Natalie Baszile - Queen Sugar

Blue dropped to his knees, rolled in the sand, lay on his back and moved his arms and legs up and down like he was doing jumping jacks.

“What are you doing?” Ralph Angel said.

“Making an angel.”

“This isn’t snow.”

“That’s okay.”

“Well, get up. You’ve got sand in your hair.”

Blue stood and Ralph Angel brushed him off. Sand on Blue’s neck. Sand down his shirt and in the waistband of his briefs. Sand in the folds of his pant legs.

Back on the road now, the stick poking through the back window, Ralph Angel said, “Stop scratching.”

“But my hair itches.”

“That’s what I tried to tell you. We’ll wash it when we get there.”

“But it itches bad.”

The sign outside the roadside café read LOST DOG: BLIND IN ONE EYE, MISSING RIGHT EAR. TAIL BROKEN. RECENTLY CASTRATED. ANSWERS TO THE NAME “LUCKY.”

Ralph Angel laughed, thought: I know the feeling .

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.”

In the bathroom, Ralph Angel turned on the faucet, lay Blue faceup on the counter so his head hung over the sink. He pressed the dispenser till a half-dollar-size dollop of soap filled his palm.

“Close your eyes.” A halo of lather surrounded Blue’s face, his hair like the burrs caught on one’s pant hem. Ralph Angel scrubbed till he felt the sand loosen.

“Ouch,” Blue said. “That hurts.”

Ralph Angel wiped soap away from Blue’s eyes, out of his ears, then cupped his hand under the faucet so the warm water ran over Blue’s scalp. “How’s that?”

Blue smiled. “Better.”

He dried Blue’s hair with a paper towel, then looked into his son’s face again, feeling the weight of Blue’s head in his hand as the boy relaxed.

“I like being on this trip with you, Pop,” Blue said. He yawned.

How would his life have been different if his father hadn’t sent him back? If Charley had never been born? He couldn’t say. How much of his mother was in him? He’d never know. But he could do everything he could think of for his boy. He could do that. “Thanks, buddy,” Ralph Angel said, and sat Blue up on the counter. He wiped a drop of water that snaked down the boy’s neck. “I do too. I like that it’s just you and me.”

It had been a week since Denton said no, and Charley still hadn’t found a manager. She spent days scouring barbershops and roadside bars, oily garages and smoky pool halls — the places men gathered after work or on weekends to tell jokes, talk about their trouble on the job or with their wives; the places they went to feel like men, and where, if a desperate young woman who was trying to make her father proud happened to wander in, they wouldn’t mind coming to her assistance. But no luck.

Now, exhausted and even more discouraged, Charley rolled over the railroad tracks into the Quarters. On the corner, a group of young men stood on the sidewalk: XXL plaid shirts and baggy jeans like gangsta rappers, hair braided in zigzag cornrows that made their hair look like puzzle pieces. They smoked pot and drank from brown paper bags, and as Charley rolled past and waved, they jerked their chins a tiny bit, like guards at a security checkpoint, and she debated whether to pull over and ask if any of them wanted a job.

Miss Honey’s house was quiet. Must be at church, Charley thought, and went to her room to change out of her farm clothes — jeans, a plain short-sleeve blouse, and work boots — which made her look older and possibly a little butch, but which she believed helped make a good first impression, showed that she was serious, responsible, and not just some kid playing in the dirt. After a long day like today, it would feel good to sit out on the porch and watch the people pass, and maybe, for a minute, let her mind wander.

But when Charley stepped out of her bedroom into the living room, she saw Micah on the sofa. Micah's back was turned, her bare feet drawn up under her so that when she moved, the plastic slipcovers crackled. Micah pressed her ear to Miss Honey’s phone, wrapped the cord around her finger, and at first Charley thought she was talking to a friend back home. But then she heard Micah say, “Hello, Lorna? Are you there?” Charley froze.

“It’s me,” Micah said. “Please pick up…” She waited, and when no one answered, her shoulders slumped with disappointment. “I’m just calling to tell you we made it. It’s okay so far. Miss Honey says I can have a Coke anytime I want. She gave me Grandpa Ernest’s old camera and is teaching me how to cook.” Another pause. Thinking. “Mom went a little psycho the other day, but it wasn’t her fault.” Micah stopped talking, pushed the prongs on the cradle. “Merde.” Hung up and redialed.

Charley held still. Last night after she bid Micah good night, her breath caught when the phone rang. She thought it might be Lorna. She waited for Miss Honey to call, heard Miss Honey’s voice over the canned television laughter followed by the sound of the receiver being returned to the cradle. Charley had not spoken to her mother in two months, not since she stopped by her mother’s house to outline her final plans, and the fact of not having her mother to consult felt like losing a limb.

“But it’s the South,” Lorna had said, as though moving to Louisiana were the same as moving to Siberia.

They stood in Lorna’s newly remodeled kitchen. Charley looked around at the glistening travertine floors and polished marble countertops, the imported Italian tiles arranged in a swirling pattern behind the stove, the refrigerator large enough to store a whole side of beef, and she thought it was a kitchen she could never cook in. She took a sterling spoon from the drawer, stared into its silvery bowl at her upside-down face. “What’s wrong with the South?” Her mother gave a little laugh that made Charley feel stupid for asking. Of course, she knew what was wrong. She had followed news coverage of the man dragged to his death behind a pickup truck in Texas, and the six black teenagers jailed in Louisiana on trumped-up charges.

“Come home,” her mother had said. “Micah can take your old room. She can go to your old school. Fine, if you insist on circling around that hellhole, but it’s not fair to Micah.”

“It’s not a hellhole, Mother. It’s an art program. And if I didn’t work with those kids, no one would.”

“I’m touched, but I’m not amused. I know your father thought it was noble, but I don’t see anything noble about it. You’ve wasted enough time doing good for other people at your own expense.”

“We’re fine.”

“You’re not fine,” her mother said. “You’re a tenant. A tenant with a disconnected phone — don’t even bother, I heard the recording. You drive a car I can hear two blocks away. How late is your rent? One month? Two? Fine, don’t answer. But send Micah to me. I’ll pay off those loans. I’ll even buy you a new car. But only if she lives here.”

Charley considered what Lorna could show Micah — the Louvre, the Met, safaris in Kenya. She considered the one thing, perhaps the only thing, she could now give her daughter, who was aching to stay in Los Angeles: the chance to see that even a woman in desperate straits could pull her own survival out of the ruddy earth.

“It’s a generous offer, Mother, but we’re going to Saint Josephine. I’m not changing my mind.”

“How can you be so selfish?” Lorna grabbed the spoon from Charley and returned it to the drawer.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s time to grow up, Charlotte. The child has been scarred once. Why drag her away from everyone she loves? Why drag her down to Louisiana, where she’ll only suffer again?”