Queen Sugar Read online

  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.”

  4

  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.

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p; “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.

  “Mom!” Micah called from the road’s shoulder. “I can’t see you.” She sounded scared.

  Charley imagined Micah scanning fields that must’ve seemed to have swallowed her mother. “Go back to the car!” she yelled.

  “But I’m scared.” Micah’s voice frayed. “I don’t like it here.”

  Charley crawled deeper into the field.

  “Please!” Micah begged.

  “Get back in the car!” Charley was being cruel, she knew, and withholding. If Davis were there, he’d have told her as much. It was only a ring, he’d say. They could buy another some day, and even if they couldn’t, it wasn’t worth punishing their child. She was being like her mother, he’d say, attentive when she approved, cold as a stone when she didn’t, and he’d challenge her to remember how it had felt to live with that kind of uncertainty. But Davis was gone. She was alone, and right now, cruelty felt deeply satisfying. Better than a back massage. Better than sex. The cane swayed above her and the sound of the rustling leaves was strangely soothing. Charley sat between the rows and buried her face in her hands. When the tears came, they flowed easily and she didn’t try to stop them. Because it wasn’t just the ring, or her dad, or Frasier; it wasn’t Davis, or Denton, or even Micah. It was everything.

 
; At last, Charley dried her face and waded back through the cane. She was shocked to see how far she was from the car. The road, in both directions, was empty. An image of the two white boys in the pickup flashed in her mind.

  “Micah!” She ran to the car and was relieved to find Micah hiding in the small space behind the passenger seat, her head down and her arms raised above her head as if practicing for an earthquake drill. Charley opened the door and slid in behind the wheel. “Come on,” she said. Her voice was still hoarse from crying. “Let’s go.”

  “Did you find it?”

  “No.”

  Micah stayed tucked.

  “Come on,” Charley said, and rested her hand lightly on Micah’s back.

  For a while they drove in silence. Gathering clouds cast shadows over the cane, and Micah, back in the passenger seat, sat with her head against the door, her eyes closed although Charley knew she wasn’t sleeping.

  “Mom?” Micah said, finally. She rubbed her own index finger. “I’m sorry.”

  • • •

  Later that evening, Charley surveyed the bedroom, which wasn’t much bigger than a pantry and felt even smaller with the double bed, their suitcases, and everything else they brought with them stuffed in Hefty bags dumped in the middle of the floor.

  Micah flipped the switch, the motor kicked in, and the new air mattress they purchased from Fred’s crackled to life and inflated in slow motion. When it was full, Micah said, “I’m going to find Miss Honey,” and stepped across the mattress, bouncing like the first girl on the moon.

  “Not too long,” Charley said. “It’s getting late.”

  Just over the threshold, Micah turned. “Mom, I’m really sorry about your ring.”

  “Me too.”

  “And Mom?”

  “What?”