  “Well, uh, well ...” The driver stumbled over his words. He couldn’t get over what these people had done to his bus, to the people inside of the bus. All he needed was for one of them Negroes to report this, just one and his job would be over and done with. He wasn’t even supposed to stop in Jamison for more than twenty minutes. A rest and food stop, that’s what his schedule stated. Twenty minutes, not a minute less or a second more.

  He had planned to blame the delay on the flat tire, but now the lie would have to become more elaborate, accommodating the cracked windshield, the waste, human and animal he was sure, that slid brown and stinking down the side of the bus.

  Seventy minutes.

  Seventy minutes and Sugar could wring the sweat from her dress. Seventy minutes and she had sat stone-faced, mentally blocking out the obscenities, spit, shit and stones the people of Jamison had hurled at her and the rest of the passengers.

  The driver could see her face; black, hard and still. His food turned over in his stomach and he suddenly felt the heat of the sun peeling at the skin around his neck.

  “Well, thank y‘all for your ...” His words seemed to escape him when he looked at the bus again. “... your uhm, hospitality, but we got to be pulling out now,” he said and started to move toward the bus. The white women followed close behind.

  The crowd parted to let them through. The young men hissed and howled at the women and lifted their skirts with the double-barreled tips of their shotguns. They snatched at their delicate elbows and begged them to stay a while longer so they could all get ... familiar.

  “Must be like hauling animals,” Vera said before they could get out of earshot. “Wild, black animals,” she added with disgust.

  The silence was uncomfortable and more suffocating than the heat.

  The old man got off in Missionville, bidding everyone a good night and safe journey. Young Buck, his wife and a few others discharged in Tannery. The white women, two men and an aged aunt stepped off in Briar.

  Those who remained onboard
included Sugar, Mercy, Gloria, her baby and a young man that had spent the entire trip with his derby pulled down over his eyes.

  Gloria rocked her baby in her arms; she needed so desperately to speak to someone, to ramble on about the heat, the stink, anything at all that would remove the dryness fear had left inside her mouth.

  She turned around and her eyes found Sugar.

  Gloria considered her for a moment, the black skin and stone-cold eyes, and decided that she would hold her thoughts a while longer.

  It was dusk when the bus blew past the rows of hackberry trees that stood like soldiers on either side of the road.

  Sugar turned her head and saw the old cotton-storage building and then the long gliding stems of the old willow tree and recognized that spot as the two-mile mark to Bigelow.

  The phoebes and warblers rustled their feathers in annoyance at the hole the bus made in the silence. They took flight, abandoning the trundle beds that the knotted and bent joints in the tree limbs had provided for them.

  Sugar straightened her back and leaned forward in her seat, straining to see the slight curl of smoke that climbed out from chimneys. Closer still, she was able to hear the searing sounds of heat against metal and knew that Black John, the blacksmith, was still alive and working.

  The bus was suddenly invaded with the unmistakable scent of sweet potato pie set out on a windowsill to cool and Sugar wondered if Pearl knew she was heading her way.

  Sugar’s chest heaved when the bus moved past the weathered sign that announced WELCOME TO BIGELOW—POPULATION 981.

  Chapter 16

  IT was nearly seven when they pulled to a stop in front of the two-room shack that served as a bus station and post office. The morning glories that sat in window boxes looked blanched beneath the blue gray of the approaching night.

  Two old men who’d been engaged in a heated game of dominoes stopped to consider the defiled bus.

  They squinted their eyes against the dry dirt the halting wheels of the bus stirred up and turned their bodies so they would not have to twist and strain their necks to see who would be stepping off the bus.