This Bitter Earth (9 page)

Mary had no answers for Sugar.

Mary hung on for four days before she opened her eyes and looked into Sugar’s.

“Mary?” Sugar leaned in. “Mary?” She called her name again just as Mary’s eyes fluttered closed and her lips parted, filling the room with the sound of dry leaves.

Chapter 10

T
HE house seemed to know Mary was dead. To Sugar, it looked older and even more broken-down than it had four days earlier.

Sugar did not call hello this time and she did not step carefully or act fearful of what she might find behind the red door. She walked sure-footed and swift through the house, moving through the parlor like the wind. She walked into the kitchen and slammed the open door of the refrigerator closed. “Dammit,” she muttered to herself and entered the hall leading back to the front of the house and the staircase that would take her upstairs.

What happened to Mercy, Sugar wondered, the soft-spoken, bright-eyed child that gave out kisses, hugs and smiles in jubilant abundance?

Sugar had never in her life felt safe and content until the day she showed up on Mary Bedford’s front stoop. Mary, without missing a beat, opened up her heart and home to her.

Sugar’s thoughts came to a halt and so did her feet. She cocked her head, realizing that she had felt more than safe and content with Mary and Mercy. She had for the first time in her life felt truly loved. That realization pierced her somewhere close to her heart and Sugar stumbled.

Mary was gone; who would love her now?

Anger swelled inside of Sugar as she took the stairs in twos and wondered how in the world Mercy could have done this to her grandmother.

Sugar reached the top landing and started pushing doors open. The sight that met her was pitiful: men and women stretched out on the floor, others laid up on filthy mattresses or propped up against the walls. Sugar scanned the rooms, but Mercy was nowhere to be found. Determined, Sugar headed back down the stairs.

The front door was open. Sugar was more than sure that she had closed the door when she entered the house. Her guard went up as her eyes moved through the shadow-filled hallway.

A creaking sound came from the kitchen and then the rustling sound of paper. Sugar did not know if it was Mercy or another addict who’d wandered in from the street. She wiped at the sweat that was forming across her forehead and reminded herself of the disgust she was feeling. She did not want fear to overpower her.

The creaking sound came again, just as Sugar took a hesitant step toward the kitchen. Her heart sped up and her stomach fluttered with each step she took.

“Mercy,” she called out.

For a long time it was still, as if the house itself was holding its breath and waiting.

“Mercy?” she called again and waited.

Mercy leaped out from the shadows. Her hair was matted and there were visible streaks of dirt across her copper-colored face. Her eyes were red and swollen and the white T-shirt and blue denim jeans she wore were soiled almost black. She was feeling the need again. Sugar could tell by the wild look in her eyes.

Sugar’s anger melted away and was replaced with pity. She took a step toward her. “Mercy,” she said, reaching a hand out to her.

Mercy took a step back and swung her head wildly from left to right like a wild animal looking for an escape.

“Baby, listen to me. Mary’s dead. Your grandmother is dead and—”

Mercy rushed at Sugar, hitting her head-on, knocking her against the wall. Sugar grabbed hold of Mercy’s shoulders and held on tight as Mercy fought Sugar like the animal she had become.

She ripped at Sugar’s blouse, clawed at her face and pulled at her hair. Sugar just closed her eyes and held on until Mercy ran out of steam and fell loose in her arms.

Sugar held on this time because she had let go so many other times in her life.

Sunlight had made a habit of slipping in and out of the room like a nervous visitor. Someone would have told Sugar, had she inquired, that it was just a passing cloud, nothing more. But Sugar had other ideas about that.

She was haunted by ghosts. Had been too close to death too many times and now those spirits were hanging around, disguising themselves as sun rays or gentle spring rain. Yes, Sugar had other ideas about that.

Sugar looked over at Mercy. The child was hanging on by a thread. Her lips were covered in blisters and her body was constantly bathed in sweat even though she was cold to the touch.

Every now and then she’d shout out something incoherent and start kicking into the air, or a string of jumbled words would fall from her mouth as if she were answering a hundred questions all at once.

Sugar watched in silence as she had her own conversations with the blue walls of the room. Mary had been in the ground for nearly a week and those seven days had snaked by like sixty, leaving Sugar restless and eager to move on.

Sugar looked over at Mercy again; she was eighteen by Sugar’s calculations, grown as far as anyone was concerned. Sugar could have left her where she’d found her, could still leave and even be nice enough to pay the room up for another week or so. She could leave a few dollars on the dresser for food and just walk away.

But she didn‘t, even though she’d made five attempts at packing her suitcase, had even powdered her face and smeared her lips in the Royal Red she loved so much. But she could never seem to turn away from her reflection in the mirror. Her own eyes told her that no matter how hard she tried she could never run away from herself. So she stayed and the countless streaks of Royal Red on the backs of her hands told her how many times she had tried to go.

“What you doing?” The question came out thick so Sugar didn’t respond; she just put it off as she had all of the other incoherent babble that had emerged from Mercy’s mouth since she’d been there. To Sugar, those words always sounded like off-key notes she’d heard banged out on a piano.

“Who you? Where am I? What you doing to me?” With each question Mercy’s voice became clearer until Sugar was forced to acknowledge her.

“You here with me, in my place,” was all Sugar offered her. Mercy stretched her eyes as wide as possible and moved her head around, looking for something familiar.

“Who you?” she asked again and the question made her tongue ache.

Sugar sighed. She was sitting on the floor, her back resting up against the cold steel of the bed frame, the Royal Red lipstick in her hand, her mind telling her to apply it without the benefit of the mirror.

“I’m Sugar Lacey,” she said and thought about the small mirror in her compact. She could position it so that her eyes would only see her lips and then she could leave.

Mercy listened to the voice and the name that it spoke and still, it didn’t sound familiar. She didn’t want to move her head, because it made her neck hurt, so she just moved her eyes and hoped that it would find the woman that spoke to her.

She was able to make out the bare blue walls, the single window that was propped open with a broken broom handle and a brown chest of drawers directly below it.

“What am I doing here?”

“You been sick, but you almost better now,” Sugar said as she dug through her pocketbook in search of the compact. She wouldn’t look at Mercy; she had looked at her enough for a lifetime.

“What you doing to me?” Mercy’s voice was suddenly filled with fear. She wanted to sit up, but she needed the help of her hands and they were nowhere to be found. “What you doing to me!” She screamed it this time and found the strength to flail her legs.

Sugar took a breath. Where the hell was her compact?

“Help! Someone help me!” Mercy screamed. Sugar heard a door open somewhere down the hall.

“You here with me,” Sugar said calmly and saw that her compact was sitting on the dresser. Had she put it there?

Mercy was hysterical and her screams for help grew louder and louder until they filled the room and forced Sugar to get up from the floor.

“I said you here with me.” Sugar spoke between clenched teeth as she looked down on Mercy. “You been sick and now you here with me.”

Mercy stopped screaming and focused on Sugar’s almond-shaped eyes and thick mouth. Sugar looked like a living and breathing summer night, deep, black and rhythmic.

“I don’t know you,” she said with a voice that was hoarse and trembling.

“You know me, you just don’t remember knowing me,” Sugar said and her eyes chanced a glance at the dresser. “You hush now. You hush and be still now,” Sugar said as she saw the shadow move beneath the door.

“I ain’t got no hands, where my hands at?” Mercy asked and braced herself for Sugar’s response.

Sugar looked back to the dresser and the compact mirror that she would have to face if she wanted to leave.

“I had to tie you down, keep you from hurting yourself.” Her eyes moved back to the door. The shadow remained. Sugar dropped her voice a bit. “You was sick, but you’ll be fine in another day or so. Just hush and be still and you’ll be fine.” Sugar’s sentence ended in a whisper. She let her eyes rest on Mercy for a second and then she eased herself back down to the floor.

Mercy had a million more questions for Sugar, but something told her that they would have to wait. She stared at the ceiling and counted the cracks until her eyes grew tired again.

The sun’s rays went still against the wall, the shadow moved away and somewhere in the house a door was softly closed.

Chapter 11

MERCY dreamed she was back in her room on Sullivan Place, stretched out across the pink-and-white canopied bed Mary bought her six years ago.

Mary had to get a job in order to buy it and it was the first real job she’d had since she was thirteen. That was the year she stopped picking cotton in favor of renting herself out to men for fifty cents a lay. That was decades ago, when her skin was still firm and her heart still beat in regular intervals. She took the job because she loved her granddaughter and would do anything for her.

After the murder of Mercy’s mother, Grace Ann, Mary was sure she would fall apart, but Mercy became her glue and the reason for her to keep hold of her sanity.

So when her grandchild pointed at the pink-and-white canopied bed‘in the furniture store window on Watkins Avenue and then turned her eyes—that looked so much like Grace Ann’s eyes—on her, Mary knew she would do anything to get it for her.

That’s how she ended up in Perkins Doll Factory.

She took the job even though her eyes were bad and her fingers curled up on days when the weather was damp. She took the job even though the workspace was dimly lit and poorly ventilated. She stayed on the job even after she complained to the foreman about the rat droppings that littered her workspace every morning.

“Ain’t you people use to that?” He’d laughed at her before walking away.

Mary bit her tongue and put away her anger every day for six months, six days a week and six hours a day as she sewed blue button eyes on the pasty white doll faces.

Six months, six days, six hours: 666. The Devil’s number. Not even Boog-a-loo, the numbers man, would play it for her when she scrawled it on a piece of paper and handed it to him along with fifty cents. “Bad mojo,” he said, and handed it all back to her before walking away.

Now Mercy was there, back on Sullivan Place under the safety of the canopy, unhappy now with the girlish frill that covered it like stiff clouds. She was sixteen and had outgrown the pink-and-white fluff of childhood. She wanted something new now, something slick. But Mary’s health was failing and the only money she earned now came from the three boarders she had in the house and from selling the sweet potato bread she baked on holidays.

There was no money available for frippery. In fact, there was hardly enough money for food and clothing, and Mercy had managed to take even that from Mary’s purse while she napped on the couch in the parlor. The five dollars that was to buy a piece of salt meat, rice and collard greens was now a small, black ball of heroin that was, at the moment, rolling between Prophet’s thumb and forefinger.

“Mercy!” Mary screamed her name from the bottom of the staircase. It was the second time she’d stopped her pacing to do so. Mercy’s name was a bitter black wind that rushed from Mary’s mouth and up the stairs to Mercy’s room. It was the only part of Mary that could venture to the second level of the house, and that’s why Mercy was unscathed by the anger in her grandmother’s voice.

Mary’s knees were bad, and a second stroke in 1960 had turned her left foot west, preventing her from climbing anything, making her a prisoner in her home, forcing her to mill about the parlor floor, moving between the stoop, the kitchen and the couch. Her condition had caused her to pile on eighty pounds over three years, rounding out her five-foot frame to a staggering two hundred pounds.

Mercy would be safe as long as Mary’s anger simmered, and she continued to pace and scream. If her anger raged, she would move out and onto the stoop to call over one of her neighbors or perhaps a passing stranger.

“Do me a favor and go on up them stairs and check to see if Mercy up there.” “Check to see if my grandbaby up there.” “Third room on the left.”

And then Mercy would be found out, but all of that wouldn’t matter if she could just get Prophet to let go of the ball so she could have her fix first.

“Prophet.” Her annoyance with him was growing, but his mind was floating somewhere above him and so he was ignorant to her frustration.

Her eyes darted around the room as she rubbed her arms. They were cold and felt as if a million pins were being pushed into her skin. The feeling would start to spread soon; it would move from her arms, up her neck and down her back in places she would not be able to reach.

“Prophet,” she called to him again, a bit louder, and even thought about risking a walk across the floor. It wasn’t far—five steps, maybe seven—just close enough for her to reach down and snatch the heroin from his hands.

She unfolded one leg from beneath her and almost did it, almost laid one foot on the floor, but something inside of her reminded her that the floorboards were old and would speak to Mary, revealing Mercy’s presence.

The feeling was starting to spread.

She tried to rock it away but the movement made her head spin and her stomach queasy. She stopped and tried to focus on the color of the walls and that’s when she realized that Prophet was naked.

It was common for him to get naked and then get high or vice versa, just as long as the end result was high and naked. For some reason, maybe because she was always caught up in her need, Mercy never saw Prophet remove his clothes.

She marveled at the way his limbs blended into the dark wood of the floorboards, how black his skin appeared against the soft pink of the walls.

Mercy tried to get excited about seeing him that way-all naked, smooth and dark—but her mind couldn’t let go of the ball of heroin he rolled between his fingers.

Prophet laughed and looked at nothing and laughed again.

His head lolled on his neck between laughs while his body slid slowly against the wall and toward the floor. Mercy held her breath each time this happened. She held her breath and counted the number of walk-limp steps Mary took across the oak floor below.

Prophet never hit the floor. At the very last minute, just as his shoulder was about to hit the hardwood, his body would jerk upright again and he would laugh or dig his fingers into the thick jungle of hair on his head and pull out insects that only he could see, consider them for a moment and then flick them off into the stream of sunlight that came through the windows.

“Prophet, goddammit!” Mercy hissed and tossed her pillow at him.

Prophet’s body barely flinched when the pillow hit him. A moment later, he began to flail his arms and then finally he lifted his head and turned his drowsy eyes on Mercy.

“Wha?” It wasn’t a full word or question; it sounded like the last utterance of a dying man.

“C‘mon, man, cook up the stuff.” She spoke urgently and between clenched teeth. This would be her fifth time shooting it into her veins, alternating between her arms and the spaces between her toes. Before that she was smoking it and allowing herself to drift away in the gray haze of it.

She had snorted it once, but the dope had caused her nose to bleed and when she reached up to wipe away the blood, it was as if she’d wiped a clean space in a window and the past she never consciously knew existed was suddenly revealed to her.

She saw, clearly, the stream called Miracle that ran through the town of Rose, where she was born. It was no wider than two floorboards, but more than three miles long, emptying into Hodges Lake in Bigelow. It had been so named by the town’s people because it had appeared out of nowhere during the great Arkansas drought of 1912.

Miracle offered the sweetest-tasting water in the county and the old people bathed themselves in it, believing it would extend their lives, while the sick and dying drank from it, believing it would save theirs.

But when Mercy was three years old, Miracle became known for something other than its sweet-tasting water and healing qualities.

The Holy Sanctuary Church of God held their baptisms in Miracle every third Sunday since its appearance in 1912. It was on a Sunday that Miracle ran red. A day when the sun was high and the green leaves of the trees shimmered emerald beneath its rays. The banks of Miracle were teeming with men and women dressed in their Sunday best. Bibles in hand, the congregation sang hymns that sailed above the bubbling sounds Miracle made against its banks.

Hands clasped in prayer, heads bowed in humility, they watched as the preacher, three young women, and one old man who had lost his wife three days earlier positioned themselves in Miracle’s serene flux. They were dressed in the same long white robes that had been donned by the very first members of the church fifty years earlier.

The old man was afraid of the water and his false teeth clicked loudly as the four waited for the preacher to close his Bible, pass it off and bend each one of them backward, dipping their heads into Miracle’s waters, washing their sins away.

The birds that rested in the leafy canopy above suddenly took flight, releasing a shrill cry, tearing at the attention of the parishioners. The old man, thankful for the interruption, bowed his head and that’s when he saw the crimson creeping slowly up the clean white of the robes.

For three days in September Miracle ran red, and the citizens of Rose, Arkansas, wondered what they had done to offend God.

Someone took a trip down to Bigelow to see if the blood was spilling off into Hodges Lake, but it wasn’t. The water ran clear over the rim where the stream ended and the lake began. The blood just seemed to swirl there at the mouth as if it knew its business had nothing to do with Bigelow.

For three days, Fanny Bedford, Mercy’s great-aunt, bounced Mercy on a hip that was weak and brittle, stuffing a tit that had not produced milk in almost twenty years into her mouth to quiet the constant cries for her mother, who had been gone for just as long as Miracle had run red.

“You all seen Grace?” “Ask your mama if’n she seen Grace Ann.”

Grace Ann, the only living child of Mary Bedford and Anyone’s Guess.

“Anyone’s Guess” is what the people of Rose called the unknown fathers of illegitimate children, and Grace Ann, along with a handful of other bastard children, would always be referred to by her first name and the disgraceful surname the townspeople had bestowed on her.

No one had seen Grace Ann.

Three days and Fanny was running out of cornmeal to feed the child, three days and Mercy began to refuse her tit, three days and she knew her hip would not be able to take much more.

“They found her!” The cry came from behind her. Fanny was in the front yard scrubbing sheets. The sound of the young boy’s hoarse voice startled the sleeping Mercy, waking her and reminding her that her stomach was empty and she was missing her mother.

“Found her?”

Fanny couldn’t imagine where she’d been. She rubbed her sore hip and put together in her mind the four-letter words she would use on Grace Ann when she got to her.

She gathered Mercy up and her mind fell on her baby sister Mary, who had left Rose for St. Louis five years earlier. Talk had it that she was a madam up there, owned a home with three full floors and indoor plumbing.

In public, Fanny scoffed at the rumors, but privately, when she and Grace Ann wrapped their fingers around the five crisp ten-dollar bills that Mary sent every month, she knew it was true.

Maybe the truth was buried in the jumble of words in the letters that accompanied the money, but Grace Ann and Fanny would never know because neither one of them had ever had any type of proper schooling, so those words might as well have been in German.

They could have begged the local schoolteacher, Miss Ross, to read the letters, but decided against it because the rumors might be true and then all of Rose would know.

So they remained content with the money and the words they did understand:

... Fanny, Grace Ann and Mercy.

Now Fanny wished her sister were there to go and get Grace Ann and maybe box her ears or slap her face for leaving her child without food or milk. Fanny was tired of playing mother to her sister’s children and their children, sick and tired of it.

“C‘mon, she up yonder,” the boy they called Patch said and signaled for Fanny to follow him.

“Why she can’t come to me?” Fanny asked as she passed Mercy off to a neighbor so she could walk faster. “Where she been? Where she at now?” Fanny asked, wringing her hands. She knew something was wrong. Something felt wrong in her chest and her head started to hurt as if she’d been out in the sun too long, but there was no sun on that day, just shade, like God had covered the earth with a sheet.

Fanny looked back and saw that her footprints were fading away in the soft soil and Fanny had a feeling that she would not be treading back that way.

“Where she at?” she asked again as she placed her hands on her hips. She wanted to stop and take a breath; she was old, near seventy, and couldn’t keep up with the pace of a seventeen-year-old boy. But her feet didn’t stop, and the roll of thunder moving in across the field veiled the sound of her labored breathing or he would have been sure to slow down for her.

“We go’n to Miracle? She at Miracle, why?”

No answers, just walking and footprints Fanny would never see again.

There were at least forty people traveling with them now. People who’d seen Patch walking down the road like he was going to war, Fanny close behind and Vivian Walker, who hardly ever left the front porch of her house, bringing up the rear.

For sure something was about to go down and they all wanted to see.

The band of people moved along quickly. Some were excited, others giggled while most stayed solemn because not knowing where you’re going and why is a scary thing. Nobody asked either; they would all just wait and see when they got there.

They ended up at Miracle, at its middle where the blood was the darkest.

“Why we here?” Fanny asked, trying not to look at the bloody waters and hoping to God that Grace Ann was on this side of the stream. Fanny wouldn’t wade through blood, not even for her own mama—God rest her soul.

Patch pointed upstream, and then they all moved on, up the side of the bleeding Miracle and toward the three men with shotguns and faces so long that they ended in the very place Miracle began.