Queen Sugar: A Novel (4 page)

“It does,” Charley said. “All of it.”

Denton stared through the kitchen window. “I turned seventy-one back in April. This is the first time in sixty years I haven’t had to get up before dawn to go to work. I got a little garden out there I like to mess around in. And when I’m not doing that, I like to go fishing.” He turned to look at Charley, the expression on his face more open than she’d seen, as if he were searching for something. “You like to fish, Miss Bordelon?”

“My dad liked to fish,” Charley said. “On weekends sometimes, he’d go down the beach near his house and catch abalone. Or he’d take his fishing pole and climb out to a rock way out in the surf.” She could still see him standing there, a lone figure perched on top of the huge boulder, the ocean churning and crashing all around him while she played in the sand. They’d have fried fish and corn for dinner. “But me? I never tried it.”

“Well, you ought to,” Denton said. “It’s peaceful. Nothing but you, your thoughts, and that fish. Everything else falls away.” He paused, his shoulders slumping a tiny bit. “You’re a smart young woman, Miss Bordelon. I feel for you, I really do. But I’m retired.” Someone had mounted an Audubon clock above the sink, with birds—an American goldfinch, a Carolina wren, a hermit thrush—positioned at each hour. For a few seconds they sat listening to the clock’s gentle ticking, and when the second hand reached the quarter hour, the clock chimed happily with a different bird’s song. “Maybe you oughta sit this one out,” Denton said, raising his head to look at Charley as the idea seemed to come to him. “Get a feel for things and, in a year, see if it’s still for you. Who knows? You might decide to sell.”

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple.” Charley glanced down at her lap. She had a run in her nylons, right above the knee, and the dark skin of her thigh shone through like a gash where the white threads were pulling apart. She thought back to her conversation with the lawyer that day in his office.
I don’t mean to sound ungrateful
, she’d said, knowing that ungrateful was exactly how she sounded,
but are you saying there’s no money? Nothing? Just some farm in Louisiana? There was money at a local bank in Saint Josephine
, the lawyer explained,
but it was entirely for operating expenses. Other than that, no, there was no money.
Even now, after all these months, the truth was hard to accept. Her father had sold every piece of property he owned to buy what amounted to a vacant lot.

Sitting across the table from Prosper Denton in a kitchen that smelled faintly of homemade bread, coffee, and freshly picked tomatoes, Charley tried to make Denton appreciate her predicament. “I can’t sell,” she said. “My father put the land in trust, I don’t know why, but if I run it, I get the profits after the bank is paid. If I walk away, the land goes to charity.” Charley felt a space open inside her as she thought about her father’s other favorite saying: “I give you what I want you to have”—which sometimes sounded intensely generous and sometimes rang with fierce control.

The lawyer, looking like an old owl behind his mahogany desk, had said,
Your father was a good man. He was trying to provide for you.
He put up a hand to stop Charley’s protestation.
You’ve got a million dollars’ worth of presumably good land down there. I suggest you bone up. Get in touch with this man.
He slid a folder across the desk. On the front was a sticky note with a name, Wayne Frasier, and a number.
He’s sort of a caretaker,
the lawyer said
. Managed the property for the sellers and, from what I understand, he agreed to work for your father.
She had flipped through the documents and photographs.
Handle this right,
the lawyer said, standing up and showing her to the door,
and your great-great-grandkids will never have to worry.
His final words convinced her. Charley had thought of Micah and Micah’s children. And even as she reeled at the news of her inheritance, loving and resenting her father all at the same time, she knew what she would do.

Charley looked at Mr. Denton. “So you see, sitting out isn’t an option. And selling is out of the question.”

“Give yourself a chance to think on it,” Denton said. “You might feel different in a day or two.”

Charley nodded vacantly. He might as well have patted her head, might as well have told her all she needed was a long soak in the tub or a good night’s sleep and she’d come to her senses.

Denton reached to refill her glass, but Charley covered it with her hand. “No, thanks, I’m fine.” She folded her paper towel over, then over again. “My father sold everything he had to buy that land.”

“Lot of farmers wanted that place.” Denton’s face brightened with admiration. “Must have come in with a strong offer.”

“A million, one twenty,” Charley said. “He had nothing left.”

Denton whistled. “That’s fourteen hundred an acre.”

“Yes, it is. And at the end of the year, the bank is going to want its first payment. So I can’t afford to ‘think on it,’ as you say.”

Denton looked at Charley. “I wish I could help you.”

And so, Charley stood. The conversation was over. Denton had shut her down before she got started and she wasn’t in the mood for more talk. She carried her glass to the sink and rinsed it before he could object, then grabbed her backpack. “Thanks for your time.”

Denton looked startled, but he led her to the door. “I can only tell you what I know to be true, Miss Bordelon.”

Beyond the screen door, the yard was bright, the clouds overlapping like leopard spots against the flat sky, and Charley braced herself for the heat. The dogs, stationed at their post, looked up expectantly as she pushed through the screen door, and followed her to the car as if it were their duty. She pulled out of the yard, the dogs chasing alongside her, the narrow country road unwinding like thread from a spool, the sugarcane seeming taller and even grander than when she arrived. Charley gripped the wheel and noticed how her diamond ring glowed as it reflected the sunlight. So many things she didn’t know, so many obstacles she couldn’t see, so many challenges she couldn’t even
imagine
, and no one to guide her.

•   •   •

Even before Charley saw them, she knew, from the garlicky smell that hung in the living room, that Micah and Miss Honey were cooking.

“You got up and out early this morning,” Miss Honey said as Charley tossed her backpack on the table.

“Mom,” Micah said. “Miss Honey’s teaching me how to make Dirty Rice.”

“I went to see Prosper Denton,” Charley said.

Miss Honey’s eyes narrowed, but then she turned her attention back to the cutting board with the chopped onions piled like a mound of confetti. “He knew you were coming?”

“He thinks I should sit out for a year. Either that or sell. Which I can’t.”

“Hmm.” Miss Honey tapped Micah. “Baby, hand me that spoon.”

In the vacant lot next door, some of Miss Honey’s dresses and two of Micah’s shirts hung stiffly from the clothesline. “Don’t take this wrong,” Charley said, “but how, exactly, did you think Denton could help me?”

Miss Honey’s lips pursed. She kept her eyes on the cutting board, continued to chop, but said, “Last month, folks over in Pointe Olivier needed their water tower taken down. Whole thing was rusted out and waiting to fall. Problem was, they couldn’t find anyone for the job. Power lines all around it, and every engineer they called swore they couldn’t say for sure where it was gonna land. Everybody screaming it couldn’t be done.”

Charley went to the refrigerator, took out a Coke, wishing it were a beer, and twisted off the cap.

“So a couple men from the city called Mr. Denton,” Miss Honey continued. “That same day he drove out to take a look. Walked around that tower a couple times, sketched out his plan on a napkin, then looked those men from the city right in the eye and said, ‘I can do it.’ Showed them exactly where that tower would fall. He sent those boys up there to make the cuts, attached the cables, got in the tractor, and before anyone could say Jackie Robinson, that tower came down, just like he said. Didn’t kiss even
one
of those power lines.”

Miss Honey called Micah over to the stove where ground beef sizzled in the iron skillet. She handed her a wooden spoon with burn marks along the handle, and told her to adjust the flame—not too high or the meat would burn; not too low or it would get soggy. “The secret to good cooking is knowing how to follow the recipe till you feel comfortable,” she said. She covered the skillet with a plate, muting the sizzling. “Once you understand how the ingredients work together,
then
you can go off on your own. Till then, you’re just wasting good food and everybody’s time.”

Fred’s Hometown Discount in Lafayette had everything you needed to make your house a home. Charley and Micah were on their way to buy sheets and an air mattress, and had just pulled away from Miss Honey’s when Micah asked, “Is Miss Honey poor?”

Charley looked at Micah. Poor was bricks of government cheese in the freezer, she thought; poor was celebrities holding hands in the music video and singing “We Are the World” for starving children in Africa. She could spend a lifetime at Miss Honey’s and not think the word
poor
, and yet she understood why Micah asked. Saint Josephine was not Los Angeles. Why, just yesterday on her way to the farm, she spotted, way back in the woods, a rusted Airstream trailer marooned in a murky puddle. Graffiti
was spray-painted in crooked blue letters across its front, and a tattered American flag, instead of curtains, hung in the window. Even Miss Honey’s house, which stretched from the broken sidewalk in front all the way to the woods out back, was nothing more than one hundred and twenty feet of raggedy tacked-on rooms, one after another like a line of boxcars.

“Miss Honey doesn’t have a lot of money, that’s true,” Charley said, “but no one’s ever gone hungry in her house.” Poor but not hungry. That was the phrase her father used whenever he described his childhood. Charley always took it to mean there was so much more to life than just money. There were family and friends, there was good, satisfying work, and knowing you had a place on this earth where you were loved and there was nothing to prove. Charley looked both ways at the end of the block even though no cars were coming. “What do
you
think?”

Micah held up the Polaroid. She surveyed the street through the viewfinder. “Everything in this town is broken,” she said. “Why is everyone black? Why do they stare every time we drive down the street?”

Charley laughed. “You’ll get used to it.” She thought back on their lives in LA with its wild mix of people: blacks, whites, Latinos and Asians, East Indians and Middle Easterners, no one staring at anybody.

At the edge of town, as Main Street fed into the two-lane and they picked up a little speed, Micah lowered her camera. She pressed her back against the passenger door and stared at Charley. “Are we poor because we live here now?”

“The Quarters”—the side of town where Miss Honey and most of the other black residents lived, a neighborhood that was
literally
over the railroad tracks—couldn’t have been farther from what Micah had known. The streets were sloppily paved, the sidewalks cracked. On the narrow houses, paint curled away from sun-bleached clapboard. Battered couches and rusty lawn chairs seemed to clutter every porch.

Charley shivered despite the sun shining through her window. Were they poor? She had two hundred and thirteen dollars after paying for the trip to Saint Josephine. Davis was so young when he died—just thirty-two—he barely had life insurance. She had a master’s in art history, which she’d still be paying for after Micah finished college, and nothing set aside for retirement. And though she didn’t want to admit it, she couldn’t have afforded to rent a house down here if she’d wanted to, had prayed Miss Honey would offer them a place to stay. And now, if she couldn’t find a manager, if she couldn’t whip her fields into shape and harvest a decent crop, she’d have squandered her father’s investment. Charley took a breath, twisted her wedding ring. “Not poor. Not exactly.”
Not yet
, she thought.

Ahead of her, Spanish moss hung in curtains from the live oaks, softening the light that fell through the branches and lent the road a hazy glow.

Micah opened the glove box, took out the map, and fanned herself. Seconds later, she kicked off the fleece-lined, shin-high suede boots she insisted on wearing despite Charley’s warning that it wasn’t boots weather, and propped her bare feet on the dash. She groaned. “It’s
so hot
.”

“I tried to tell you.”

Micah looked at her sideways, then reached to fiddle with the air conditioner.

Charley was just about to remind her that it was broken, tell her to leave it alone, when Micah’s sleeve rode up her arm, revealing her scar. An impulse shot through Charley and she brushed her hand over it.

“Stop it,” Micah said, pulling away. “I hate when you do that.”

Charley withdrew her hand, placed it back on the wheel. “Sorry,” she said, lamely, unable to reprimand Micah for her sharp speech. She could rationalize part of it: hormones. All the eye rolling, the crossed arms, and the sulking, even that clicking sound Micah made with her tongue to convey impatience or general disgust, it was part of growing up—that’s what the parenting books said, anyway. And she had flickering memories of herself at Micah’s age; remembered how sometimes the mere sound of her mother’s voice made the hair on her arms prickle, it was that grating; or how, downstairs in the garage after school one day, she burst into tears for no reason she could think of. Just burst into tears, shoulders shaking and nose running, as she stood there beside shelves of laundry detergent and paper plates and her mother’s old tennis rackets. So why get on Micah’s case when she knew it was just a phase?

But then there was the other part; the part that had nothing to do with hormones and everything to do with her guilt. And for the next few minutes, as she drove, Charley cursed for not catching herself before she touched Micah’s scar, for not thinking the moment through. Micah’s accusatory tone, her rejection, stung, for sure, but it could never match her own lacerating self-loathing, her own sickening shame.

Charley reached for the map. “We’re here,” she said, unfolding it and spreading it in the space between them, “and we’re trying to get there. You can be our guide.”

Micah drew the map closer, traced the road with her finger. She was quiet for a while, then said, “I want to go home.”

“Not again.” Charley was pleading. They had had this conversation—if you could call it a conversation with all the tears and pouting—a hundred times in the last ten months, like actors in a play.

Micah folded the map’s corner. Vinton, Sulpher, and Lake Charles disappeared into crisp accordion pleats. “I want to live with Lorna.”

Lorna was Charley’s mother, Micah’s grandmother, back in Los Angeles. She took Micah shopping, to the children’s symphony, and to tea at the Ritz Carlton on her birthday. Last summer she took Micah to Martinique and promised they would fly to Paris when Micah turned fifteen. Lorna’s house, a stately property with a towering wrought-iron gate out front, a gurgling cherub fountain, and olive trees lining the courtyard, was filled with framed pictures of the two of them. Charley was happy the two were close, was happy Lorna could provide for Micah in a way she simply couldn’t on her nonprofit salary; and yet, lately, Charley felt a stab of jealousy whenever Micah mentioned Lorna’s name.

“I still don’t understand why I have to—” Micah began.

“My God,” Charley cut her off. “What can I tell you? That ship has sailed. I’m not discussing it.” She brushed Micah’s hand from the wrecked map as Welsh, Jennings, and Crowley vanished into its creases. “I’m going to need that if you don’t mind.”

“Fine.” Micah shoved the map off her lap. It crumpled in the well beneath her feet.

Beyond the window, the landscape rushed by. How could there be so many shades of green? Cane fields the bright green of a new pippin apple, while the grass was almost jade, the woods the deep green of raw spinach, and the reflection of the sunlit trees along the bayou a vibrant chartreuse.

“You know, I’m not trying to torture you,” Charley said, and studied her hands, which had swollen in the heat. With difficulty, she twisted her wedding ring off her finger and dropped it into the empty ashtray. “Just think, Micah, how great it’ll feel to walk across fields we own.”

“I don’t want to walk across fields. I want to live in a city, with sidewalks and a swimming pool.”

“We never had a pool.”

“Stop joking. It’s not funny.” The wind tossed the flyaway strands of Micah’s braids. She brushed them out of her face and said, “You promised there’d be kids.”

“I know,” Charley said. “Don’t worry, we’ll find them.” She forced brightness into her voice. “It’s south Louisiana. It’s
Catholic
,
for God’s sake. Trust me, we’ll find kids.”

“What if they don’t like me?”

“Of course they’ll like you. You’re smart and funny, and besides, you’re from California. People always want to know kids from California.”

“Sure.
Malibu
, California.” Micah picked at the flaking upholstery. “
Beverly Hills
, California.” She rubbed her arm absentmindedly, and then, in a voice so quiet Charley could barely hear her, said, “Kids can be mean.”

The dark feeling lapped inside Charley and she steeled herself against it. Of course, Micah was right. Kids could be mean. But what choice did she have? She had come down here. Her father had left this door open and it was the only open door in her life.

Charley turned on the radio. The bandleader sang in a Cajun twang, and feeling her spirits rising, she tapped her hand lightly against the dashboard. The bass and drums, the button accordion’s high whine, the rolling emerald fields and the sapphire sky. “Just wait, Micah. You’ll see what I mean. It’ll all be good when the farm’s up and running.” As she spoke, Charley’s heart quickened. One song ended and another began. She stuck her head through the window and shouted, surprising even herself. “‘Oh, summer has clothed the earth in a cloak from the loom of the sun!’”

“Oh my God, Mom. Shut up!” Micah sank low in her seat.

“Relax,” Charley said, “it’s a beautiful poem.” She stuck her head through the window and yelled again. “‘And a mantle, too, of the skies’ soft blue, And a belt where the rivers run.’”

“Please, Mom! I’m not kidding. You’re embarrassing me.” Micah sank even lower and rode like that for a few minutes. Then, seeing Charley’s ring in the ashtray, she fished it out and held it up to the light, then slipped it onto her index finger. “Why do you wear this?”

“It reminds me of Daddy,” Charley said, though in truth, after four years, she struggled to remember Davis’s face. She recalled more easily the smell of his shirts, like coffee and ink, the easy sound of his laugh, and the feeling of being with him in the kitchen as he cooked on Sundays—the Grateful Dead blasting from the portable speakers, the counters overrun with spices, the recipe for some curry dish he found in a magazine splattered with oil. She rubbed her heat-swollen index finger, indented where the wedding ring had pressed into it.

Micah slid the ring off her finger and jiggled it in her cupped hands. Charley started to grab it, but stopped herself. She silently counted to twenty.

“Okay, time’s up.” She reached over. “Let me have it back.”

But Micah twisted away. “I just want to hold it.”

“No. Give it back.”

“Tu me fais chier,”
Micah said under her breath, and pressed her closed fist to her chest.

“I didn’t send you to that school to learn how to swear,” Charley said, and wondered, not for the first time, how she ever let Davis talk her into enrolling Micah at the Lycée.

“It was nothing,” Micah said, then, under her breath,
“Merde.”

Charley slapped the wheel. “Don’t
merde
me.”

“I want to go back,” Micah said, then added with more certainty, “Lorna will send me a plane ticket.”

Charley let the threat pass.

“You’re just jealous,” Micah said.

“That’s ridiculous. Jealous of what?”

“You’re a fish.”

Charley would have laughed had Micah not been glaring so fiercely.

“Lorna and I are sharks,” Micah spat. “Sharks are better. We rub our tongues along our teeth. Sharks
eat
fish.”

Charley didn’t take her eyes off the road. “And here I thought Lorna was teaching you which fork to use with your salad. I never guessed she was teaching you which fork was for stabbing me in the heart.”

Micah covered her face with her hands. “I want to go home.”

“This is your home.
I’m
your home.”

Micah whispered something in French and shifted in her seat. She extended her right arm through the window as if to sift the breeze through her fingers, and Charley, alarmed, saw the diamond ring in Micah’s palm as it reflected an instant of sunlight. She cried out exactly as Micah drew back her fist and threw. Charley caught a glimpse of the ring as it flipped in the wind and tumbled past the window. The Volvo careered off the road, onto the band of dirt edging the fields, a cloud of red dust swirling behind them. By the time Charley slammed on the brakes, they were hundred of yards farther along. Silence flooded the car.

“What the hell!” Charley cried. “What were you
thinking
?” But when she turned to Micah, her daughter met her gaze with an unapologetic glare. Charley kicked open the door. She stepped out into the moist air and ran back to where she believed the ring had landed. She waded into the cane, then dropped to her hands and knees, searching for her ring among the whispering rows. If she took her time and looked closely, Charley thought, channeled all her energy into her fingertips, she could find it. Down so far beneath the cane, the light took on an aqueous hue. Clumps of warm earth slipped through her fingers. Bits of soil lodged beneath her nails. She was so close to the ground she could taste it in the back of her throat; so far below the cane, the silence was amplified. But minutes passed and she couldn’t find the ring.