Free This Bitter Earth by Bernice McFadden Page B

twice, three times and nothing happened.
    “Light it!” May was screaming now.
    “Ruby! Ruby!” Sugar yelled again.
    Finally the flint caught and a small blue flame appeared. Sugar had never smoked a pipe in her life, hadn’t even had a cigarette since she arrived in Short Junction. Now she was pulling on the end of a pipe, kindling tobacco for May. Her head spun as her lungs filled with smoke.
    “Jes ... Jesus Christ!” Sugar gagged and then spat into her hand. “Ruby!” she yelled her name again and again between coughing fits. The last thing she wanted to do was put the lit pipe in May’s outstretched hand.
    “Give it here.” May’s eyes sparkled and Sugar thought she saw a small smile trying to break across her face. “Gimme Papa’s pipe,” May said and then she did smile.
    May placed the pipe between her lips and began to take short, rhythmic puffs that even put Sugar at ease. The room filled with an aroma that reminded Sugar of chamomile and the blanket Pearl wrapped around herself when she felt happy, sad or both.
    “Hmmmm.” May removed the pipe from her mouth and let off a long stream of smoke before placing it back in again.
    Her eyes were back on the ceiling but her face looked as though someone had turned a light on inside of her.
    Sugar sat on the side of the bed watching, but not understanding what it was she was seeing.
    “May—” she started to say, but May turned her head toward her and shushed her.
    “Shhhh, now. Papa talking. Mama there too, so is Sara. They look so beautiful ... sooo beautiful.”
    Sugar didn’t want to leave her to find Ruby, but she did not want to see death take another life.
    “Ruby!” she called out again and still no response came.
    May giggled and then smiled and Sugar could swear she saw her blush before she turned her head toward her again.
    “Ruby coming soon, I heard the pot drop,” May mumbled before her hand fell down to her chest, sending the pipe and its charred contents across the bed.
    Sugar slapped at the smoking bits of tobacco, brushing them off the sheet and to the ground. When she turned to look back at May, her eyes were open and staring, her body still. May was gone.
    “Oh, my God,” Sugar cried and threw her hands up to her face.
    The clattering sound of metal hitting the floor followed, and Sugar knew that a pot had indeed dropped and both May and Ruby were dead.

    People stared at her when she came into town to buy food, pick up a package from the post office or just for a change of scenery.
    Children pointed and snickered behind curved palms and the older ones—the ones who felt that they were grown because they had moved past holding their father’s hands or clinging to the skirts of their mothers—felt they had earned the right to sneer at her, talk out loud about who she was and what had happened in the Lacey home when she’d arrived a season ago.
    “Witch,” some called her. “Devil,” most said.
    After May and Ruby died, the sheriff came to investigate Sugar, asking her questions that made her mouth curl and twist as she fought to keep back the cuss words that pushed at her clenched teeth.
    “Why would you give a sick old woman a pipe to smoke?”
    “Don’t you think that pot was too big and heavy for Ruby to lift? Poor thing, the strain and the loss of her sister probably caused her heart to give out the way it did.”
    “Where you been all these years?”
    “Them sisters had any life insurance?”
    “What you gaining from their sudden demise?”
    Sugar looked him right in his blue eyes and answered all of his questions as calmly and efficiently as she could. Whenever she felt herself about to lose control she just picked up the glass of water she’d poured for herself and took a sip. Not a big one, mind you. Just small ones, enough to keep her mouth moist and allow her mind to focus on something else, if only for a moment.
    “How you a Lacey and them sisters ain’t never had no children ?” he asked,