Sugar Daddy Read Online Free PDF Page A

sweetgrass baskets and yellow barbeque and fried catfish lunches by the side of the road.
    A whole lot of Mt. Pleasant had been airbrushed by new money settling in. Not me. Growing up, we never knew a stranger. Easy-going, slow-paced, the smell of honeysuckle arbors and us kids yelling from one yard to the next...someone always had an eye out for us when it was still a front-porch culture.
    We’d lived in the Old Village, at the mouth of the Charleston Harbor. My daddy a longshoreman at the docks, my momma had inherited our cottage from her grandmammy. Our small parcel of land was a Jussely birthright, something to keep in the family, right next door to my Mimi’s house. On the other side of us were neighbors whose family had been there since the Old Village was the original Greenwich Village, populated in the 1800’s. Though the area caught a fair sea breeze, it was never an enclave for the plantation gentry seeking relief from the threat of mosquito and malaria. Genuine people resided there, still did, amidst the stifling new rises of four story houses blotting out the riverside vista.
    With my daddy’s accident, we’d lost our property, and Momma and I lost him. His chest was crushed by an ill-handled crate from an Evergreen cargo ship. My brawny, stevedore daddy–the man who’d set the sun on his able shoulders–was more dead than alive when we’d reached the hospital.
    He’d opened his eyes when I’d touched him. “Shay.”
    Sobbing, I’d grabbed his hands. “Daddy!”
    He’d managed to turn his head to me, and into my ear he’d whispered, “Y’all take good care of your momma.” A trapped breath pinballed inside his torso. “You make good on yo’self. You’re almost a woman now. I’ll be countin’ on you, Tiger Lily.”
    I’d been inconsolable when they’d pulled Momma and me off him to check his vitals. The inconstant bleep-bleep-bleep ended in an alarming high-pitched siren that still woke me up at night.
    Daddy’s hospital bills bankrupted us, health insurance already on the rise. His funeral was paid on credit to J. Henry Stuhr. My momma became a broke single mother and a widow.
    Me, fatherless.
    Us, homeless.
    Landowners no more. It was a hell of a thing to endure the end of my second year in high school, but at least I had Palmer.
    We couldn’t keep pace with escalating Old Village property taxes at any rate, not without Daddy’s paycheck. Good thing Momma was frugal because she hardly had any time to mourn.
    Grief was an old friend to me and Momma, one that kept on a-callin’. But that didn’t stop us Motte women from settling our skirts and getting on about our business.
    Setting my sunglasses on my nose, I found Augie haggling over a punnit of strawberries, asking the vendor why he should pay the high price when he could head out to Boone Hall Plantation and pick them himself.
    I called his bluff. “Augie, sugah , I do believe the only time you’re to be found on your knees is when you have somethin’ more filling than strawberries in your mouth.”
    “I see you’re feelin’ spunky tonight, Miss Shay,” he managed between laughs.
    “You’d know more about spunk than me, M’sieur DuBose.”
    Marching me toward a fresh-faced vendor–the type whose cheeks shone like red delicious apples–he dared me, “I think he wants you to check out his produce . ”
    With a wink, I set off toward the youth selling tomatoes. He was every bit lovely: big baby blues, buff body, smiling widely at all who approached. “Evenin’, ma’am.”
    Ma’am. Goddamn. Did I look that old?
    “Or should I say Miss?” Oh, but he was a fast learner.
    A perfect grape tomato in the palm of my hand, I asked, “How much are these?”
    I turned so the setting sun shifted through my sundress.
    The boy-man stammered. “Uh...yeah...two bucks a pint, Miss . ”
    Face flushed as pink as the sunset sky, the lad shifted from foot to foot, trying not to stare at my breasts.
    Augie came over. “I think what