Queen Sugar: A Novel (22 page)

Ralph Angel nodded, and again, Charley waited for him to say something about her being spoiled. But he lifted the shirt higher and studied the piece more closely, ran his finger along the cane knife, traced the pant fold. He stared into the figure’s deeply carved eyes, then turned it around to examine the back, handling it with respect, even reverence.

“Micah said you talk to it.”

“Micah said that?” Charley wondered what other personal tics and idiosyncrasies, what small moments, forgotten or overlooked, Micah had innocently revealed.

Ralph Angel gently turned
The Cane Cutter
around. “Kids. Boy, I tell you, nothing gets past them.” He shook his head. “And, man, don’t promise you’re going to do something and then not do it. They never let you off the hook.”

Charley recalled the recent promises she’d made to Micah: that she’d have her own room in the house they’d own one day, where she’d be free to hang her favorite posters and paint the walls any color she chose, because it would be their house and not some rental; that she’d help Micah find kids to play with and her afternoons would be filled with endless games of Capture the Flag and Kick the Can, because everyone wanted to know a kid from California. Charley thought of those promises and all the others she’d made to lure Micah into coming, and felt sick at how few she’d delivered on.

“On our way down here,” Ralph Angel was saying, “I promised Blue I’d buy him a toy, some Power Ranger thing he saw at a rest stop. I thought he’d forget, but he must have asked me about that thing ten times. Probably stopped at twenty rest stops before I found it.”

Ralph Angel’s eyes met Charley’s and she smiled in agreement. “Kids.” An easy calm settled in the space between them.

“Kinda funny when you think about the two of us,” Ralph Angel said. “We got the same daddy. My wife dies, your husband dies, and here we are, come to roost in the same house. To say we spent so many years apart, we’re just alike.”

Charley gave Ralph Angel a smile, but she felt a chill ripple across her skin. “Funny,” she said, and thought he was almost right—almost but not quite. She wasn’t perfect, far from it, but she’d never taken money from her father and lied to him about it. She’d never used drugs or pushed an old woman down. Were they minor infractions? Perhaps. And she believed everyone deserved a second chance, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to her brother than he was letting her see.

Ralph Angel absentmindedly pulled the dresser’s top drawer open a fraction, then seemed to remember whose room it was now and closed it. “Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks again for taking Blue with you this afternoon. He’s still talking about it.”

“It was just a sno-cone,” Charley said.

“Not to him.”

Charley nodded, understanding all that Ralph Angel couldn’t bring himself to say. “My pleasure.”

Ralph Angel re-covered
The Cane Cutter
and slid it back into position. He glanced around the room as though he were seeing it for the last time. “Well, I ought to let you get back to your reading. I just wanted to say thanks.”

“No problem.”

Ralph Angel turned to leave, and was over the threshold, pulling the door behind him, when he paused. “There was one more thing I wanted to ask.” He leaned against the doorjamb. “You said you’d think about us partnering up on the farm.”

“Well, like I said, I already have a partner.” Two, Charley thought, and prayed Ralph Angel never found out about Alison.

“Yeah, you said that before.”

“And there’s not much—”

“To administer. You said that, too. But I’ve been thinking.” Ralph Angel stepped back into the room and straightened the lampshade. “You’ve got to need help with something. I could drive a tractor, run errands. It wouldn’t be permanent. Just till, you know, we figured out an arrangement.”

“An arrangement?”

“For cutting me in on the action.”

“What action?” Charley thought of the long hours she, Denton, and Alison spent in the fields, the black mold she scrubbed off the refrigerator shelves, the bird shit she chiseled off the shop windows. Tedious, boring work. And then there were the bills. Between the unpaid invoices and Denton’s ever-growing list of parts and supplies, they were barely scraping by. Denton and Alison had agreed to take smaller draws till the harvest, but Charley still had to pay them something. As for herself, she’d budgeted sixty dollars a week for gas and her share of Miss Honey’s food bill, but she still felt like they were eating more than their share. Charley looked at her brother in the glow of the bedside lamp and knew Ralph Angel was desperate; she could see it on his face. She knew that in her brother’s eyes, she was seated at a grand banquet and that all he was asking for,
begging
for, was a morsel off her plate. But she had nothing to offer. Nothing to spare.

“I can barely afford to buy gas,” Charley said. “If I can’t afford that, I can’t afford to pay you, and you can’t work for free. If I could hire you now with the promise of paying you after the harvest, I would, but I’m not sure there’ll be any profit. Hell, I’ll not sure there will be any cane to harvest.” Still, he was her brother—her
disinherited
brother. She reached for her purse and pulled her last twenty from her wallet. “It’s all I have. I’m sorry.” As she held out the money, Charley thought of the old black veteran who peddled newspapers outside her neighborhood market back in Los Angeles—not a fancy market, but still a decent one, with its crates of freshly picked produce, and bulk bins of grain, and cuts of meat laid between sheets of butcher paper. All day, every day, he stood there, politely, in his dirty veteran’s cap, with his pulpy, smudged newspapers in one hand and frayed American flag in the other. She always thanked him as she bought a paper, slipped him an extra dollar. And sometimes she didn’t buy a paper at all, just gave him the money. “It’s all I have,” she’d say.

Ralph Angel took the money. But rather than put it in his pocket, he let the bill hang limply between his fingers. “Twenty dollars,” he said. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”

“I’d give you more if I had it,” Charley said, and it was true. If Ernest had left her any unrestricted cash she’d have gladly shared it. For a moment, she thought about explaining the trust: that every expense had to be backed up with receipts; that if she made one false move she’d lose everything.

“Jesus, Charley. I thought we had an understanding.”

Charley blinked. “What are you talking about? What understanding?”

“I gave you that damn chemistry set.”

It took her a moment to realize what he was talking about. “But—” Charley counted back through the years. “That was ages ago. I was just a kid.”

“I’m your brother, Charley. Your big brother. Your
only
brother. We’re supposed to look out for each other.” Ralph Angel stepped deeper into the room and began to pace the floor in front of the dresser. Back and forth, back and forth, slowly, with his hands on his hips. “You know, I’ve tried to be patient. I’ve tried to be nice about it, give you space. But I’m starting to think you’re giving me the runaround.”

“I told you. I can’t afford to take on more expenses.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Ralph Angel said. “This is what I’m hearing.” He bunched the fingers on his left hand together, pressed them against his thumb, then opened and closed his hand, pantomiming a mouth talking. “Just talk. Talk, talk, talk.” He gripped the bedpost and leaned toward her. “You think it’s easy for me to sit around here sucking eggs while you waltz off to work every day?”

“It’s not the party you imagine, trust me.” Charley felt her heart drumming. Her legs felt shaky even though she was sitting on the bed.

“I hear you talking to Miss Honey. I know you just bought a shitload of equipment, and that Denton taught you how to drive a combine. You think I can’t do that stuff?”

“You don’t like manual labor. You said so yourself.”

“You think it’s been easy for me, all these years, hearing stories about how good you had it? ‘Charley got a new car for her birthday.’ ‘Charley’s going to a fancy East Coast school.’ ‘Charley went to Hawaii on her honeymoon.’ How do you think that made me feel, sis, knowing Dad loved you more?”

“How can you say that? That’s not true,” Charley said, but the truth was, even if he’d had a perfect childhood, whatever
that
meant, something told her he would always believe she’d had a better one, and she would never be able to convince him otherwise.

“Then how come he didn’t leave me part of the farm? Come on, sis. Don’t bullshit me.”

“I don’t know.”

“You know what I think? I think you had something to do with it. I think you told him to cut me out because you wanted it all for yourself.”

“That’s crazy.” Charley thought about her father’s final months: the hospital bed like a barge docked in the living room, the cocktail of medications that coated his teeth with plaque and made his breath smell like metal and rotting meat, the gurgling tubes that sucked green mucus from his lungs, bones so brittle they snapped like matchsticks. Even with hospice there, she’d barely had time for her own life, for Micah. Charley threw her legs over the side of the bed. “I didn’t know anything until he was gone and his lawyer told me.”

When Charley looked at Ralph Angel again, she saw that something had changed. The man who’d played with the kids was gone, replaced by the person who’d teased Hollywood.

“Yeah, right. I bet,” Ralph Angel said. “Just look at you, sitting there like Little Miss Perfect. Little Miss Rich Girl. And that daughter of yours, running her mouth all the time. She’s a goddamn little know-it-all. She’s going to grow up to be a spoiled brat, just like her mother. The two of you make me sick.”

Before he went back to Houston, Uncle Brother had warned her the house would be tight with Ralph Angel in it. Charley thought about how Violet had said, as she left the reunion, that things wouldn’t work out if Ralph Angel were allowed to stay. Now she understood.

“Maybe the reason Dad left you out of his will,” Charley said slowly, “had something to do with money you stole.”

Ralph Angel blinked. “He owed me that money.”

“For school. Which, by the way, I know you didn’t finish, so spare me all that talk about being an engineer.”

“I am an engineer. Just a few more credits and I could get my degree if I wanted.”

Charley knew she should stop, yet she couldn’t stop herself, didn’t want to, because he’d insulted Micah, and it was as though he’d opened the latch on an enormous steel door where every hope and fear and worry and secret longing she’d ever felt about her child was piled up on the other side, and it all came tumbling out. It was not fair to go after Micah; that was crossing the line. “What did you spend the money on? Drugs? Did you smoke it up? Snort it? Did you drink it away? Because that’s what I heard.”

“Violet and Brother should mind their own business.”

“Were you on something when you pushed Miss Honey?” Charley said. “Or did you break her arm on purpose?”

“Shut up!” Ralph Angel said. “You weren’t there.”

“I didn’t have to be,” Charley said. “All I have to do is look at the way you treat Hollywood to know what you’re capable of. He’s supposed to be your friend, but you treat him like shit. But you can’t help yourself, can you? You hate the fact that he has a business and you don’t.”

“I said, shut the fuck up!”

“You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Ralph Angel lunged forward and grabbed Charley’s wrist.

Charley looked down at Ralph Angel’s hand. All the blood had drained from his fingertips, he was squeezing so hard, the skin under his nail beds had gone white. Charley’s hand was slowly going numb. She looked up into Ralph Angel’s face, expecting to see a monster, but to her surprise, she saw a man who was out of his mind with anger, yes, but also terribly, achingly, afraid.

“Pop?” a small voice said. “What game are you playing?”

Charley and Ralph Angel both looked and saw Blue standing in the doorway.

“Oh—hey, buddy.” Ralph Angel’s voice sounded strained and breathy. He let go of Charley’s wrist. “You’re supposed to be in bed.”

“I woke up and couldn’t find you. I kept calling you.”

“Oh yeah? I guess I didn’t hear you. Where’s ’Da?”

“Watching TV with Micah,” Blue said. “I heard you say a bad word.”

“Yeah, well, uh—” Ralph Angel patted his pockets as though searching for his keys.

“He made a mistake.” Charley did not look at Ralph Angel as she said this. “But it’s okay now. Let him take you back to bed.”

“Yeah,” Ralph Angel said. “We’ll finish our story.”

When Ralph Angel was gone, Charley closed the door, and as soon as she did, a surge of adrenaline shot through her so that her whole body tingled and she had to lean her head against the door, close her eyes. Through the door, she could hear the faint sounds of the TV coming from the den, and behind her, through the open window as the warm air drifted in under the curtains, the sound of Miss Marti next door, dropping an empty bottle in her trash can and dragging it to the curb. Charley stood there until the anxious feeling passed, then she sat on the bed. She wasn’t afraid of Ralph Angel, but she could never trust him. He wasn’t the person she’d hoped he would be.

•   •   •

Charley woke in the night and saw that Micah was not on the air mattress. Nor was she in Miss Honey’s bed, or on the moonlit porch, or in the den watching TV, and it was only on her way back to her room that Charley saw a sliver of light under the bathroom door, heard Micah’s voice, and imagined who might be in there with her, doing God knew what, and she turned the knob, thinking the worst, ready to slay any monster, ready to kill her own brother if it came to that. And so it was with extravagant relief that she saw, immediately, that Micah was alone. Alone, but also naked, standing at the sink on a kitchen chair so she could see herself in the mirror. She had taped all of her gates of heaven Polaroids around the mirror’s edge, propped the lookalike Barbie doll—the bare-chested one with the nest of tangles and the crochet antebellum hoop skirt, the one Miss Honey gave her the day they arrived—on the counter beside a flickering candle, and—Oh my God, was that a Shirley Temple DVD cover on the floor?—so that now the bathroom looked like some kind of freaky voodoo shrine.