Sugar

by Bernice McFadden

  “Miss Pearl, I’ll take care of that,” Sugar said and grabbed the plate from Pearl’s hand. She didn’t want to help. Would have been perfectly happy going home, running a bath and smoking a joint or having a tall glass of pike aid. But she wanted to show Seth that she was useful and not just a piece of garbage his mother had dragged in off the street.

  “Well, okay,” Pearl said with a wink. “I’m going to sit down and watch myself a little television.”

  At first the silence that surrounded the flowing water and clinking silverware was uncomfortable. Seth washed and Sugar dried. No talk. No eye contact. No brief smiles. Sugar reached to grab a plate from Seth and their fingers brushed, finally their eyes met and held. There was nothing for a long moment. Just a soundless circle around them. They could only hear the beating of their hearts. Not the rushing water or the static sounds of the television. Seth’s lips moved and the sound came rushing back in. But it was warped and confusing and Sugar found herself leaning closer to Seth, desperately wanting to know what those lips were trying to communicate.

  Seth’s eyes widened and he pulled his head back. He too had been hurled into a zone of soundlessness. “What?” they both said in eager unison.

  “You look a lot like Jude,” Seth said. His eyes walked carefully across Sugar’s face, pausing to examine her nose or to rest in the dip of her lip. Sugar returned to the table, answering him over her shoulder. “Yes. I know. I saw pictures.”

  “I guess that’s why she likes you so much.” Seth cut the water off and turned, leaning his back against the sink, crossing his arms over his chest. He watched her walk away, sway away. Her movements brought a slight smile to his face. “She talks about you all the time.”

  She smiled in spite of herself and was glad to hear the softness in his voice, the calm that for some unknown reason stirred and heated her insides. She did not respond; if she had her voice would have been light, her words a swirl of pink and white cotton candy on a May day. She couldn’t risk the silly in her, answering for her.

  “Daddy seems to like you too,” Seth added and she heard his approaching footsteps. “Got my mamma to dye her hair and paint her fingernails,” he noted in mild amusement. He was beside her now, looking down on her, through her. His eyes voicing so much more than his mouth was prepared to say.

  Sugar nodded her response but kept her eyes lowered, staring hard at the table, as her hand continued wiping at the invisible crumbs.

  “I like it.” He leaned in and spoke close to her neck. She could feel his hot breath heavy with the scent of sweet potato pie. “I like it a lot. She looks twenty years younger. I think Daddy likes it too, although he probably ain’t never said nothing to you about it. Just ain’t his way.” And then his breath was gone. Sugar closed her eyes and longed for its return.

  “Mamma says you from Short Junction, but spent most of your time in St. Louis.” He was sitting down, his long legs stretched out before him, his hands crossed over his chest. He was looking at Sugar, wanting her to look back. “She says you a singer. Is that so?”

  “Why would your mamma tell you a lie?” It was out before she could stop it. She almost slapped herself right there in that kitchen. Right in front of Seth Taylor. Why couldn’t she just answer the question like a normal human being? She was being malicious for no reason. She raised her head to look at him, to apologize. But then she remembered his reaction toward her the night before and most of that afternoon, and decided he deserved it.

  His eyebrows were hitched so high up on his forehead that they were touching his hairline. Her lashing words had caught him off guard. “W-well no, to the best of my knowledge, my mamma ain’t never told me a lie.” His words were surrounded by light laughter. He sparkled when he laughed. Sugar smiled.

  “Oh, you something, ain’t you?” He paused to consider his next set of words. “So you sing. That’s nice. Maybe you’ll sing for me before I go?” He winked at her and laughed again.

  Sugar was still standing, but had dragged her hand from the table, stopping the mechanical wiping movement her hand had found comfort in. She stood there like a plank, her eyes darting from Seth to the table and then back to Seth. She felt like an idiot. She couldn’t remember a time she was so uncomfortable in front of a man. Too much of who she was was exposed to him. She didn’t have on a lot of makeup; just a little powder for the shine and a bit of lipstick. The thought brought her hand up to her face and she ran her fingers quickly across her cheek. Perhaps it was the bulky sweater and faded ankle-cuffed denims. She felt more naked in that than any of her skin-tight, low-cut dresses. Maybe it was because she hadn’t had a cigarette since she walked in Pearl’s house. She’d purposely left them at home and now she questioned her decision.

  “Ain’t you tired? You and mamma done cooked up a storm and ate up a bigger one. C’mon now, sit down.” Seth moved the chair out from beneath the table with his foot. “C’mon,” he coaxed and then flashed a smile.

  “No, I gotta go,” she said quickly. Her behind just brushed the plastic covering of the seat before she straightened up again. Too many weird thoughts and feelings were swirling around inside of her. She couldn’t trust herself to be herself around Seth Taylor. Because at the very moment she wasn’t sure who herself was. It was best she leave.

  “Where?” he asked innocently.

  “Home.”

  “Home?” Pearl walked in the kitchen and Sugar jumped like a child caught doing something wrong. “You going home now? I just talked Joe into a game of cards.” Sugar detected the disappointment in Pearl’s voice.

  “I—I think I ate too much,” Sugar said and tapped at her swollen belly. “I’m not feeling too hot,” she lied and dropped her eyes.

  “Oh no.” Pearl’s face filled with concern. “I think I got some seltzer around—”

  “No,” Sugar raised her hand in protest, “don’t trouble yourself, Miss Pearl. I just need to lay down.”

  “You sure?”

  “Uh-huh. I’ll be fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Sugar said good-night to Seth and went to wish a half-asleep Joe the same. Pearl and Seth met her at the front door. “Seth going to make sure you get home all right,” Pearl said and gave Seth a little nudge. Sugar eyed mother and son suspiciously. “I just live right next door,” she said, wondering if Pearl was going senile. She turned to face Seth, trying to gain some support. “You could spit the difference between here and there.”

  “I know where you live.” Pearl rolled her eyes at Sugar’s ignorance to the obvious. She was well aware of the attraction between the two. The previous evening Seth had asked a thousand questions about Sugar. He slipped them in the conversation, hoping Pearl would not notice his obvious interest in her neighbor. But she had. “Seth gonna see you home anyway. It’s late and a lady shouldn’t be out and about alone after dark.”

  No one had ever referred to her as a lady. It was a role she never thought she would play. She liked it. “Okay,” Sugar surrendered.

  The evening sky looked far above them. It was cobalt blue with a heavy dusting of tiny twinkling stars. Seth’s and Sugar’s breaths preceded them in tiny puffs of white that appeared and disappeared quickly. The temperature had dropped with the setting of the sun, and all around Bigelow fireplaces burned, sending billows of smoke up into the dark. Surrounded by silence, they walked the short distance down the road and to #10 Grove Street.

  Sugar’s mouth moved to say good-night when they reached the porch, but before she could utter one word his feet were already walking up her stairs, his body was settling down into her porch chair and his eyes were turned on the large Arkansas night sky that surrounded them. She moved hesitantly up the stairs and silently took a seat beside him on a beach chair made up of green and white strips of material wrapped around the metal frame. A Sears catalogue special that she’d seen and taken a fancy to. She would sit there and pretend that she was by a pool or on a beach, her feet lazing in the surf. It was her dreaming chair.

  Th
ey sat there for a while, just staring at the sky and breathing in the new winter air. His voice startled her, although she had been waiting for it to come. “Short Junction is so close. You know, I ain’t never been there? Been to most of these towns around here ’cept that one. I hear Short Junction smaller than Bigelow. Shoot, Bigelow ain’t the size of nothing so Short Junction gotta be less than nothing.” He laughed at his little joke. Sugar laughed too, and covered her mouth when she did.

  “Daddy said you done woke something up in Mamma.” The words came suddenly, his tone turned serious. Like his father, he spoke to his hands. “You know, after Jude died, she just went inside of herself, you know what I mean? It was like she was my mamma, but she wasn’t. She was doing the same things she always done, after a while anyway. She took care of us and all, but her eyes were empty and she just stopped smiling altogether.” A long time filled with quiet passed before he spoke again. “And then Joe Jr. went into the army. He wasn’t doing nothing but running away. Still running I suppose. Me, I hung around for as long as I could, but couldn’t stay here forever, not in Bigelow.” He looked around him as if he’d forgotten where he was. “Daddy say she smile all the time now and laughing too. Singing to herself in the kitchen and all! He say, he done got the woman he married back again.”

  Sugar was listening, enjoying the sound of his voice washing over her like a velvet wave. She didn’t care what he said as long as he kept talking.

  “Sugar.” He was calling her name. Slow and then again, “Sugar?”

  “Yes,” she answered and turned to look into those deep brown eyes.

  “I wanna thank you.” Once again, his eyes finished his thoughts and Sugar found herself, as she knew she would, lost inside of them.

  The winter air left as quickly as it had arrived. The next morning’s air and every morning after that was warm and brilliant. Children skipped happily to school and streaked home to finish homework and enjoy the remaining dwindling daylight. People smiled broadly and spoke loudly, needing to be heard over the tumultuous joy that entered Bigelow.

  Sugar was caught up in that joy. She had become a living, breathing part of it. Seth had become another limb she never knew she needed. The hours she spent away from him were crippling and made it, if not impossible, extraordinarily difficult to hold a teacup or flick a light switch. He was a third lung. Her breathing was labored without him. He made it possible for Sugar to see the beauty she possessed inside and out.

  She was Sugar Lacey, born in Short Junction, Arkansas, thirty years ago. Abandoned by her mother, father unknown, raised by three women who took pity on her and took her in, giving her their name and calling her their own. She was Sugar Lacey, St. Louis night club singer, come home.

  That is what he had been told and that is what she was to him. No more. That’s what his mamma told him, and that’s what Sugar had attested to. His mamma didn’t lie, to the best of his knowledge. Life went on.

  Pearl sat back in her rocking chair and watched Joe climb into his truck, back it out and head down the road. She waved good-bye and turned her attention to the November sky and silently thanked God for her life and the lives of her family and friends. Her lips moved soundlessly as she spoke to her Jude, as she often did now. Running down for her the events of the past five days.

  “Jude, I know you know all about Sugar, what I done told you, and what you’ve seen for yourself. I believe you had a hand in guiding her here to me, and I thanks you. I guess you know that Seth is sweet on her, and she sweet on him too. He don’t know what type of life she done led, the things she allowed men to do to her body, and I ain’t gonna tell him. We all got our scars to bear, every single one of us. Sugar ain’t spoiled, she just a little bruised, is all. Bruises can heal and fade away to nothing. He don’t have to know.

  “What good would it do? He’s human like the rest of us, he’s gonna automatically judge and that ain’t for him to do. You know that, Jude, that’s gotta be left to the Almighty.

  “Seth likes Sugar for who she is now, and as far as he is concerned, she always been that person, no one else. Maybe when you sent her you ain’t expect her to touch no one else but me. Maybe you ain’t all for Seth and Sugar getting together, probably wasn’t in your plan. But you gotta know that she done changed for the better, she halfway out of what she used to be. I think Seth can pull her out the rest of the way.

  “I know he’s your brother, but he’s my son and a mother knows best. Seth done had his own hard times. A wife that ain’t care about him. That Viola treated him like a dog. She wasn’t no kinda wife for my Seth. I ain’t never like that child, but I let Seth make his own decision and learn the hard way. And what happened? She crushed his little heart into dust and let it go on the first strong wind that passed by. Hurt him so bad, that he ain’t never talked about another woman since then. Well, up until now. You see how his eyes light up when Sugar come around? You see how he just can’t stop grinning at her? She make him happy and he make her happy. He make her want to be respectable.

  “A man should have a wife, and a woman should have a husband. It ain’t natural any other way. He need someone to love and she need to be loved. I wants this to work! Lord knows I wants this to work!”

  Her face was wet with tears when she was done.

  Seth’s time there was coming to an end. A few days more and Sugar knew she would be standing alongside Pearl and Joe waving good-bye to Seth as his car cut through the road dust and headed toward home. The thought disrupted the comfortable happiness he’d brought to her. When things were bad, time had a habit of taking its time to pass, making sure you experienced every painful moment. When things were good and contentment abundant, time moved like the wind, hurrying precious moments along and forcing things that normally require nurturing to grow and forge quickly.

  Seth and Sugar’s talk was light, supported by laughter and hand holding. Seth told Sugar about his dreams and asked her about her own. His hopes and dreams rolled effortlessly off his tongue, like the dew off a leaf under the yellow heat of the sun. She had very few dreams, and the few she had had only just blossomed within her, and they all included him. She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know, tell me more about yours.”

  “This old man I know, he’s got a small diner up in Harlem. Does all right business, I know I could make it do better. Anyway, his wife died some years ago, children all grown and gone. He wants to come back South, live out the rest of his years in the house he grew up in, says he’d sell me the diner. . . .” He trailed off then, bending to pick a wildflower.

  “You gonna buy it, right?” Sugar asked, her eyes wide.

  “Want to.” He placed the flower in Sugar’s hair above her left ear. Taking a moment to make sure it sat just right. His actions always surprised her. They seemed so out of the ordinary to Sugar. But Seth treated it like it was a part of everyday life. And maybe it was—Sugar never really had a normal everyday life against which to measure his actions.

  “Well, it ain’t that easy, takes money. I got some, but not enough.”

  “How much more you need?” she asked innocently. Not realizing that a man’s business was his pride.

  Seth raised his eyebrows. “Not too much, about five hundred, but more than I’ll be able to get my hands on in the next month or so.”

  “Will he take less?” Sugar’s mind was working. She had a little money left, not near five hundred, but almost two hundred. She would give it to him in a second. It was the least she could do for all he’d given to her during the past few days. Knowing Seth, though, he wouldn’t take it.

  Again his eyebrows rose and then he smiled. “Sure, probably.”

  Hodges Lake was a huge fluid mirror that the trees peered down into, witnessing their lush summer greens turn into deep reds and fiery oranges, until finally, unable to hang on any longer, they’d crumple. Dry and brittle, they’d float weightlessly down, littering the liquid spectrum.

  Sugar thought, if not for Seth, she would have definitely felt uneas
y. The tall looming trees, and weeds thick as branches, clasped tight around anything that stood still long enough. Birds moved suddenly and quickly from the treetops, their feathered bodies temporarily blocking out the small patches of blue that fought through the wooded canopy.

  It was cold there. No one had informed the backwater woods that summer had decided to hang around a little bit longer. Sugar pulled her sweater closer to her body. An icy chill sliced through the thin blanket she and Seth shared, causing her to shake and her teeth to chatter. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. “You cold?” he asked, the warmth in his eyes caressing her face.

  “A little bit,” she said and gave him a brief smile. They were alone for the first time since Thanksgiving night. No one in the next room or backseat. Just them. She was glad and nervous all at once.

  “Me and Joe Jr. use to come here all the time and play when we was kids or fish alongside Daddy. Farther down,” he pointed south, “the lake gets shallow. Daddy would let us swim there. We’d stay in the water so long that we’d look like raisins by the time we got home.” He laughed at the memory. “Mamma would be mad. Fussing with Daddy about letting us stay in the water for so long.”

  “Was Jude with you?” Sugar asked. She was staring at the spot Joe pointed to and she could envision the three children, two boys, one girl, splashing happily around in the water.

  “Sometimes,” Seth said quietly. His mood was serious now. Sugar had felt it when she opened the door to his solemn face this morning. A massive change from the wonderful time they’d spent together the night before. They took in the new James Dean movie, East of Eden. Broward County held the only colored movie house in the state of Arkansas. It was a place where people could lose themselves to the imagination of the silver screen without having to be subjected to the confines of an overcrowded colored section of a white movie house balcony.