Sugar (18 page)

“Ain’t it beautiful, Miss Pearl,” Sugar suddenly said in a breathless voice. “Just sky and land for miles, umph!”

Yes it certainly was beautiful. September days were unique in Arkansas. The sky was an enormous, pale blue pallet with white streaks and puffs. In September the horizon lowered itself and it seemed like you could reach up and touch it. The soil turned a deeper, richer brown and the trees, plants and flowers gave their all, knowing that in a matter of weeks fall would claim their brilliancy and tuck it safely away in winter’s pocket, keeping it safe till spring.

“I didn’t know you noticed those type of things,” Pearl said.

Sugar didn’t respond. She was beginning to notice quite a few things. Not only notice but appreciate them in a way she never dreamed possible. She smiled at the joy her small observation seemed to bring to Pearl’s face.

Pearl sipped quietly and thought of the only other times she had ever digested alcohol. The first was as a servant in the McHenry home, during one of their infamous parties. It was the first party of the summer and rich white folks came from all over Arkansas and neighboring states to take part in the festivities.

Men in starched white and blue seersucker suits and women in long flowing silk dresses that captured every color of the season glided here and there hiding their smiles behind gloved hands or tilting their heads back in polite laughter. Clinking glasses resounded around the property and added to the comically composed festivities. Tennis, lawn bowling and croquet filled the daylight hours before dinner was served. At the drop of the sun, massive quantities of food were laid out beneath huge canopies. Whole pigs lay staring with dead eyes, their mouths stuffed with huge apples. Cornish hens, one for each of the two hundred or more guests, goose liver patés, English crackers, chilled cantaloupe soup, wild rice, pheasant and duck—Pearl saw that the white people certainly did have everything and so much of some things she never thought existed.

The mood would change after the meal. The band, brought in from Mississippi, would play ragtime and Dixieland music for the guests to kick their feet up to. Women would lift their legs to reveal seamed stockings. The liquor would flow like water, ice clinking against glasses; liquid falling out and over onto white patent leather shoes. Oh, a high time was being had.

Laughter became raucous, stories became full-fledged lies and Pearl watched as wives ran their long painted fingernails down the napes of other husbands’ necks, while husbands whispered deep into the ears of their partners’ wives—or their wives’ best friends.

When it was all done, guests gone that could, others that couldn’t retired to the many guest rooms, Pearl was left alone on the great lawn, gathering the delicate crystal that still held the liquids that made the guests talk louder and laugh longer. Cigar, cigarette and pipe smoke still clung to dew-wet eaves and the crying branches of the weeping willow trees. She didn’t know why she suddenly tilted the glass up to her mouth. It was a quick and jerky motion, as if her hand was guided by something other than her mind. The drink traveled down her throat tickling as it went until it finally reached her stomach and settled there like glowing embers. Oh, the feeling was unique, and the only thing that came close to it was the feeling she got when she thought of her Joe and the way he kissed the under part of her arm.

She could think of the two at once and get a sharp pleasurable stabbing sensation in her womb, one that would keep her feeling silly for hours.

Even now as she sat and reminisced, her stomach contracted and she hid her smile behind a mock cough and her hand.

The second time had not been pleasurable at all. Her wedding night. She and Joe lay together in her own childhood bed, in her room that shared a wall with her parents’ room. They spoke in whispers and giggled in the moonlit darkness of her room. She could tell the urgency he had for her. His sex organ pressed against her hip and throbbed there like a second heart. She would not, could not, remove her starched new cotton nightgown given to her by her mother as a wedding gift. She did allow his hands to travel beneath it and explore her virginal body. She was embarrassed by the moans that escaped her, heavier and even more sexual than the ones that emanated from Joe. When his mouth clasped hold of one of her erect nipples, she thought for one split second that her mind would snap.

He could not enter her, even though she was slick. The pain was too much to bear. He placed his hand between her legs and massaged her opening with his finger, he glided it effortlessly in and out until she thought her whole body would fall apart with pleasant convulsions. But when he mounted her again for the third time, she still squirmed against him, pushing him away instead of pulling him forward. He became desperate. “Take a little of this,” he said. His voice was thick with want as he guided the small flask of whiskey to her lips. The smell alone intoxicated her, but to please her new husband she drank the whiskey. Moments later her head was spinning and her stomach turning. She spent an hour in the outhouse, puking up her wedding cake. Joe spent some time there afterward too, pleasing himself.

Pearl was consuming her third glass of pike aid, and wondering why the name began to sound familiar to her. She thought hard and long about it, but could not remember. She forced her attention on Sugar, who was smoking a cigarette. For the first time she realized that Sugar did not have on one of her many wigs. Her head was tied with a rag. Her face was absent of makeup, which was a rare occurrence. She looked normal for once, even fresh. Her scantily clad body seemed less threatening without all of the fixtures. In this chaste state, Sugar looked more like Jude than ever before. Pearl looked away and tried to consider something else, but again her vision was drawn back to Sugar. The cigarette smoke sailed over to her and invaded her nose. She coughed a little and fanned it away with her free hand.

“You need to stop that,” she said, her voice lagging a bit.

“Stop what?” Sugar said.

“That smoking. You smoke too much and you don’t wear enough clothes, either.” Pearl was speaking matter of factly, her tone was less than accusing, just tottering on the verge of drunkenness.

Sugar, realizing this, just rolled her eyes and looked back toward the fields.

“Gimmesomemore to drink.” Pearl’s words spilled out like poor man’s pearls, strung together and worthless.

Sugar looked over at her, and realized by the way Pearl was shoving the glass in her direction that she’d probably had too much already.

“I think that might be it for you, Miss Pearl. How about a Coke?” Sugar said, not moving.

Pearl set the glass down between her legs and leaned her head back against the house. “Sugar, don’t it make you feel ashamed when you take off your clothes for everyone and anyone?” Pearl asked, curiosity lacing her voice.

“No,” Sugar said quickly and shifted her body. She was uncomfortable, knowing what the questioning was leading up to.

“Umph,” Pearl grunted and shook her head.

“It ain’t no big deal. You take your clothes off in front of Joe all the time. That don’t make you feel shame, do it?” Sugar said, a bit sarcastically.

Pearl had never disrobed in front of Joe, in fact when they made love, it was in the thick darkness of their bedroom and her gown was simply lifted above her waist. But that was so long ago; she had not been able to perform that wifely duty since Jude’s death. It had been fifteen long years of nothing more than caresses and quick kisses, sleeping with even breath against a neck and a hand settled into the curve of a waist. Joe and Pearl simply shared a bed now and not each other.

Pearl did not respond.

“I feel free when I ain’t got no clothes on,” Sugar continued.

“How does being naked make you feel free?” Pearl sat up now, wanting to understand Sugar’s words.

“I can’t explain it, Miss Pearl, it just do.”

“I think it’s downright disgusting,” Pearl said, frustrated because Sugar could offer no valid explanation.

“Well . . . don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”

Pearl huffed. “I don’t know nothing about you, Sugar. You live next door and we spend time together, but you still a stranger to me.”

Sugar laughed. “Miss Pearl, I see you one of those soupy drunks.”

Pearl scratched at her nose. “I ain’t drunk.” Her words were slurred and she squirmed again against the warm feeling between her legs. “Tell me something, what you think your mamma woulda said ’bout what you do?”

Sugar stiffened at the words. They hit her like pellets. “Okay, Miss Pearl, I think it’s time for you to go now.” She stood and stretched her long brown frame. Any high she had was quickly seeping from her.

“Y-you think she woulda approved of you being a whore?” Pearl continued, oblivious to the anger that was building up in Sugar.

Sugar flinched at the questions and swallowed hard. She did not want to discuss a mother she never knew.

“She dead. How am I suppose to know what she think?” she said and bent down to snatch up Pearl’s empty glass.

“I don’t think she wouldalikeditverymuch.” Pearl’s bottom lip was stuck out and her head began to look too heavy for her neck.

Sugar just smirked.

“You think maybe she was a whore too?” The words fell effortlessly from Pearl’s mouth and luckily Sugar had sense enough to realize that Pearl’s words were only alcohol induced.

“Miss Pearl, if my mamma was a whore then she did what she felt she had to do. I ain’t gonna judge her, cause I don’t want to be judged. Anyway, we whores ain’t all that different from the rest of you.”

Pearl’s eyebrows went up. “How you figure that?”

“Well we all got working pussies. We all whores in one way or another—”

“I ain’t no whore. I know that for sure!” Pearl exclaimed.

“Yes, you is, Pearl, you and your mamma before you—”

“I ain’t no whore!” Pearl was standing now.

“You lay down with your husband and in return he clothe and feed you—keep a roof up over your head. You stop laying with him, all those things disappear.” Sugar snapped her fingers for emphasis.

That was not true. And Pearl shook her head insistently no, but she would not tell of what didn’t go on in her bedroom. She would not.

“Look here, I do what I have to to put food on my table and clothes on my back and will keep on doing it same as you.”

Pearl raised her hands in defeat. She did not want to argue again, but she had Sugar angry now. Sugar’s tongue flicked words at Pearl like a whip.

“The only difference between you and me, Miss Pearl, is you began your whoring life in front of a congregation, dressed in white and with God’s blessing!”

She slammed into the house, leaving Pearl sorry for speaking at all. Pearl heard the glasses crash into the sink. The refrigerator door opened and slammed closed three times and by the time Pearl’s foot landed on the last step Sugar was back on the porch, huffing and puffing like a wild, angry boar.

“You right, Miss Pearl, you don’t know me at all. I been on my own since I was fifteen fucking years old. Fifteen! And did you forget how I told you I survived? Have you forgotten!” Sugar’s anger had the best of her now. Pearl turned to meet Sugar’s enraged eyes but she did not utter a word.

“With my pussy, that’s how! Men pay to fuck, eat or smell
my
pussy!”

Pearl blushed at Sugar’s use of language; she wanted to throw her hands up to her ears.

Sugar was spent, the anger was mellowing down to simple annoyance now. Her breathing slowed and she sat down heavily on the steps.

“I ain’t bad, Miss Pearl, I just ain’t had no crossroads in my life is all.”

Pearl traced Sugar’s jawline with her hand. “Yes you have, child, you just wasn’t able to recognize them when you came across them.”

Chapter Twelve

H
ER
headache was finally withdrawing. Just to be sure, she took another aspirin and kept the ice pack on her head. Her first hangover at sixty. She laughed out loud in the five o’clock darkness of her bedroom. She thought of Joe and her stomach trembled. She moved her hand across the empty space his absent body left in their bed. Not one full day had passed and she was already missing him as if he had been gone for twenty.

Her body was weak from the pike aid and lack of food. Cooking was something she did not want to consider after the heat and angry words from Sugar; the cans of tuna fish stacked in the cupboard would remain stacked until another day. Her mouth craved barbecue, but her feet would not carry her to town to get it. Perhaps buttered bread and a cup of tea, she thought.

Shortly before seven Pearl found herself eating exactly what she craved. Sugar appeared at her front door with two barbecue rib dinners, complete with corn bread and potato salad and Coca-Cola.

Sugar seldom visited Pearl’s home, and when she did, she never left the confines of the kitchen; her visit was always short. Pearl felt they both preferred it that way. Pearl was uncomfortable having her around Joe; Sugar was uncomfortable with Pearl’s apparent uneasiness having her there. But today they sat and listened to the radio.

Sugar bore another bag, a large heavy brown paper sack, its top rolled tightly closed. Pearl eyed it on and off, wanting to know exactly what it contained, but Sugar made no effort to disclose its contents to her.

“Miss Pearl, I got something I wanna do to you,” Sugar said as they cleared the table of the dinner remnants.

“What?” Pearl was surprised at her statement. “What you want to do to me?” she said suspiciously.

“C’mon,” Sugar said and grabbed the brown sack and headed up the stairs.

“W-wait a minute,” Pearl said and rushed to follow her.

Sugar found herself standing in the upstairs hall of Pearl and Joe’s house. The differences were few. Pearl’s floors were bare, the unfinished floors dull against the old beige wallpaper with the tiny light blue flowers. Sugar turned into the bathroom. Unlike her own bathroom, Pearl’s walls were painted white, and butterscotch towels, washcloths and hand towels added brightness to the room, even though it was dead darkness outside the window. “Sit down,” Sugar said as she dropped the toilet seat down.