This Bitter Earth (7 page)

Chapter 6

BY the time Sara finished her story dawn was coming in pink and blue, and roosters all across Short Junction announced the beginning of another day.

Sugar shivered in the early morning chill that suddenly consumed the room as her mind slowly digested the information Sara had just unloaded on her.

“That’s how I ended up with you?” Sugar asked, even though she already knew the answer.

“She didn’t have noplace else to leave you and she was afraid of taking you with her. Afraid that she would end up crazy like her mama and do to you what her mama did to her.”

Sugar hugged herself and rocked a bit before she asked the next question. Sara had, Sugar thought quite conveniently, left Shonuff Clayton out of the remainder of the story.

“What happened to Shonuff Clayton?”

“Who?” Sara said, suddenly developing amnesia.

“Shonuff Clayton, Sara. What happened to him?”

Sara turned and looked out the window. She took a deep breath but said nothing.

“Sara, please.” Sugar needed to know. Needed to hear it.

“I loved him, you know?” Sara said in a voice that should have belonged to a child.

“Sara,” Sugar pleaded. “That part is just hearsay.” Sara spoke slow and quiet. “I don’t much believe it myself, but seems you need to know.” She turned her head so she could look at Sugar full in the face.

“Some say, the whole time Joe was courting your mother, Shonuff was watching. Well, he worked ‘longside Joe for some time, laying tracks, digging ditches and such. Shonuff never much liked work, didn’t like getting his hands dirty, he said,” Sara said with a sorry laugh. “He had pretty hands, you know, delicate like a woman’s.” A look of nostalgia spread across Sara’s face.

“People talk, you know,” Sara said and then bit down hard on her lip. “People make up things in place of things they don’t know about, you know?”

Sara’s eyes were wet, and she’d left out the part about how she came across Bertie Mae in town one day, how she’d run her fingers through Bertie Mae’s hair, complimenting her on its thickness and shine before turning and walking away with five strands of Bertie Mae’s hair locked between her fingers.

She wouldn’t tell Sugar about the handkerchief, the blue-and-white one that had belonged to Bertie Mae, the one she used one day to mop the sweat from Joe’s brow as he shot craps at the side of the house, beneath the hot sun.

She would leave out the night that Shonuff made love to her, not even speak on the fact that his touch was intoxicating and when he requested the objects he’d asked her to secure for him, she had gladly handed them over to him.

She loved him.

Those things, those things she’d keep to herself.

“Some of the menfolks that worked with Shonuff and Joe said that they had had words about Bertie Mae, low angry words.”

Sugar nodded her head.

“Well, like I said, he was jealous of them two, Joe and your mama. Don’t know why.” Sara’s voice was filled with spite. “But he was, and set about taking care of them. Or so the story goes.”

“Taking care of them?” Sugar was confused.

“Yes.”

“Well, how did he do it, Sara, how did he take care of them?”

“I don’t know how,” Sara said and waved her hand.

“You know, Sara, tell me.” Sugar’s voice was stern.

“I only know what was said.”

“What was said?”

“Well, I heard that he went to the Hastings woman down in Ashton, had that something belong to your mama, something else that belonged to Joe. He gave them to that woman and she said she’d fix it so that Joe couldn’t have your mama, ever.”

“A roots woman?” Sugar’s body relaxed. “Black magic?” Sugar laughed.

“Some call it that,” Sara said, throwing her a sly look.

“Mama died of cancer and Joe is alive and well, Sara,” Sugar said, laughing harder this time.

“Evil kill off more than one generation, Sugar,” Sara added, and began rocking again. “Evil stick around longer than good sometime, infecting people that had nothing at all to do with the deed.”

Sara’s words struck Sugar and her skin went cold. “What you saying, Sara?”

Sara wouldn’t respond.

“Shonuff had a child?”

Sara gave Sugar an odd look. “Why you ask that?”

“Did he have a child?” Sugar asked again. All of the pieces coming together now.

“A boy, from some white woman, born a year or so before you.”

“That boy, he got a name?”

“He christened Edgar after his daddy,” Sara said a little too quickly.

Sugar looked at her real hard, she knew Sara was keeping something from her.

“What you say, Sara?”

Sara swung her head around and her eyes seemed as dark and piercing as the blackbirds that had attacked the house earlier. “I said his Christian name be Edgar, but they called him Lappy.”

Sugar flinched with each syllable that rolled off of Sara’s tongue.

The words that dropped from Sara’s mouth were too evil to be true. This was a nightmare and soon, very, very soon, Sugar thought that she would wake up and none of what she had heard would be true.

“I loved him, he was the only man I ever loved. Seems as though he was the only man I had the opportunity to love,” Sara said. “I been carrying that around with me forever. Seems like forever anyway,” Sara added and the rocking chair came to a sudden halt. “Telling you don’t make it hurt so much now.” Her voice seemed far away as she spoke into the soft morning light. “Yeah, I’d say the pain is ‘bout gone,” she said and smiled.

Sugar looked at Sara and saw the woman that had stubbornly loved her for as long as she could remember and now she understood why.

“Uh-huh, I’d say, the pain is all gone now.”

Sara turned to look at Sugar. “Uh-huh,” she sounded again before the chair rocked backward one last time and went still.

Her eyelids fluttered and then closed. The smile remained, and Sugar knew that Sara had not slipped into slumber, but into the royal blue-and-yellow light of the afterlife.

Sugar’s breath quickened and then slowed, and for a long moment it seemed as though she was looking out at the world from inside a bubble. The room seemed airless and quiet until the high-pitched squawk of a blackbird shattered the silence and left Sugar gasping for air.

The blackbird was perched outside her bedroom window and it watched Sara with great curiosity before turning its attention to Sugar.

The blackbird cocked its head a bit before tapping its beak impatiently against the windowpane. It was an insistent tap, as if it were trying to remind Sugar of some forgotten task.

It went on like that for some time and then the long wail of the winter wind sent the bird fluttering off to the safety of the bare limbs of a nearby oak tree.

“I’m glad it don’t hurt no more, Sara,” Sugar said before stepping across the hall toward May’s room.

Chapter 7

Most of Short Junction turned out for Sara’s funeral, hands heavy with casseroles, fresh baked bread, shortbread cookies, cherry and peach pies. They came in twos, dressed in black, brown and gray, faces just as flat as their wardrobe, shuffling instead of stepping.

May sent Sara out in true Lacey fashion. Sara was laid out in a brilliant purple frock that ruffled around the neck and wrists and May had someone go all the way to Little Rock to buy Sara a shiny new pair of patent leather shoes.

Sugar would always remember how long and bizarre the mourner’s reflections looked in the glossy black leather of Sara’s shoes.

Sara was laid out in the parlor and she looked small and pale against the dark wainscot of the walls and heavy dark drapes. Her face was so heavily made up that she looked like one of the ceramic china dolls that graced the dressing table in her bedroom.

“It’s too much, I think,” Ruby had ventured when May started dabbing more blush on Sara’s cheeks.

“No, it’s not,” May snapped. “She always liked rouge. You know she did, Sister.” May’s tone was harsh, but Sugar didn’t miss the grief that rolled alongside her words. “Just because she dead don’t man she gotta look it.”

Her statement was ludicrous and Ruby just shook her head and gave Sugar a sad look.

Sugar would take a washcloth to Sara’s cheeks when May wasn’t looking. She would tone down the red, make things right, just as Sara had done for her.

They buried her on their land, just as they had buried their mother and Sugar’s mother, Bertie Mae.

The preacher came and said some words over her body and then stayed until the casseroles, tin cans of cookies and cake plates were empty.

“Such a loss,” he said as he cupped May’s hands and then Ruby’s in his own. “She will be missed,” he breathed as he donned his hat and looked up at the sky. “Looks like we gonna be getting some more snow,” he commented as he pulled on his leather gloves.

“Looks that way,” May agreed and closed the door.

Sugar knew, even as she sat on the couch in the parlor and stared at the wallpaper that was graced with tiny horses and carriages, that death wasn’t done with the Lacey home. She knew she’d be there until the only voice that echoed through the halls was her own.

“Let me help,” Sugar said when Ruby and May began removing the crystal glasses and bone china plates.

“You ain’t in no condition, Sugar,” May responded without looking at her. She was staring at a half-eaten cookie that someone had carelessly placed on the coffee table. “Look at this,” she said in disgust as she snatched it up. “People just don’t have no respect.” May brushed the crumbs off into the palm of her hand and started to move out of the parlor.

May moved in a large circle, cutting left, close to the wall, and then right and out the door. Ruby and Sugar blinked at each other. May had just walked through the parlor as if Sara’s coffin were still there.

“Jesus,” Ruby sighed and sat down on the couch.

Sugar never mentioned what Sara had shared with her during the hours before she died. She buried it alongside the other secrets she kept deep inside her.

Every now and then Ruby would ask if Sara had said anything before she died.

“She ain’t say nothing?” “I told you I woke up and she was there in the chair by the window. Already gone.”

Sugar stuck to her story and never looked in May’s or Ruby’s eyes when she told it.

May passed away four months later, just as spring was approaching and the scent of magnolia rolled in from the mountains.

It wasn’t a surprise to anyone when she stopped sweeping the kitchen floor, put the broom to rest in its corner, climbed the stairs, changed into her nightdress and took to her bed.

The grief she suffered after losing Sara weighed heavily on her and she constantly fretted about the last moments she’d had with her sister.

“I was so angry, so damn angry at her!” She would interject her regret into any piece of conversation that happened to be taking place, whether it had to do with Sara or not. “I shouldn’t have been, though. That was just Sara.”

“Yes, Sister, that’s just how she was. But she okay now, she with her maker and everything is okay,” Ruby would say and pat May’s hand.

“I shouldn’t have slapped her,” May would mumble and then go off to be alone.

On the fifth day after May took to her bed, she stopped eating solid food.

“Just bring me another Mason jar,” she would say whenever Sugar or Ruby came to her bedroom with a tray of food.

“Sister, you need to eat. Got to keep your strength up.” Ruby smiled when she spoke, but Sugar heard the fear in her words, saw the concern in her eyes.

“Just bring it to me.”

And Ruby did.

May dried up as fast as the thyme and rosemary Ruby hung upside down along the inside of the kitchen’s window ledge; wasted away until Sugar and Ruby had to step all the way into the room to see for sure that May was somewhere in the mess of sheets and quilts on the bed.

“Bring me Papa’s pipe.”

Sugar was sitting by May’s bed staring at the flames that danced in the fireplace, thinking about Bigelow.

“What you say, May?”

“I said, bring me Papa’s pipe.”

“Uh-huh,” Sugar mumbled and dismissed May’s request as incoherent babbling.

“Bring it here, Sugar, now!”

Sugar jumped at the strength of May’s voice. “What, May, what?” May had Sugar’s undivided attention now. “What you want?”

“Papa’s pipe,” May repeated herself; her words came out heavy and thick.

Sugar just blinked at her. “Pipe? What pipe? Where?”

“On top of the mantel.”

Sugar moved her eyes over the mantel and didn’t see anything there but a small handmade wooden crucifix, two books, a wooden box and a small silver oval-shaped picture frame.

“Ain’t no pipe up there, May.” Sugar got up and was about to head downstairs to get Ruby when she decided to check the contents of the box.

Inside was indeed a pipe as well as a small velvet bag filled with tobacco and a gold lighter with the initials I.T. carved on its front.

She picked up the box and carried it over to the bed. May was wheezing and her eyes watered as she stared up at the ceiling. “Fill it up and light it for me.”

Sugar hesitated. “I don’t think you should be smoking. I mean, in your condition.” Sugar stepped back a pace or two. “I think maybe I should check with Ruby and see—”

“Who more grown here, me or you? I say fill it up and light it.”

“Ruby!” Sugar yelled over her shoulder as she sat down on the bed and hurriedly began to empty the tobacco into the pipe. “Ruby!” Her hands were shaking as she packed the tobacco into the bowl of the pipe before placing the curved end between her teeth.

“Light it, light it.” May spoke as her head twisted back and forth in the pillow. Her eyes were watering badly now and every breath she took was followed by a sound that reminded Sugar of dry leaves dancing at the mouth of a cave.

“I’m trying, May. Ruby!”

Sugar had the pipe between her teeth and had to speak from the side of her mouth. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably now as her attention was torn between May’s twisting head and the lighter. She flicked it, once, twice, three times and nothing happened.

“Light it!” May was screaming now.

“Ruby! Ruby!” Sugar yelled again.

Finally the flint caught and a small blue flame appeared. Sugar had never smoked a pipe in her life, hadn’t even had a cigarette since she arrived in Short Junction. Now she was pulling on the end of a pipe, kindling tobacco for May. Her head spun as her lungs filled with smoke.

“Jes ... Jesus Christ!” Sugar gagged and then spat into her hand. “Ruby!” she yelled her name again and again between coughing fits. The last thing she wanted to do was put the lit pipe in May’s outstretched hand.

“Give it here.” May’s eyes sparkled and Sugar thought she saw a small smile trying to break across her face. “Gimme Papa’s pipe,” May said and then she did smile.

May placed the pipe between her lips and began to take short, rhythmic puffs that even put Sugar at ease. The room filled with an aroma that reminded Sugar of chamomile and the blanket Pearl wrapped around herself when she felt happy, sad or both.

“Hmmmm.” May removed the pipe from her mouth and let off a long stream of smoke before placing it back in again.

Her eyes were back on the ceiling but her face looked as though someone had turned a light on inside of her.

Sugar sat on the side of the bed watching, but not understanding what it was she was seeing.

“May—” she started to say, but May turned her head toward her and shushed her.

“Shhhh, now. Papa talking. Mama there too, so is Sara. They look so beautiful ... sooo beautiful.”

Sugar didn’t want to leave her to find Ruby, but she did not want to see death take another life.

“Ruby!” she called out again and still no response came.

May giggled and then smiled and Sugar could swear she saw her blush before she turned her head toward her again.

“Ruby coming soon, I heard the pot drop,” May mumbled before her hand fell down to her chest, sending the pipe and its charred contents across the bed.

Sugar slapped at the smoking bits of tobacco, brushing them off the sheet and to the ground. When she turned to look back at May, her eyes were open and staring, her body still. May was gone.

“Oh, my God,” Sugar cried and threw her hands up to her face.

The clattering sound of metal hitting the floor followed, and Sugar knew that a pot had indeed dropped and both May and Ruby were dead.

People stared at her when she came into town to buy food, pick up a package from the post office or just for a change of scenery.

Children pointed and snickered behind curved palms and the older ones—the ones who felt that they were grown because they had moved past holding their father’s hands or clinging to the skirts of their mothers—felt they had earned the right to sneer at her, talk out loud about who she was and what had happened in the Lacey home when she’d arrived a season ago.

“Witch,” some called her. “Devil,” most said.

After May and Ruby died, the sheriff came to investigate Sugar, asking her questions that made her mouth curl and twist as she fought to keep back the cuss words that pushed at her clenched teeth.

“Why would you give a sick old woman a pipe to smoke?”

“Don’t you think that pot was too big and heavy for Ruby to lift? Poor thing, the strain and the loss of her sister probably caused her heart to give out the way it did.”

“Where you been all these years?”

“Them sisters had any life insurance?”

“What you gaining from their
sudden
demise?”

Sugar looked him right in his blue eyes and answered all of his questions as calmly and efficiently as she could. Whenever she felt herself about to lose control she just picked up the glass of water she’d poured for herself and took a sip. Not a big one, mind you. Just small ones, enough to keep her mouth moist and allow her mind to focus on something else, if only for a moment.

“How you a Lacey and them sisters ain’t never had no children ?” he asked, scratching under his arms and then down between his legs.

“They just took me in and give me their name.”

“Just like that? Well, that don’t sound like no legal adoption to me. Sound like one to you, Kurt?” he said, turning his big hog head toward his deputy. His neck was thick and red and Sugar thought how appropriate that was.

“Nossir, not at all.”

“Uh-huh. Where your
real
mama at?” he asked as he picked something from his nose.

“Dead,” she said.

“Daddy?” he asked and flicked something to the floor.

Sugar hesitated for a moment. She could feel her eyes begin to twitch and she took a sip of water.

“Don’t know who he is.” And then, “Or was,” she added without blinking.

The sheriff rubbed his massive stomach and gave Sugar a look that made her skin crawl.

“Uh-huh. Just you here now?” he said, looking past Sugar toward the stairs.

“Yes.”

“Uh-huh. Well, you stay close, this is still an ongoing investigation,” he said, standing up and hitching his pants over his stomach.

Hours turned into days and days into nights filled with the sound of Pearl’s voice, Jude’s crying, and a hundred sharp blades that wheeled at her through the blackness.

Nothing came of the investigation and Sugar stayed in Short Junction for nine more winters before she decided to leave.

The Lacey women had willed the house to her and Sugar supposed that entitled her to the 7,240 dollars she found stuffed in coffee cans and buried in the freezer May had purchased back in ‘54.

Sugar kept to herself and didn’t share more than ten straight words with anyone, until the day a white man and black woman came knocking on her door. She didn’t invite them in or offer them a cool glass of water; she just stepped out onto the porch, folded her hands across her chest and listened to what they had to say.

When they left, promising to return within a week, Sugar couldn’t seem to stop their words from bouncing around in her head.