Sugar (20 page)

“So where are we going and how are we getting there?” Pearl asked. She was beginning to sweat and would need to move out to the front porch soon to try and catch a breeze.

“I gotta friend coming by to get us,” Sugar said as they walked down the stairs.

“What kinda friend?” Pearl asked suspiciously.

“The kind that drives a brand new car and pays for everything,” Sugar said, finally giving in to her craving and pulling her pack of cigarettes from her bag. They were on the front porch now, Sugar leaning over the railing and peering down the dark road. Pearl went into her own pocketbook, a hard black leather bag that she’d had for years, and pulled out a stick of Doublemint. “Umph,” she said to Sugar’s back as she popped the stick of gum in her mouth. She pulled at her dress again, and wiped at the blush on her cheeks.

“Will you stop that,” Sugar screeched.

“Maybe this ain’t a good idea.” Pearl was having second thoughts. The night air had cleared her mind. She finally realized the extent of her commitment and the approaching headlights made her mindful of the possible consequences involved.

“Oh, Miss Pearl, you only gotta worry about one thing.”

“What’s that?” Pearl said, concern in her voice.

“You just gotta remember you is a married woman and tell all them men that’s gonna be sniffin’ around you that you already got a man!” Sugar laughed out loud, her laughter competing with the approaching car’s motor. “Here he is.”

Sugar walked slowly down the stairs, her body swaying in time with Pearl’s quickening heartbeat. Pearl could see that with every step, Sugar was transforming into the Sugar that worked the night, the Sugar that appeared in the dreams of men and whose name, usually during heightened passion, suddenly rested on the tips of their tongues.

“C’mon, Miss Pearl.” After a brief exchange with the man behind the wheel, Sugar called to her. Pearl looked up and down the dark street and half walked, half ran to the car, hoping to get safely inside before she was spotted.

The driver’s door opened and out stepped a white man. Well, what Pearl thought was a white man. The same white man she saw passing between their houses that early morning not so long ago. She took in too much air and began coughing.

“You okay, Miss Pearl?” Sugar was next to her now, patting hard on her back.

Pearl blinked the tears away and looked again at the man before her.

“This here is Lappy. Lappy Clayton. Lappy, this here is Miss Pearl Taylor.”

Lappy smiled and his gold tooth sparkled under the moonlight. He took Pearl’s hand, bent his head and tried to kiss it, but before his lips could brush against her hand, she snatched it away. Terror, then confusion, glistened in her eyes.

“Nice to meet you,” he said, mildly annoyed at her reaction.

“Same here,” Pearl muttered and looked down at the ground. What she’d seen in his face, or thought she’d seen, would not allow her to look directly at him.

“Well, ya’ll ready to have a good time?” he said as he opened the driver’s side door, pushed his seat forward and stood back so Pearl could climb in. She hesitated, but Sugar was already in, beckoning her to hurry.

Pearl sat quietly in the backseat trying to avoid looking at the sneaky eyes that watched her in the rearview mirror. She shifted her body, said the Lord’s Prayer and looked out into the darkness.

Forty minutes later they came to a stop. Pearl was shaking; she looked out the window and saw a large wooden shack that was supported on slate-colored mason stones. Christmas lights—red and green—were hung around the doorway and carelessly from the sloping roof. It stood in the center of a wide open field. Large trees bordered the land and Pearl could hear the sound of water moving restlessly behind it.

The shack vibrated and shook under the weight of five dozen stamping feet, as the people kept time with the soprano and the piano that wailed away inside.

“It’s okay, Miss Pearl,” Sugar assured her for the hundredth time that night as they stepped over the threshold and into the smoky abyss called the Memphis Roll.

They sat down at a tiny round table that was covered with a purple-and-black-checked tablecloth. One lone candle sat in its center, the flame threatening to give in to the night wind that slipped in through the aging rafters.

Pearl kept her head bowed. She felt nothing but pure shame for being there; it pulsed through her body, contaminating her arteries, threatening to extinguish the remnants of her moral character.

“Drink?” Lappy was leaning over her, the candlelight illuminating his gold tooth. Pearl could smell his cologne and the stink of his breath. “Uh, no—no thank you.” She responded without raising her eyes to meet his.

“Bring her a beer, and you know what I like,” Sugar said as she lit a cigarette.

Pearl looked at her over the dancing flame. Sugar avoided her and turned her attention to the large mass of people swirling around them. Too much skin and loud let-go laughter clothed in hot tangerines, blood reds and hot pinks made up the women. Quiet, slanted-eyed Negroes that moved like serpents through the crowd and sported slick suits made up the men.

Lappy, dressed in a saffron-colored suit, pushed through the crowd, making his way toward the bar, stopping every few feet to shake an outstretched hand, slap a back or pinch a curved tight ass. Pearl watched him disappear into the crowd and wished that it would swallow and digest him, finally discharging him as the shit she knew he was. She tried to convince herself that Joe’s leaving and the heat of the day were to blame for the departure she’d obviously taken from her senses. But now, she felt something else had a hand in things. It would have to be the case—either there was a greater force at work, or she was going mad, because what she saw, or what she thought she saw when Lappy took her hand in front of her house, was unsteadying enough to make her want to have the drink that Sugar had requested he bring back for her.

Men circled the table like vultures; their eyes caressed Sugar’s body, their hands took brief liberties on her knee. They knelt down beside her and spoke into her bosom, or had a conversation with her leg. Her face and who she was were of no concern to them, and they made no attempt to pretend that it was.

Upon Lappy’s return, the men scattered. He set a bottle of beer in front of Pearl and a glass of whiskey before Sugar and took his seat.

“This your first time, Miss Pearl?” Lappy asked. He spoke to her in a loud, slack voice usually reserved for friends.

“Yes,” Pearl said. She did not want to talk to this man and absolutely did not want to look at him again, especially his hands—those pale long things, adorned with gold and glass. No, to look at his hands again would send her screaming from the Memphis Roll and down the dark road that brought them there. Because when she looked at his hands, she saw fresh, dripping blood.

“Thank you all for being here at the Memphis Roll. For all of you who ain’t never been here before, welcome. And for the rest of you—ain’t you got noplace else to be?”

The short, dark, round-faced man had a booming voice; it rolled like thunder over the lofty levels of laughter and conversation. People waved their hands at him in amusement and begged him to bring on the band. He told a few more jokes, none that even brought a wisp of a smile to Pearl’s face.

A group of men entered through a side door and took their place on the small makeshift stage that was directly in front of Sugar and Pearl’s table. A piano, guitar and drum set awaited them. The shack was quiet, except for the sound of people ordering drinks and chicken frying in a room behind the bar area. The band struck up and played tune after tune that ignited the shack, causing men and women to grab at each other and then send each other in wide, wild circles. They separated and came together again in a slow steady grind.

The temperature rose as the music became more feverish. The band members were soaked with sweat, but did not seem to tire beneath the music they put forth. The floor was alive beneath Pearl’s feet and more than once she caught herself bopping her head or tapping her feet to the music, before she quickly composed herself.

Sugar yelled obscene praises to the band while slapping her thighs and keeping time with their frantic harmony. “Ya’ll is too damn hot tonight!”

The music had hold of the people, compelling them to dig deeper into the rent, bill or mortgage money they foolishly carried with them. “Shiiiit! Pour me another!” reverberated throughout the shack as people slammed dollar after hard-labored dollar on the bar, pushing further and further back the consequences of their pleasure. Eviction, screaming wives, hostile husbands and hungry babies. They would deal with that when the sun fulfilled the promise of another day. For now there were good times to be had, and good times cost.

The band took a break, and people retired breathlessly to their tables, dark corners and the comfort and support of a wall.

“Ain’t they hot, Miss Pearl?” Sugar’s voice was filled with excitement and she continued to snap her fingers to the memory of the music that lingered in her mind. Pearl nodded in agreement. During the chaos, Lappy had disappeared. Pearl searched the crowd and spotted him pushed up against another woman. Pearl looked quickly away. Her watch told her it was almost three a.m.

“You think we could get going?” she said above the noise.

Sugar couldn’t answer, the round-faced man was back.

“Right about now we gonna have our girl belt out a couple of tunes for you.” His eyes fell on Sugar. Pearl blinked, and was sure she misunderstood his meaning.

“C’mon people, and give the lovely Miss Sugar Lacey a nice Memphis Roll welcome!”

Hands came together at a quick and deafening rate. Sugar turned, faced the crowd and did a little curtsey. Pearl’s mouth dropped wide open.

Three songs later the crowd begged for more. The fifth and final song brought down the house and Sugar had to fight her way off the stage. “Let’s go,” she said and grabbed at the hand of a dumbfounded Pearl. “Miss Pearl, you better close your mouth, you likely to catch something other than flies in here.”

They fought their way out of the Memphis Roll, the exit continually interrupted by someone who wanted to commend Sugar on her performance. Once outside, beneath the flushed dawn, Pearl finally found her voice.

“Why ain’t you never said you can sing?” she asked in awe.

Sugar shrugged her shoulders.

“You got a voice worthy of angels and you choose to do . . . what you do?”

“Let’s not start.” Sugar’s voice was stern.

Pearl shook her head in utter bewilderment. They walked across the field that was wet with morning dew. The car was gone, and Pearl found solace in that. She’d rather walk back to Bigelow than get back in that car with Lappy Clayton.

“Shit,” Sugar said under her breath. They turned and started back toward the shack. People were spilling out now. Some stumbled and fell flat to the ground, while others linked arms with friends, shoes in hand, and started down the road home.

Isaac, the round-faced emcee who was also the owner of the Memphis Roll, took them home in his beat-up pickup. The ride was bumpy and the truck slow. Discarded soda bottles and candy wrappers littered the floor and the seats.

“I been trying to get Sugar to let me manage her. She could make a lotta money with her voice,” Isaac confided in Pearl. “I got’s a lot of connections in the music business and everyone that work the chitlin circuit gotta play at the Memphis Roll!”

The truck groaned as Isaac shifted into third gear.

Sugar sat sleeping between them, her head resting on Pearl’s shoulder. In her sleep she was the image of innocence—not a whore or flashy juke joint singer—just Sugar.

“I dunno, I’m all talked out . . . maybe you can talk some sense into her hard head,” Isaac said in exasperation.

“I’m gonna try,” Pearl said as the sun followed them into Bigelow.

Chapter Thirteen

T
HE
shop was filled with searing sounds as hot combs killed kinks in the Bigelow women’s hair. The radio brought sounds from the world that mixed in among the Saturday conversation. Women complained about the dryers being too hot, flinched at the sting of the relaxer placed on an over-scratched head, but most of all, they talked about the happenings in and around Bigelow, especially Grove Street.

“Fayline, you say that woman been in here?”

“Naw, ain’t come in, just walked by. Sometimes stopping to look, but ain’t never step in.”

“You wouldn’t let her in, would you?”

“Hell no!”

“Good thing.”

“Sure ’nuff.”

“She been spending a lot of time with Pearl.”

“Pearl Lawrence?”

“No, girl, Pearl Taylor!”

“Is that right?”

“Right as rain.”

“Hmmm, ain’t Pearl heard ’bout that woman?”

“Ain’t you heard? Of course she has . . . probably just don’t believe it though.”

“What’s there not to believe?”

“You know how Pearl is. Naive ’bout lots of things. Life things. Anyways, she got Pearl doing all sorts of strange things.”

“Really, like what?”

“Well you should know . . .”

“Me? Know what?”

“Well didn’t you dye her hair? Fayline? Fayline, honey, I think that curl is done now, you can take the curling iron out. Fayline!”

“Oh, s-sorry.”

“Jeez . . . damn Fayline.”

“Don’t mess with it, just let it cool off. It’ll be okay. So you say she dyed her hair?”

“Black as night.”

“Well, shit on me.”

“Shit on that woman.”

Ring—Ring—Ring

“Hey girl.”

“Anna Lee.”

“Josephine. Fayline.”

“You got a wait ahead of you.”

“I ain’t here to get my hair done. I’m here to tell you something about someone.”

“Oh, who?”

The women looked cautiously at Josephine. “Aw, you don’t have to worry about Josephine.”

“Yeah, well, when the shit hits the fan, and it will, I don’t want nobody bringing it back to me.”

“Talk, girl.”

“I seen Pearl and that woman last night.”