SHUG

I've moved several old blog items to my new site.  This is the opening to a novel entitled "Shug." 

SHUG
Shug – this girl knew her way to hell. Lawsy, Lawsy, the girl done tried her best to make it all work. She pushed and she pulled against the yoke her menfolk was always droppin over her head and shoulders like she was the queen of nothing. That poor child worried over gettin her life the same way you always come from gettin a tooth pulled: you just can’t help pokin at the empty spot like you know somethin should be there but it jus ain’t. But all the same she keeps right on explorin the dark spot in her smile, hopin she finds the light she so sorely needs. She’s a fighter, that girl. Leastwise, she was. Up until the very second she won’t no more.

We was in high school together, Western Wynn High School in Goldsboro, North Carolina, class of 1969. We was swear-to-God best friends, even though she got about as much sense a turkey in the rain and I’ve always been the practical one.

“Ivey Lee” my momma said, “yous gonna be okay sister girl. You gots that know how, that common sense and it’s gonna carry you girl.” She said this every Saturday night as I laid out all four of my sister’s neatly pressed dresses for Sunday mornin while she tugged and yanked on the poor girls heads till they had tears in their eyes. I still to this day can’t smell a hot hair iron without thinkin of her her doin my sisters’ hair, one week curlin us up and the next week braiding so tight our eyes just about crossed and making us sleep in those cotton drawers so we’d look good for God and all the church women the next mornin. We didn’t look good to Mamma until the church ladies told her how good we looked and how well behaved we were in church that mornin. “Oh Mabel, your girls be such little angels.” We hoped Opal Lou would be in church every Sunday because she always told Mamma this same thing whenever she was there. She always said, “Not a peep outta your girls during Reverend Father James’s sermon and they always closed their eyes during prayer.” She always says this with a big grin and little wink at me and I used to wonder how come she saw us when her eyes were s’posed to be closed too. But Lawsy, what a good day that was when someone said we was good girls during church – Momma would fry us up chicken and make us a heap of mashed potatoes and warm up some collard greens that she had canned last fall and we’d wash it down with gallons of tea – that Southern staple, that icy pale brown sweet drink that almost had a flavor other than sugar water to it. Hot grease, vinegar, melted sugar and burnt hair – that’s what Momma’s house always smelled like. My mouth still waters when I think of whoever’s turn it was to say Grace rushing through the words so we could pass that chicken around while it was still greasy hot. I love it so much better ‘n than when Momma made chicken and gravy or chicken and pastry like she normally would on Sunday afternoon after church.

I never did understand why we had to do dishes on Sunday. My G-ma always said God made the world Monday through Saturday and on Sunday, he just had to sit and rest a spell. She always preached, and Lord knows I mean preached, that God didn’t and still don’t like no one to do no work or make no plans come a Sunday ‘less they say “God Willin’ and the Creek Don’t Rise,” and I’m sure to this day that I will burn in hell if I iron on Sundays and ‘specially if I have to iron my church clothes on Sunday morning right before I go to the Lord’s House cause I was too lazy to get ready for Him on Saturday. It was sin to do anything other’n go to church pressed so crisp you was afraid to move for fear of breaking that stiff church dress which meant momma was goin to beat the tar out’n you when you finally got home for fidgetin in church (“I raised you better ‘n that”); it was a sin to do any kind of work (‘cept cooking for the menfolk, I s’pose) and raising up your voice and your heart and your eyes to God. Shug was always lookin up, lookin up to the heavens for help, for hope, for the salvation that even at sixteen, ‘specially at sixteen, she knew was never gonna come to her. I think I liked that dreamy part of Shug first. Oh – Shug? That was her name. Well, that’s what we always called her. Her full name was Lucy Estelle Sugar Stevens but only her mama called her that and only when Shug was really in trouble was all her names called at once.


Please feel free to post a comment about the opening of my new novel; constructive feedback is always appreciated.  



Until next time,

“I have seen the sea when it is stormy and wild; when it is quiet and serene; when it is dark and moody. And in all its moods, I see myself.” ~ Martin Buxbaum