Natalie Baszile - Queen Sugar

“Lucky. Yeah, that’s me.” Charley looked away. “And you? How are you doing? How are your fields?”

“I’m okay,” Remy said. He paused and they looked at each other across the awkward silence. “Hey, look. There’s something I want to—”

But the woman at the window was calling again — angrily, this time — and Remy reluctantly stepped forward. Charley watched as he handed drinks to the boys, balanced the food tray in one hand and clasped Annabel’s ankle with the other. Wobbling, he turned back to her, gesturing to his full load. “I’d better go. It’s good to see you, Charley.” He tried to smile. “Tell Mr. D. I said hello.”

Charley stepped aside so Remy could pass. “You, too,” she said, and forced herself to watch as he moved through the crowd, looking, with Annabel on his shoulders, like a stilt figure in a parade, the two boys following behind. She hoped he would turn around. Just one glance to show the door was still open. But he didn’t. The woman at the window called for another pickup, and Charley realized she’d never ordered, and now the line for crawfish pies stretched on forever.

• • •

Pulling up to Miss Honey’s, Charley’s mind raced with all the things she could have said, should have said, to Remy: that while she didn’t like what he’d said — no, she didn’t like it at all — she’d been too quick to judge. Because who in this life was perfect? Who said everything right, did everything right all the time?

“Bedtime,” she said, turning off the ignition. “No fooling around. Lights out in ten minutes.” The words came out in the sharp tone of a drill sergeant. “Blue, honey, you can sleep in one of my T-shirts. And don’t forget to brush your teeth.” When no response came from the backseat, Charley turned to look and saw that both kids were asleep. Micah slumped against the door with her mouth hanging open. In the plastic bag in her lap, the goldfish she won at the Ping-Pong toss swam in frantic circles. Blue, curled up like a kitten beside her, clutched his bag of cotton candy now crushed to a hard pink wad the size of a baseball.

• • •

Charley came home the next evening and stopped short when she stepped into the kitchen. At one end of the table, Blue sprinkled bread crumbs into the coffee can he’d converted into a fishbowl, and at the other, Violet, yes Violet, helped Micah frost a cake shaped like a crawfish. For a moment, Charley just stood and looked.

“You should have seen how high up we were,” Micah was saying. She dipped her spatula into a bowl of red frosting. “And then they dropped us. I almost barfed.”

At the sink, Miss Honey scowled. “Barfed?”

Violet wiped food coloring off her hands. “That’s California talk for vomit, Mother.”

“Hallelujah!” Charley walked around the table and hugged Violet tightly, whispered, “Welcome back,” in Violet’s ear.

“We’d better hurry, Micah,” Violet said when she and Charley let go. “Judging starts in an hour and we still have to decorate the base. And Blue, baby, that’s enough bread crumbs. You’re gonna kill that little fish.”

“Judging for what?” Charley said.

“The baking contest,” said Violet. “You can bake anything, long as you use Louisiana sugar. I told Mother she should make her pralines.”

“And I told Violet, baking contests are for white ladies,” Miss Honey said.

“Micah, don’t listen to your great-grandmother.” Violet opened the festival guide. “It says here, ‘community invited,’ Mother. That means you.”

“Say what you want, Violet, but I’ve seen those garden club ladies with their matchy-matchy suits and not one of them is black.”

“Grandmother Lorna wears matchy-matchy suits,” Micah said.

“I don’t say anything about joining, Mother,” Violet said. “Besides, once they see Micah’s crawfish cake, they won’t care if she’s green with purple stripes.”

“Keep living, Violet,” Miss Honey said. “You’ll see what I’m talking about.” And though her tone was harsh as always, Charley saw Miss Honey smile after she spoke and knew that for all her blustering, Miss Honey was happy Violet was back.

Violet turned to Charley. “How about we take the kids to the boat parade after we drop off Micah’s cake? It starts at seven.” She leaned closer. “Then you and I can go to the fais do-do on the plaza. Jimmy Broussard Jr. comes on at nine.”

• • •

All along Main Street for as far as Charley could see, green sugarcane stalks tied with bright red bandannas festooned every light post and telephone pole. At Beads and Baubles, the Dew Drop, and the other boutiques lining the square, proprietors had decorated their big picture windows with shiny red wagons, hay bales, and scarecrows dressed in overalls and straw hats looking neater than most farmers in town. Even the side streets were packed with people. Zydeco music blared from the speakers in the plaza, and over at Evangeline’s, Saint Josephine’s fanciest restaurant, the bartender handed out free frozen margaritas from a sidewalk bar. The sky above the bayou glowed pink from all the spotlights and the sun dropping down to make way for evening.

Charley, Violet, and the kids fell in with the throngs. They staked out a spot near the drawbridge just as the boat parade began, and watched as old wooden pirogues, motor boats, and party barges trimmed with colored streamers and strings of lights, their reflection on the water like a thousand fallen stars, drifted down the bayou. Along the banks, where people’s backyards opened onto the water, folks cheered and hurled fistfuls of candy at the boats.

The last boat was a slick, double-decker cabin cruiser. As it approached, everyone cheered louder, and Charley couldn’t figure out why until she saw Queen Sugar and her court — all young white women dressed in heels and baby-doll dresses, their legs perfectly tanned — smiling their biggest debutante smiles and waving giddily from the deck. This was the best day of their lives, their smiles seemed to say. Queen Sugar wore a massive crown of green rhinestones fashioned into a ring of sugarcane stalks, and as she passed the spot where Charley, Violet, and the kids stood, she waved with one hand and pressed the other to her head to keep her crown from toppling.

“That’s quite a crown,” Charley shouted over the cheering.

“Honey, that’s nothing,” Violet shouted back. “Last year, the Shrimp Queen from Cameron wore a crown that was twenty-four inches tall. Must have weighed five pounds. It’s like they say, ‘the smaller the town, the bigger the crown.’”

For all the excitement, Blue couldn’t care less, it seemed. For most of the parade, he searched the ground for loose candy and stuffed it in his pockets. But when Queen Sugar waved again and blew a kiss, Micah waved back, her face bright, then she leaned over the rail and pointed her camera.

Half an hour later, the boats had circled around and were chugging back toward the drawbridge. Charley looked at Micah’s narrow back as Micah studied the Polaroids she’d taken of Queen Sugar, and thought she’d grown strangely quiet.

“So what do you think of all this?” Charley said. “Is this what you wanted to see?”

Micah looked up from her pictures. “They’d never let me be Queen Sugar here, would they?”

Let? Charley’s heart sank. Why, in God’s name, hadn’t she seen this coming? She looked out at the bayou where the cabin cruiser, with its streamers and strings of lights, was gliding past. Couldn’t there have been at least one black girl on that boat?

“Child, you don’t miss a thing, do you?” Violet said.

Charley laid her hand on Micah’s shoulder. “Some things take a long time to change. But you know, you’d make a great Queen Sugar.”