Chapter 3

Word about Sugar got out quick. Even as May pulled the last stitch through Sugar’s flesh and tied the final people were on her porch, rapping on the door and fixing their faces with mock concern.

“We done heard. She all right?”

“She the one use to stay with y‘all. The one y’all raised from a baby?”

May just fixed them with her cold eyes and said nothing. Ruby answered most of the questions, though not all. Sara stood back in the hall among the shadows and for once, said nothing at all. Family business was family business and she never talked outside the house about what went on inside the house.

The last person came just as the snow started to fall again, and May had Ruby get down on her knees to pull a second Mason jar of corn liquor from beneath her bed, that along with the shotgun May had had to use the one time back in ‘24 when Shonuff Clayton tried to choke Sara to death.

May was a big woman, six foot easy and wide. She rarely laughed and hardly ever smiled, and if that wasn’t intimidating enough to the men that had spent their time and money there, May spoke in one even tone and her eyes never wavered. May didn’t just look at you, she looked inside of you.

No one, man or woman, had ever messed with May Lacey and that still held true, even in her old age.

But on that day in ‘24, six days after the hog had been slaughtered and the smell of blood was still thick in the air around the pen, Shonuff Clayton stumbled in from wherever he’d been, his yellow skin tinted red and his breath stinking of alcohol. He was still clutching the pint of whiskey when he tossed two dollars at May, snatched Sara by her arm and dragged her into the house and up the stairs to the bedrooms.

May had huffed a bit and exchanged glances with Ruby, but said nothing. She knew she was lucky to get the money; Sara was in the habit of giving it to Shonuff Clayton for free.

“I loves him,” she had whined one day when May approached her about it.

“If he loves you so much, then let him fuck you some other place but here. Here, there is no love and no free pussy. Here, in this house, is all business and business bring in money, not love.”

May knew Shonuff didn’t give two bits about her sister, but Sara was too far gone to see that.

“Men don’t fall in love with whores, Sara,” May had screamed at her back when Sara stormed off angry and hurt.

Now someone yelled for May and then Ruby, but not Sara, and so May knew immediately Sara was the one in trouble.

May could recall taking the stairs in twos, the sound of Ruby’s feet behind her. Her hip still pained her in bad weather from where she’d slammed into the doorframe of her bedroom in a rush to get to her bed. She’d dropped down to the floor so hard that her stockings ripped and the skin on both her knees split wide open.

The pain must have erased the moment she reached beneath her bed and wrapped her hand around the cold steel of the shotgun, but it had happened. She knew that for sure when time swam back again and she was standing over Shonuff Clayton, the gun pointed right at his head.

“You let her go!”

Shonuff had Sara pinned in the corner of her bedroom. His hands were locked around her throat and his eyes were stretched wide open. He didn’t even flinch at May’s demand; his hands went tighter around Sara’s throat.

There were four men in the room, standing behind May and Ruby, all of them shouting, pleading for Shonuff to let her go.

“C‘mon, man, what you doing?!”

“Shonuff, you drunk, man. Let go of her now!”

“Please, Shonuff, please!”

Even now the memory of it made May wince. Not the words, but the sound of their voices and her own: loud and scared.

Up until that day May had never known fear for any moment of all the years she had been alive, and now it had been thrust upon her, stealing her breath and filling every pore of her body. She tasted it in her mouth and felt it moving through her bladder and curling through her bowels.

“I said let her go now!” May screamed and stepped in closer.

Sara was almost gone. Her hands had stopped clawing and slapping at Shonuff’s face and she seemed to melt beneath him.

‘Now! May screamed again, stepping close enough to push the barrel of the gun against Shonuff’s temple.

He didn’t let go until May cocked the gun. He knew even in his drunken madness that she was through with talking, she had said too much already, so he let go and Sara fell gagging and coughing to the floor.

Three men jumped on him, locking their hands around his neck, arms and waist, while the fourth man gently, very gently, eased the gun from May’s hands.

The jar was half empty, the sun gone and the sky black when the knocking started up again. The stars were out and that’s all that should have been out at that hour of the night. “Decent people are in their homes with their families,” May grumbled as she raised her massive bulk from the wooden kitchen chair and started toward the door.

Ruby started to follow, had even gone as far as raising up and out of her chair, but she saw the look resting on May’s face and how she rocked on her heels before reaching for the shotgun she’d placed in the corner closest to the doorway. Ruby knew then that May’s patience had slipped away with each sip she’d taken from the Mason jar.

Her suspicions were confirmed when May swung the front door open without asking who or even what for.

“Yes?”

The visitor, the nosy busybody (as Ruby liked to call them), took note of the smell of liquor that came off of May’s breath, looked down and saw the shotgun that hadn’t been seen by any outsider since ‘24, and then looked up into those eyes that didn’t just look at you but looked deep inside of you, and knew that May Lacey had had enough.

There were words that sounded like “sorry” and “good night,” but Ruby couldn’t be sure, because May had slammed the door before the words had fully spilled out from the visitor’s mouth.

Three days passed before the wind let up, the gray clouds parted and the sun was finally able to take hold of the sky again. Three days, and the three women that at any other time would have been napping, cooking or mending remained seated around the kitchen table. They only ventured away for brief moments and then only to relieve themselves or run a damp cloth across the back of their necks and beneath their arms.

Little conversation passed between them, and the small words that did were as insignificant as the tiny cracks that ran through the wood of the table they had stationed themselves at.

May and Ruby took turns checking on Sugar, making sure she was still with them and hadn’t gone on to join her mother in the afterlife.

May kept checking the corners of the bed, kept tucking them tighter and tighter beneath the mattress, as if tightly tucked sheets could keep Sugar’s life from slipping away.

Ruby stepped in to adjust the drapes with the time of day: fully open in early morning, half drawn in the afternoon and closed at night.

Sara wouldn’t go into the room. She watched from the hallway, wrapped in shadows as she gnawed at her cuticles.

They waited, and on the morning of the fourth day Sara looked out the window to find twenty-four unblinking, tiny black eyes staring back at her.

“What the—” Sara was startled and stumbled back from the window.

“Yes, I know. Them blackbirds been out there since dawn,” Ruby said.

“They have? Lawd have mercy, what now?”

“Don’t know, guess we just got to wait and see.”

“Them are some ignorant birds. Look how they done run off all the others.”

“Yep.”

“Mean something for sure.”

“Yep.”

“They worse than black cats.”

“Some say,” uttered Ruby as she tipped a bowl of peeled apples into a pot of boiling water.

“C‘mon away from the window now. Leave ’em be ‘fore they get it in their mind to do something.” Sara said and wiped her hands across her apron.

“What can a blackbird do to you?” May’s voice dripped with disgust.

Sara and Ruby turned to face her. May looked like a specter behind the steam curling up from the teacup.

“Nothing, I suppose,” Ruby said and stole one last peek out the window before dipping her long wooden spoon into the pot of boiling apples.

“Humph,” Sara added and moved back to the table. “We all know what blackbirds mean.”

No one said anything for a long time. There was just the sound of wood knocking against metal and fruit as Ruby stirred the apples and stared out the window.

“You should have told me the truth.”

The words swirled around the sisters as gentle and easy as the sweet aroma that escaped in clouds of steam from the stewing pot of apples.

“What you say, Sister?” Ruby asked May as she peered at her over the thin rim of her glasses.

“I ain’t said a thing,” May replied and turned her bleary eyes on Sara. May had been drinking steadily for three days and the liquor was taking its toll on her vision.

Sara looked back at May and then over at the pot.

“I said it.” The accusation was clearer now and as thick as the molasses Ruby was spilling into the pot.

The sisters slowly turned their heads toward the doorway. Sugar was there, propped up against the wall. Her lips were chalky and cracked, her eyes puffed and tearing. She was rail thin and looked like a vagrant in May’s old gown.

The women jumped to their feet and placed three pairs of hands on her. Sugar tried to shrug them off, but she was weak and her struggle, a brief one.

They helped her to the table and set her down gently into a chair.

The sisters took their respective seats and studied their fingers instead of answering Sugar’s question.

Sugar laid her eyes on each of them. They were all totally gray now and the wrinkles that covered their faces were few enough to count. Their cheeks hung like jowls and age spots had begun to dot the honey-brown skin of their arms.

Sugar thought she knew the women that sat around her, but the scars that crisscrossed her belly, the love she was forbidden to have and the father whose name she did not carry; all of those things told her that she did not know the women who’d raised her at all.

“Can I have a glass of water?” Sugar asked as she laid her head down on the table. Her feet were bare and the floor was cold. She began to shiver. “No, lemme have a cup of tea instead,” she said as she placed one foot on top of the other.

“Bring me the quilt from the parlor,” May said to no one in particular. “Some socks from my room,” she added. The alcohol was still swimming in her head, but the warmth it had provided her seeped out with every hard breath Sugar drew.

Ruby went for the quilt and the socks. Sara just looked off toward the wall.

May rapped her knuckles on the table to get Sara’s attention. “The child said she wants some tea.”

Sara just looked down at her hands and began examining her fingers.

May let out a heavy breath and shook her head. She did not know when Sara had become so childish and cantankerous.

“Sara.” May’s tone was stiff. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” May exclaimed before moving her chair back hard on its legs.

“I’ll get it, May,” Ruby said, moving back into the kitchen, quilt and socks in hand. She placed the quilt around Sugar’s shoulders and then hesitated before dropping to her knees and slipping the socks onto Sugar’s feet.

“Y‘all could have told me. Y’all should have told me,” Sugar said as she struggled to kick Ruby’s fidgeting hands from her feet.

“I know. I know,” May said as she watched Ruby cross the floor to the stove. She didn’t want to see the hate that was stewing in Sugar’s eyes.

“So you did know?” Sugar was flabbergasted. Up until that point she’d hoped against hope that they didn’t know about Joe Taylor and the fact that he lived in Bigelow, just two towns over.

But that hope was shattered with May’s confirming words.

“Oh, God,” Sugar moaned as sorrow pressed against her chest. “Oh, my God.” She dropped her head against the table and began to weep.

The sound that followed was deafening. The women threw their hands up to their ears and looked to each other for answers. The black winter night poured into the kitchen and the sound swelled until it rattled the walls and shook the tiny ceramic knickknacks lining the shelf above the stove.

“Lawd!” Sara yelled.

Blackbirds, dozens more than the twelve that had perched outside earlier, fluttered at the window, their strong wings beating at the glass and the side of the house, splintering the wood and sending cracks through the glass.

“Lawd help us!” Sara yelled again and jumped back from the window.

“What’s going on? What’s happening?” Sugar screamed, her voice barely audible over the noise.

“They want you!” Sara screamed, pointing a crooked finger at Sugar, her body trembling in fear.

“What you say?” Sugar screamed back at her, not sure she’d heard Sara right. “What you say, Sara Lacey?” Sugar said again, sure now that she had heard Sara right.

“Don’t you look at me.” Sara threw her hands up in front of her face as she eased herself away from the table. “Don’t you dare lay your eyes on me!”

The clamor of the birds increased, and a piece of the window gave way.

“Ahhhhh!” Sara screamed as she ran from the room. The women didn’t notice her departure; their eyes were fixed on the birds that were forcing their way through the opening.

“Dammit to hell!” May yelled as she stormed past Ruby.

Suddenly, there was a loud blast, a flash of light, the shattering of glass, clouds of smoke and then complete silence.

Sugar’s eyes moved from one sister to the other and then to the space where the window used to be.

The wind carried bloody black feathers in and set them down on the table, the floor and into the pot of apples that were now bubbling and mushy. Above them, Sara could still be heard screaming bloody murder.

“May?” Ruby called her sister’s name just as soft and gentle as the man that had eased the gun from her hands back in ‘24. “Let it go, May,” she said, moving toward her. “Give it here,” she urged as she placed her hands over her sister’s.

May’s grip tightened around the gun and for a moment Ruby didn’t think May would ever let go.

“Wha—huh?” May looked on Ruby with blank eyes.

“Sister? May?” Sara said as she unfolded May’s fingers from the warm metal. “Give it here.”

“Oh, yes,” May said, her eyes clearing. “Yes,” she said again to some other question neither Sugar nor Ruby had asked.

Neighbors came in twos and threes after the sound of the shotgun echoed across Short Junction.

“What done happen here?” Mr. Gates from two houses over yelled out before stepping in front of the gaping hole the blast had left.

“Everybody okay?” he called before stepping hesitantly into the circle of light that spewed out from the kitchen.

May looked at him and then straightened herself. She ran her hands over her hair and then across her face before she spoke. “Fine, just fine,” she said.

“Had a little trouble is all,” Ruby said as she placed the shotgun on the table and then thought better of it and moved it back to its place in the corner.

“What happened—” Mr. Gates started to ask, but Sara had started screaming again and her shrieks did as much damage to his words as the shotgun blast had done to the wall.

“Sara done taken ill is all.” Ruby’s words were rushed and she didn’t seem to notice that her response had nothing to do with the hole in the wall.

Mr. Gates’ eyebrows rose and his mouth twisted a bit, but he didn’t challenge Ruby’s explanation.

A few more men came into view. “She’s in a lot of pain,” Ruby explained. “ ‘Scuse me,” she said to the men, five of them now, before she hurried away and up the stairs.

The men gathered around the hole to examine the damage. Their eyes fell on the pieces of dead blackbirds that lay at their feet and then their eyes found Sugar. They took in the blue tint of her skin and the closed pinched look her lips had, as if the undertaker’s needle had already had its way with them.

They understood why the blackbirds had attacked the house.

All of them had seen it happen at least once in their lives. Throngs of blackbirds, perched in trees and scatter-walking across the ground, waiting for death to claim its victim.

“Y‘all gonna freeze in here if this hole don’t get closed up tonight,” Billy Sanford said.

“You offering to close it up?” May asked as she stood peering out at them. Her tone was not humble and her stance—hands on hips, head tilted skyward—did not hold well with Billy Sanford.

Old whore should be on her knees begging me to mend this hole up, Billy thought to himself. But he wouldn’t say it out loud. He knew not to mess with May Lacey. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

“Well, I’ll pay you. You don’t have to worry about that,” May said and stepped away from the cold that seeped in.

Humph, be good to get back some of the money my old man dropped here back in the day, Billy thought to himself, but once again, he didn’t dare say it out loud.

The men avoided the dead birds as much as possible, preferring to step over them rather than kick them aside with the toe of their boots. Blackbirds meant death and they wanted no part of that.

The men worked together mending the space in the wall and went home and told their wives that they were sure the next time they saw Sugar Lacey, she would be faceup in a pine box.

Sara remained locked in her room for two days after May slapped her twice across her face and shook her until her head wobbled on her neck when she still wouldn’t stop screaming.

Sara wouldn’t eat a thing Ruby left outside her door and only God knew where she was relieving herself. May threatened to remove her bedroom door from its hinges if she didn’t stop behaving like a child and open it up. May wouldn’t have gone to the trouble; she just needed to know that Sara was still alive, and Sara satisfied her curiosity by screaming like a lunatic every time May started picking at the hinges of Sara’s door with her penknife.

Ruby had little to say during the whole ordeal. She felt like she was caught in one of those bizarre Hitchcock movies she’d seen once on a visit to Ashton.

She thought that the evil Sugar had carried with her into that house was slowly spreading over all of them. May was drinking again, Sara had definitely taken leave of her senses and who knew what was going to befall her.

Ruby sprinkled salt on the porch and around every entrance of the house before retiring to her bedroom, picking up her Bible off the nightstand and opening it to the Book of Revelation.

Sugar heard the click of the lock and the creak of Sara’s door as it swung open on its hinges. She waited, as did Sara, for any interruption in May’s snoring or Ruby’s heavy, even breathing.

Sara stepped out into the hall and Sugar eased herself up and onto her elbow. The two women remained as still and silent as the cats that roamed the land for field mice. Ears keen, bodies stiff and rigid, they listened to the darkness around them.

The grandfather clock in the parlor chimed and Sara moved with the bells, and on the twelfth she pushed Sugar’s bedroom door open and stepped inside.

“You wanna know?” Sara’s voice reached through the darkness and snatched at Sugar. “You said you wanted to know why. Do you really want to know, ‘cause I’ll tell you the truth.”

Sugar sat up and pushed her back against the headboard. She could barely make Sara out in the darkness of the room. She could smell her, though, like spoiled milk and rotting apples.

“May won’t tell you, not all of it, and Ruby don’t much know any of it,” Sara hissed and Sugar could tell she was getting closer. Sugar slid herself across the bed and moved her hand to the night table, where she searched for something, anything to protect herself.

“I loved him. Me! Not your mama, Bertie Mae. But he couldn’t see it, just kept on chasing behind her like some lovesick woman. She didn’t pay him any mind, but still he kept on.”

There was a pause as Sara’s voice drifted off into the darkness. Sugar strained to see what she was doing, where she was moving, but her eyes were weak and refused to adjust to the darkness.

“He never looked at me like he looked at her. Not once.” Sara’s voice came from Sugar’s right side and she jumped and scrambled to the other side of the bed.

The curtains parted and moonlight streamed in. Sara looked skeletal beneath the moon’s glow; her eyes were wide and sunken and her teeth seemed to jut forward as if they were pulling away from her skull.

The light-green gown she wore was soiled and Sugar caught the unmistakable scent of urine.

Sara stared at Sugar for a long time while her emotions—happy, sad and angry—played out across her face. “Well, that’s the way things are sometimes,” Sara said, suddenly sounding sane, suddenly sounding normal.

Sara sat down in the rocking chair by the window and stared out into the night. “No one person should be forced to keep everything to themselves. Not everything. The mind is small, the heart, weak.” She spoke in a low whisper.

Sara stopped rocking and raised her head a bit as if she’d caught sight of something outside the window. Satisfied with what she did or did not see, she began rocking again.

“Your mother died from it. Keeping things in, those stories and the hurt and pain that went along with ‘em. They called it cancer ... and yes, I guess that’s what it was or what it ended it up being.

“She was weak when she run off. If she had to fend for you and run all at the same time, she woulda dropped dead long before she did, and you ... well, who knows what would have happened to you. She ain’t have you to tell the stories to and I guess she felt she couldn’t share it all with Clemon.”

Sara turned and looked at Sugar. “Clemon Wilks was your grandmama’s man first. Did you know that? She run off with her own mama’s man,” Sara said matter-of-factly.

Sugar blinked at the name. Clemon Wilks. Wilks? Well, that was the name on the deed to #10 Grove Street.

“Well,” Sara breathed, waving that bit of information off with a flick of her hand. “Men don’t understand most things, so she kept it all to herself, inside where it fed on her soul and spirit. She realized it when it was too late and jumped on the train and come back here, looking for you, but you was off looking for who knows what.”

Sugar straightened her back and tried to shake the guilt that Sara’s words seemed to plant in her.

“Ohhhh my goodness.” Sara yawned and stretched her bony arms above her head. She didn’t speak again for a long time. The only sounds that filled the room were the soft creaking noises from the rocking chair and the wind outside the window.