Natalie Baszile - Queen Sugar

Charley sighed. Hollywood had looked so nervous sitting there with his hair perfectly combed and his shirt ironed — like a schoolboy on picture day — and she’d been tempted to say yes, she’d go out with him, just to put him at ease. But that would have been a mistake. He’d have gotten the wrong impression and then what? The last thing she wanted was to hurt his feelings, but she’d been relieved, actually, when Ralph Angel walked in and interrupted. If only he hadn’t started in with the teasing. Why did he always take it too far? “If I had the money, I’d pay someone to break the news that I just think of him as a friend.” Charley said.

There were plenty of things for which Charley was prepared. She was prepared for the day Micah first kissed a boy (or a girl), and for the day she’d start her period. She was prepared for the day Micah got her learner’s permit and accidentally drove through a neighbor’s yard because she mistook the gas pedal for the brake; and though she hoped it would never happen, she was prepared for the day Micah got caught shoplifting strawberry lip gloss from the five-and-dime, and, God forbid, for the day she got busted for smoking cigarettes behind the high school gym. Charley had steeled herself for conversations with Micah about sex, and considered the advice she’d offer about colleges and careers, love, marriage, and parenthood. But Charley was not prepared when, after a long day at the farm and a quick stop at the Piggly Wiggly, she pulled in front of Miss Honey’s and saw Micah standing in the yard, her Polaroid camera pointed at the sky.

“What are you doing?” Charley asked.

“I’m taking pictures of the gates of heaven,” Micah said.

“The what?”

“The gates of heaven,” Micah said. She pressed the button and the camera spat a dark square into her hand.

“May I see?” Micah handed her the square on which a fuzzy pronged circle of gold and white light appeared against a backdrop of sky the color of bleached driftwood, and Charley was flushed with a sinking sensation. “Exactly where did you get the idea you could take pictures of heaven?”

“Miss Honey,” Micah said. “She always talks about God, how he washes us clean. How he always answers our prayers. She says after we die, God is waiting for us at the gates.”

“I think that’s Peter at the gates,” Charley said, grimly. “Or Samson. One or the other.”

“It’s what she says.”

Charley looked into Micah’s face, which was so open, so hopeful and filled with innocence it was all she could do not to turn away. “Sweetheart,” Charley said in her most patient voice, “I know you’re curious about God, but those aren’t the gates of heaven.”

“They are.” Micah pressed her finger to the photo. “You aren’t looking at it right.”

“I’m looking,” Charley said. She studied the photograph closely, then handed it back, but when Micah aimed her camera at the sky again, something within Charley flared. “That’s enough.”

“Just a few more,” Micah said, twirling away. She snapped another picture, quickly, and another. And another.

Ten pictures lay spread across the top porch step before Micah put down the camera.

“And you can really see the gates of heaven in all of them?” Charley asked, seated now and not reaching for the camera any longer, because the last time she tried to grab something from Micah, she wound up on her hands and knees, crawling through a cane field. She wanted to make sure she understood exactly what Micah believed she saw so that when she spoke to Miss Honey, she could thank her for exposing Micah to God, and could suggest, as delicately as possible, that a little faith was fine, Lord knew she could use some herself, but that religion was like vitamin A: a little bit every day was good, but too much left you sweaty and unable to see straight.

“Yeah,” Micah said. “That’s what I showed you.” She knelt on the step a few inches from where Charley sat, but didn’t look at her as she gathered the pictures into a stack, carefully aligning the corners like a deck of cards.

“What are you going to do with them now?” Charley asked, remembering how, as a kid, she was never good at cards or any other game for that matter, not Monopoly or Sorry or even Clue. She did play the Game of Life once, though, at her friend Carolyn’s house. Carolyn Brewster, with hair the color of corn silk and eyes blue as a baby doll’s. They spread the board on the shag carpet in the living room, and she’d especially loved the tiny pink and blue “people” pegs tucked into the little plastic cars, how the twisting roads promised as much misfortune as triumph, how a spin of fate’s wheel could set your make-believe grown-up life in motion, like a ship launched from a dock.

Micah responded to Charley’s question with a half shrug, a gesture Charley found off-putting and slightly disrespectful, but she decided to ignore it. One day, months or even years from now, she’d find the pictures under the couch or scattered along the bottom of an old shoe box with other artifacts of Micah’s youth, and she’d look back on these moments and wonder why she wasted so much time and energy worrying.

And so Charley decided to take a different approach. “Well then, let’s get sno-cones,” she said, even though she had just bought two boxes of Moon Pies at the market, and saw what they put on sno-cones: not just the usual assortment of artificially flavored syrups, but condensed milk, of all things.

“Can we?” Micah asked, unable to mask her surprise. “Right now?”

“Why not?” Charley said. “Take these groceries inside. We’ll unpack them when we get back.” She handed Micah a grocery bag. “And put some shoes on,” she called, as Micah disappeared into the house.

While Charley waited for Micah to change, she poked around Micah’s garden, where the first sprigs of carrots with leaves like the lace on baby’s bonnets were just poking through the soil, and pea blossoms, fragile as tiny fairy hats unfurled against the fence. And walking up and down the rows now, Charley’s heart broke even as it leaped, because Micah had done all the work without her help. Soon enough, Charley thought, even the garden would be forgotten as Micah’s interest turned to boys and dating, and college after that. Up and out and on her own. Time moved too fast. Charley stared at the garden again. Time moved too fast and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

• • •

The late-afternoon sun lingered as though it were enjoying, far too much, shining its golden light over rooftops and warming the country roads to give way to evening, and Charley wandered about the garden, gathering up Micah’s tools and empty seed packets, recoiling the hose, until she heard the screen door slam and walked to the corner of the house, thinking she’d meet Micah on the walkway. Only it was Ralph Angel and not Micah who’d stepped out onto the porch in his T-shirt and sweats, his hand raised against the afternoon sunlight, looking like he’d just woken up from a nap.

“Hello, Ralph Angel.” Charley spoke politely but cautiously. She hadn’t been in the mood for too much conversation since he teased Hollywood for asking her out.

“Hey.” Ralph Angel yawned and stretched. “Micah said you were out here. But it’s what — five thirty? You don’t normally roll in here till after six.”

“We finished early for once,” Charley said. Privately, she was glad when Alison said the preschool called, one of his grandsons was sick, he needed to leave by three, and Denton had suggested they call it a day. The fields were looking good. The cane had grown another notch, which meant that it was almost as high as it needed to be for this time of year, and they’d nearly finished making minor repairs to the equipment they bought at the auction. But since Ralph Angel seemed to be in a good mood, she let her guard down. “I would have been home sooner, but LeBlanc’s light was on, so I picked up a loaf,” Charley said. “I bought some ginger cakes, too, if you want one. I told Micah to put them on the counter.”