This Bitter Earth (12 page)

She slapped her hands hard across her mouth, willing herself not to throw up. Instead of toilet paper, old mildewed newspaper had been placed in a stack on the floor.

Sugar stood and yanked her panties up around her. She would not wipe herself with some white man’s old news.

A small cracked mirror hung haphazardly on the wall to her left. It caught the light of the moon, revealing the words that had been scrawled in red lipstick across its glass surface:
Nigger Go Back.

Sugar stood for a long moment staring at those words. She imagined that an aged white-haired woman had scrawled this ignorance, someone’s grandmother or even great-grand. In her mind’s eye she saw her sneaking into the bathroom while her son, his wife and her grandchildren indulged themselves in a cold Coca-Cola while exchanging pleasantries with the attendant.

The day wouldn’t have been too hot and the stench bearable as she lipsticked into place each letter, careful to space them just right so that the people who came in there would maybe put some thought into what she and the rest of this part of the country had been trying to tell them.

Sugar picked up a piece of the newspaper and wiped the words away.

She scrubbed furiously until there wasn’t even a dull smear of red left, and then she reached into her own purse and pulled out her own red lipstick and scrawled
Lappy did it.

The doors to the bus were closed when they returned.

After some time the driver approached, the three white women following close behind, Cokes in hand. They looked over their shoulders and waved gaily at the two white men that stood smiling in the doorway.

“Thanks again!” they yelled in unison.

“Y‘all coloreds make sure you move to the back o’ the bus,” the driver said before he reached the mass of people that waited patiently for him.
“The back
o’ the bus, ya hear?” he said again as he stopped right in front of Sugar.

“Ya hear me, gal?”

The white women stepped around him and the crowd parted and formed a pathway for them.

Sugar was looking down at the ground when the man spoke to her. Mercy saw the muscles in her neck tense and heard the air whistle as Sugar pulled it sharply through her nose.

“Ya hear?” the bus driver said again and took a step toward her.

The crowd took a step backward and waited.

The white women folded their arms across their chests, cocked their heads and arched their eyebrows.

“Yes.” The word came out thin and sharp.

“Good,” he said and hitched his pants up around his waist. “You in my neck o’ the woods now!” He boomed with laughter.

The bus rolled through county after county, steadily slicing through the darkness. It was quiet except for the hum of the engine and the random sound of a throat being cleared. Even the babies were quiet, snuggling themselves closer to the safety of their mothers’ bosoms. No one slept; all eyes were wide, watching the woods for roaming white sheets.

“Well, hello, Jim Crow,” Sugar said aloud to no one in particular. “Been quite a while. Quite a while.”

Chapter 15

SUGAR was repeating something over and over in her sleep.

Mercy wasn’t looking at her, but she knew that Sugar’s head was twisting back and forth against the green-and-yellow vinyl of the headrest. The
shh-shh
noise Sugar’s hair made against the material reminded Mercy of secrets, her own and the ones that kept Sugar sipping from the silver flask she kept inside of her purse.

Mercy rubbed her arms to try to quiet her veins. They screamed out to her as her blood ran hot and then cold through them. Mercy licked her lips and tried not to think about the black balls and needles that danced in the darkness of her mind every time she closed her eyes against the breaking dawn.

She was trying to think of something else when the bus began to sway, slightly at first and then in large snake-like movements that tumbled people out of their seats and sent one mother’s infant flying from her arms, over the seat and into the lap of an elderly man.

“God help us!” the driver screamed as he fought to keep the bus on the road. The elderly man echoed his appeal and Mercy’s head slammed up against the window, her ear exploded in blood and pain and then everything went black.

When Mercy came to, she was stretched out in a field of wild verbenas and yellow jasmine. Above her, the early-morning sun beamed and the pointed peaks of the pine trees pricked the deep blue of the sky. The majestic Ozarks loomed off in the distance and all around her was the curling cry of whippoorwills.

Mercy was sure she was dead and in heaven until Sugar pressed her palm against Mercy’s forehead.

“Hi,” Sugar said softly when Mercy’s eyes fluttered and then focused on her face. “Don’t worry, you’re fine. We’re all okay,” Sugar said, giving her a weak smile. “One of the back tires blew out ... or something like that,” she mumbled and then looked off toward the bus.

Mercy didn’t feel all right, her head was throbbing and her ear hurt.

She closed her eyes and concentrated on the cool dampness of the ground beneath her.

The three white women had positioned themselves away from the mass of colored people and were kneeling daintily on the kerchiefs they’d spread out on the grass.

All around them the black people made themselves as comfortable as possible, sitting on top of turned-over suitcases, or spread out on jackets and sweaters they’d placed across the grass.

After a while, Mercy sat up; her wounded ear popped and then throbbed as she eased herself up from Sugar’s lap and into a sitting position. She felt sticky warmth slide down her neck and when she brought her hand up to inspect it, it came away bloody.

“Lay back down,” Sugar coaxed, pushing her gently back down. “Turn your head a little, it’ll stop the bleeding.”

“She need something to block it,” a woman called out from somewhere off to Sugar’s left.

Sugar looked up and realized it was the same woman whose baby was thrown from her arms. Sugar had noticed her at the bus station in St. Louis. Back then the woman and her child had seemed unconcerned with what was going on around them. She had stayed to herself, preferring to stand near the door rather than sit with the other people who waited to board the bus. She was careful not to let anyone get too close to her or her child and walked with her head tilted slightly toward the sky.

Her clothes were smart, too smart for the Midwest, and her copper skin was smooth and free of imperfections. Her hair, which was pulled back so tightly it added an artificial slant to her eyes, didn’t hold even the slightest hint of a curl.

The woman moved her baby from one hip to the other and then looked away when Sugar did not respond.

She didn’t look as slick and as put together as she had when she boarded the bus two days earlier. Her hair was mussed, her clothes wrinkled and there was a nasty run in her nylons.

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 long 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.