This Bitter Earth Read Online Free PDF Page A

and opening it to the Book of Revelation.

    Sugar heard the click of the lock and the creak of Sara’s door as it swung open on its hinges. She waited, as did Sara, for any interruption in May’s snoring or Ruby’s heavy, even breathing.
    Sara stepped out into the hall and Sugar eased herself up and onto her elbow. The two women remained as still and silent as the cats that roamed the land for field mice. Ears keen, bodies stiff and rigid, they listened to the darkness around them.
    The grandfather clock in the parlor chimed and Sara moved with the bells, and on the twelfth she pushed Sugar’s bedroom door open and stepped inside.
    “You wanna know?” Sara’s voice reached through the darkness and snatched at Sugar. “You said you wanted to know why. Do you really want to know, ‘cause I’ll tell you the truth.”
    Sugar sat up and pushed her back against the headboard. She could barely make Sara out in the darkness of the room. She could smell her, though, like spoiled milk and rotting apples.
    “May won’t tell you, not all of it, and Ruby don’t much know any of it,” Sara hissed and Sugar could tell she was getting closer. Sugar slid herself across the bed and moved her hand to the night table, where she searched for something, anything to protect herself.
    “I loved him. Me! Not your mama, Bertie Mae. But he couldn’t see it, just kept on chasing behind her like some lovesick woman. She didn’t pay him any mind, but still he kept on.”
    There was a pause as Sara’s voice drifted off into the darkness. Sugar strained to see what she was doing, where she was moving, but her eyes were weak and refused to adjust to the darkness.
    “He never looked at me like he looked at her. Not once.” Sara’s voice came from Sugar’s right side and she jumped and scrambled to the other side of the bed.
    The curtains parted and moonlight streamed in. Sara looked skeletal beneath the moon’s glow; her eyes were wide and sunken and her teeth seemed to jut forward as if they were pulling away from her skull.
    The light-green gown she wore was soiled and Sugar caught the unmistakable scent of urine.
    Sara stared at Sugar for a long time while her emotions—happy, sad and angry—played out across her face. “Well, that’s the way things are sometimes,” Sara said, suddenly sounding sane, suddenly sounding normal.
    Sara sat down in the rocking chair by the window and stared out into the night. “No one person should be forced to keep everything to themselves. Not everything. The mind is small, the heart, weak.” She spoke in a low whisper.
    Sara stopped rocking and raised her head a bit as if she’d caught sight of something outside the window. Satisfied with what she did or did not see, she began rocking again.
    “Your mother died from it. Keeping things in, those stories and the hurt and pain that went along with ‘em. They called it cancer ... and yes, I guess that’s what it was or what it ended it up being.
    “She was weak when she run off. If she had to fend for you and run all at the same time, she woulda dropped dead long before she did, and you ... well, who knows what would have happened to you. She ain’t have you to tell the stories to and I guess she felt she couldn’t share it all with Clemon.”
    Sara turned and looked at Sugar. “Clemon Wilks was your grandmama’s man first. Did you know that? She run off with her own mama’s man,” Sara said matter-of-factly.
    Sugar blinked at the name. Clemon Wilks. Wilks? Well, that was the name on the deed to #10 Grove Street.
    “Well,” Sara breathed, waving that bit of information off with a flick of her hand. “Men don’t understand most things, so she kept it all to herself, inside where it fed on her soul and spirit. She realized it when it was too late and jumped on the train and come back here, looking for you, but you was off looking for who knows what.”
    Sugar straightened her back and tried to shake the guilt that Sara’s words seemed