Queen Sugar: A Novel (9 page)

“Mom? Are you okay?”

“You know what?” Charley said. The realization had dawned upon her and she surrendered to it. “I’m
not
okay. I can’t breathe, because it’s hotter than the Amazon rain forest in here, and my kid is taking social cues from a tap dancing minstrel. I can’t find a manager to run my farm, and I’ve got some corporate thug threatening to run me out of business. All the black workers around here think I’m out to cheat them, I’ve got a stack of bills I can barely pay, and each day that passes, I’m this much closer to losing the whole goddamned thing.” The absurdity of it all. She almost laughed; probably would have, if it hadn’t been so serious.

After a long silence, Miss Honey said, “Well, good heavens. Why didn’t you say that before?”

•   •   •

Alone on the porch, Charley stirred salt and butter into her grits as a delivery truck pulled up along the gully. Violet sat behind the wheel.

“I thought I’d seen the last of you,” Charley said, jogging out to greet her.

Violet climbed down, brushed the back of her shorts. “Mother didn’t tell you I was coming?”

“After yesterday? She threw you out, remember?”

Violet raked her fingers through her hair. She had replaced her ringlet hairpiece with a long, straight ponytail. “If I took every mean thing Mother said to heart, I’d never speak to her.” She threaded her arm through Charley’s. “Mother wants to have this reunion, I say let her have it. The quicker she throws it, the quicker you can get back to business with your farm. I brought the van so we could get everything at once.”

It was actually more of a truck than a van, with “Frito Lay” stenciled on the side above a faded potato chip bag,
TRUE VINE BAPTIST CHURCH
arching over everything in bright red letters.

“Rev bought it at an auction in Baton Rouge.” Violet slid open the driver’s door and invited Charley to look inside. “He welded the bus seats.”

“Impressive,” Charley said, stepping down. “But I can’t go. The farm. It’s dying.” Stunted cane overrun with weeds, rusting equipment, broken tools scattered on the shop floor, paperwork she couldn’t begin to make sense of.

“It’s Sunday,” Violet said. “Everything’s closed. All you’ll do is wring your hands and make yourself crazy.” She took Charley by the shoulders and shook her gently, as if trying to rouse her from a bad dream. “Come on, girl. Let your mind air out a little.” Violet shook Charley’s shoulder again and looked at her expectantly. “Just for a few hours. It’ll do you some good.”

Charley looked out over the yard, past the camellia bush with its explosion of juicy red blossoms, past the towering live oak whose branches filtered the morning’s sunlight. “All right,” she said. “Especially if it’ll drag your mother and my daughter away from
The Littlest Colonel
.”

Violet scowled. “Good Lord, I hate that movie.” She crossed the yard, climbed the porch steps, then called through the screen door, “Mother, come out of there,” as though she and Miss Honey had never argued.

“Girl, don’t rush me.” Miss Honey, with Micah close at her heels, stepped onto the porch wearing a purple dress and white sandals that looked good enough for church. Her face was freshly powered. She struck a pose.

Violet laughed. “Mother, you kill me.” She took Miss Honey’s face in her hands, using her thumb to gently blend the rouge on her mother’s cheek. It was a gesture of such familiarity and closeness, it took Charley by surprise.

•   •   •

They rumbled out of town at a steady clip, the sky electric blue, the cane fields almost unnaturally green, and Charley felt her spirits lift for the first time in days. First stop, Mr. Nguyen, who sat on a milk crate beside his battered pickup parked along the road. He rose as the van approached, and flashed a cracked smile. Earlier, Miss Honey had referred to him as the Chinaman, but Charley thought she heard Vietnamese as he chattered with his wife, who pushed back the lids of Igloo coolers packed with fresh seafood on beds of ice—three types of shrimp, oysters, and crabs. Live red snapper thrashed and gasped in a five-gallon bucket. Miss Honey bought shrimp, her manner cordial but firm.

Then it was on to the produce stand in Arnaudville, where Miss Honey sniffed and pinched for ripeness like a chief inspector with the Department of Agriculture. Okra, speckled butter beans and black-eyed peas, bowling-ball-size cantaloupes, tomatoes, and cucumbers thick as Micah’s arm. Soon the van was cluttered with boxes, the air inside sweet from the bounty, sharp with the musk of red earth and Gulf water. West on Highway 90 and north on Route 26, past Elton and Oberlin, where cane yielded to rice paddies, which yielded to vast stretches of piney woods, a part of Louisiana Charley had never seen.

They rolled to a stop in a small turnout where a strip of multicolored flags hung over a sign that read
WELCOME TO SUGAR TOWN.
Stiff-legged, Charley helped Miss Honey to the ground, then followed her toward two wooden shacks. Sun fell through a blue plastic tarp strung between their sagging roofs, and variations in the blue light beneath reminded Charley of being underwater. She squinted into the shadows, smelled pine, saw watermelons strewn everywhere.

The little man in soiled overalls and rubber fishing boots hefted a melon onto a wooden table, rolled it over until the pale yellow spot faced skyward. With one stroke, he drove his blade through the center and sweetness filled the air as the halves tilted away, revealing flesh as red as beef filet. He stabbed his knife into the center of one half, cut rough square chunks. The heady aroma made Charley laugh. She laughed till her sides hurt and tears streamed down her face and they were all looking at her like she was crazy, and even then she could not stop. Because life should be as simple as a bucket of fish caught a few miles offshore and a van full of produce bought at a roadside stand. It should be as sweet as a cube of melon the color of your heart.

•   •   •

Back at Miss Honey’s in time for supper, Charley and Violet unloaded the van as a deep rumble echoed from up the street.

“Oh, Lord,” Violet said.

Charley looked. It was a Cadillac Escalade, with tricked-out hubcaps that spun counterclockwise, and a chassis so low to the ground there was barely room for a shadow.

“Rosalee Simon’s boy.” Violet set a pallet of snap peas and okra on the steps.

But it was the girl in the passenger seat who Charley focused on as the car glided past. Glassy black mane with a streaked lock the color of strawberry Kool-Aid draped over one eye. A gold hoop, large as a salad plate, grazed her shoulder.

“Would you look at that?” Violet said.

“Like she’s sitting on a throne.” So straight-backed and regal, Charley thought, and pulled her own shoulders back.

Violet shook her head. “Young women these days. I just don’t know.”

“What?” Charley said. “She looks happy.” Thought,
I’d trade a lot for happy
.

“Happy, till she’s knocked up. Happy, till the boy she thinks is so fine dumps her. Happy, till she realizes how much time she wasted.”

A wood sliver came lose from the pallet. Charley picked at it. “Geez, Violet. That’s awfully harsh.”

The Caddy sailed past the stop sign and turned. A hush fell over the street. Seconds passed, but the silence hung between them.

Violet searched Charley’s face. “Okay. Spit it out.”

“It’s nothing. Forget it.”

“Sorry, sugar, but I can see it in your eyes.”

Charley wasn’t sure she had the words. Sometimes it was a small ache behind her breastbone and sometimes it was a heaviness, like a sopping wool cloak draped over her. It was a feeling that had come and gone since childhood, but she had married young, and lost her husband young, and it was like falling down an elevator shaft that no one else could see. Charley peeled a speckled butter bean shaped like a heart.

“I don’t mean to compare my loss to yours,” Charley began. She couldn’t imagine the pain of losing a child.

“It’s all suffering,” Violet said, simply.

Behind them, the porch light flicked on and moths danced around the bulb. Charley could hear Miss Honey and Micah inside the living room, talking to each other in low tones.

“After Davis died,” Charley said, “I would drop Micah at school, then come home and put on this old robe.” Blue terry. So old, the dye had faded along the seams, with big square pockets hung by a thread. She’d close herself up in Davis’s closet, which was safe and smelled like grass. She knelt with the hood over her head, and cried till she was snotty and had a headache. “I cried a lot,” Charley said. “I didn’t shower much.” Eyes stinging, she looked at Violet. “I bet you’ve never fallen apart.”

“Oh,
chère
.” Violet wrapped her arm around Charley.

In the street, another car passed. Charley waved; it was second nature now.

Violet put her hand on top of Charley’s, and for a few seconds, they both stared out into the yard.

Finally, Violet sighed. “Life does get daily.”

“If it had just been me, that would have been okay.” Charley took a breath and made herself say, “Micah’s arm. That’s because of me.” And suddenly, her admission felt like enough, too much, even. Yes, Violet was her closest ally, but she didn’t need to know everything. Yes, she was a preacher’s wife, a good Christian woman, but she was still human, and even the most godly, well-intentioned human being couldn’t resist a bit of judgment were she to hear the rest of the story. Violet must have sensed this, because she sat perfectly still, as though she knew the slightest disturbance would trigger Charley’s retreat. She didn’t make eye contact. She just waited.

Months passed and Charley still wore the blue robe. Micah began doing laundry, dishes, making both beds. Her one symbolic act had been dinner, but that slipped too: a baked potato where there’d been roast chicken and a fresh green salad.

She was in bed, listening to pots rattle in the kitchen, the night she gave up and asked Micah to cook. She heard a sound that she strangely recognized as a rush of air, and then a cry. Not a cry for help exactly; more a cry of surprise, and by the time Charley reached the kitchen, Micah was in flames—her whole left side lit like a column of red cellophane. Charley looked and saw the pot of water boiling over, the box of macaroni and cheese. She saw the bottle of cleaning solution overturned on the counter and the long, narrow river where the spill snaked toward the burner. She saw the fine red seam of fire creeping up Micah’s T-shirt, feasting on the drenched cotton, which curled away and turned to ash.

Violet listened quietly. She still didn’t look at Charley, for which Charley was thankful. And for a second, Charley thought she understood why Catholics revered the act of confession. There was something freeing about speaking your mind. There was a relief in sharing the secrets you’d tended like mushrooms in the darkest corner of your thoughts without having to meet another’s gaze.

•   •   •

In the bedroom, Micah turned her back, pulled her T-shirt over her head. She covered her bare chest with one hand, but Charley could see where the smooth caramel-colored graft ended and the normal skin began. In another year, probably less, Charley thought, Micah would ask her to leave the room when she changed. Wanting to extend the small moment, she said, casually, “Today was fun,” like they’d only gone for a walk in the park.

“Totally,” Micah said. “Aunt Violet’s van is cool.”

“It is.”

Charley picked Micah’s clothes up off the floor and was happy to do it. She put Micah’s camera on the nightstand and was happy to do it. She pushed their suitcases to the back of the closet, saw the package on the floor, and hoisted it onto the bed. Between the farm and reunion preparations, she had forgotten it was there. The packaging tape peeled away with a whisper; the butcher paper crackled as she folded it back and kneaded it into a ball. She unspiraled the sheets of bubble wrap until the first bits of bronze gleamed through. Richmond Barthé’s
The Cane Cutter.
A familiar calm settled over her.

Micah buttoned her pajama top. “Yuck. Why’d you bring that?”

The figure—a black man, naked to the waist—swung a cane knife. He was only eighteen inches tall, but his power took Charley’s breath away. She ran her hand over the Cane Cutter’s broad shoulders, the knots of muscle in his arms, the burnished slabs of his pecs and back flexed with the force of his swing.

The day her father brought it home, he called Charley and Lorna into the living room. Charley got there first and saw the coffee table heaped with Lorna’s silver-framed family photographs, many of them facedown, Lorna’s prized Lalique vase, the one with the naked ladies following each other around the icy glass, resting on its side.

“So?” Her father placed his hand on her shoulder.

Charley heard her mother’s footsteps in the hall behind them; heard her mother’s humming stop as she entered the room. But she saw how excited, how proud her father looked and she did not turn around. She took her time studying the piece. The bronze man looked like he must be sweating. Something about him—his deep-set eyes, wide forehead, and square hands—seemed familiar. He stirred up a feeling she could not name.

“He looks like you,” Charley said.

“I certainly hope not.” Her mother, coiffed and buffed from a day at the salon, was already holding the Lalique vase. “What’s next, Ernest? A painting of the garbage man?”

Charley looked from her mother to her father and saw his expression dim, his mouth move as if he tasted something sour.

“This is the living room,” Lorna said. “Your laborer can go in the den.”

“Move it,” her father said, quietly, not taking his hand from Charley’s shoulder, “and I’ll break every piece of goddamned crystal in this house.”

Now Charley touched a finger to
The Cane Cutter
. The curve of his back like he could lift ten times his weight, the rough drape of his pants, which she imagined as burlap or canvas; his determined gaze, as though he could cut a thousand acres by himself. He almost breathed.

Years later, after her parents divorced, Charley let herself into her father’s condo. She found him staring at
The Cane Cutter
.