Sugarheart

When dew gathers on the Spanish moss on the mangrove trees in the swamps, it glistens like little stars caught on the branches. It drips slowly into the water of the bayou, with a plink and plonk. It disturbs the algae and the water plants that sit on the water, and sends out ripples that are shaded gray like storm clouds and inky black like the world with your eyes closed. And when the owls hoot in the depths of the mangrove stands, and the dew showers down like sudden rain as branches quake in a swift wind, that's when they say she walks.

They call her Sugarheart, because they don't know what else to call her. Some say she looks gray and tattered, her skin the gray that skin goes when it's been out in the mossy mud for weeks. Those folks that see her swear that her mouth is just like a tear in a cloth, her face tight-stretched leather on a bony skull... Those folks also say that if she breathes her sweet, poisonous breath on you, that you forget everything you ever loved. You forget the warmth of the homes that sit closer to New Orleans, you forget the good wines and the hot spicy gumbo and the clink of silverware over a fine, fine meal.

Those folks (though they try not to talk about her much) say that if you dare come close enough to her to catch that sickly sweet smell and hear the rustle of whatever crawls under the ripped bedraggled robes, you're liable to get asked for a kiss, and liable to forget everything that you love. You'll end up a poor soul doomed to a life of poling ghostly barges through the swamp, heading to a home you don't remember, folks you think maybe you knew once. To your very own children that look at you wondering why you turn away their hugs.

Others say Sugarheart looks mighty different. That her straight black hair and white robe look like a debutante stepped mincing from the carriage. That she smiles with red sweet lips sweet as can be, and her eyes are full of laughter in the night.

Me, well, all I know is what I know of the girl I called Sugarheart, the girl I ran away from wedding, nigh on twelve years ago, when I was too young and stupid to know what was good for me. Her name was Stephanie, pronounced with a lilt the French way, and I was just a Yankee wanderer brought down seeking riches. It was near on 1850, I would guess, when I stood with her outside the door of her family's house. And told her that I didn't know about settling down, didn't know if her family would take me, didn't know if we could ever make a go of it.

New Orleans had me all in a dazzle, you see. The way the houses with their candles in the windows reflected off the water, the way the smells from the farther corners of the city stank of spices and darker things. You have to understand about that city, the magic it can work on a man's heart. The parties, with the houses split in two, where the men went

to one side and the women to the other, so that the mistresses everyone knew they had could be civilly kept apart. That was the way the whole city was, the way that my whole life had become, split apart. On one half, my seeking of fortune--and on the other, Stephanie.

She wanted to stay in New Orleans, she said. "Ah," in that French lilt I always thought was an affectation, "but there is no other city in the world!"

Her father had offered to put me up in his business, but I was proud in those days. Too proud to accept what I saw as charity. It was a miracle we were allowed to step out at all, and a miracle each time I danced with her.

By day, I worked near the docks, where the catches of fish were brought in and scales on the cobbles made the ground seem paved with silver. I was a clerk, keeping tally of shipments, earning a pittance. What choice had I, but to step away from her?

Now, if you ever see Sugarheart, this is what they say to do. They say, don't avert your eyes. She takes offense to that. She finds it an affront. They say, look at her clear and free, right in the face, and don't show what you may really feel. They say that her face in either guise is like a mirror. It reflects what you fear and what you most cherish.

Some say those two are the same thing.

They say don't ever step close enough to her that she might seize you. They say she likes to dance, only her feet glide above the quicksand and the knotholes, where yours are more likely to catch on roots and drag you under.

Some have told the tale of staying there with her until dawn comes, and then she glides away. She leaves you all a-sweat and all a-tremble, with the cold light of morning washing over your face.

None have followed her back to where ever she goes. Not and told the tale, that is.

Stephanie's family had lost patience. A week, they had given her, knowing how her heart was tied to my future. After the week, they said, off she would go to the summer house, away from the noxious airs of the cities, from the time when disease ran through the streets. She was desperate, I see that now.

That last night, as we rode out to the summer house, all her pleadings and broad hints having failed, she grabbed my arm and held it tight. "Please," she said, "if you cannot make your pledge, tell me now," she said. "Tell me so that I can forever close my heart and harden myself against love."

At the time I thought it the fancies of a foolish girl. Gently I said, "You will love again, Stephanie. Do not say such foolish things."

She shook her head. "You do not understand." And she pointed out of the carriage window. "There, you see the moss, the silver moss that hangs from the tree?"

I nodded, unaware of where she was going with her line of thought.

"I am like that," she said. "I am nothing unless I have the strong branch under me, the steadiness to hold me aloft. I am incomplete--if you look close, I am tattered, I am ragged, I am like a thinly woven net."

As I looked at her, I saw how translucent her skin was, like delicate china. A pampered girl, I thought her then.

"Swear to me," she said suddenly. "Swear that even if you now turn your back on me, that should I ask, you will always reveal your heart to me. You will always love me."

I shook my head. "Too grand an oath, Stephanie. Who can say what might happen a dozen years hence? If I should meet and marry--if you should do the same?"

Her eyes grew bright with tears, as the carriage rumbled up the drive to the grand summer house, with the lace curtains and the lovely fenced in gardens.

I was to return with the carriage promptly--otherwise, there might be talk. I helped her down, and gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek. As the driver clucked to his horses and brought the carriage around, she spoke fierce and sudden to me. "Know this, then. I shall not wait forever. You shall regret this, I am sure of it, but I cannot wait forever. A dozen years, you say? Very well. For a dozen years, a spinster I will be, if it come to that. But after that, no more!" She stamped her pretty feet, and her reticule jangled with the small golden bells that were broidered onto it. "You may think that now I am sweet and my heart is sweet on you. And so it is. But even sugar becomes bitter if left too long." And with that, she flounced back into the house, and I rode back to town, my heart heavy.

But by the time I was home, back in the garret above the bakery near the docks, where I did my clerking, where I translated ribald Greek plays into pretty English for the proper young ladies to read and feel erudite, where I did the sums that earned me my bread and wine, where I even pretended at verse in the evenings by candlelight--well, I felt lightheaded.

I felt free.

You know--the night here in the swamp is very dark and still. I hear the slippery sound of wood and water, dank green ivies and clammy mist all around me. I have grown wet, sitting here on this bank, my barge beside me here where I have poled out into the unmapped reaches of the bayou. They say she wanders near these parts, that Sugarheart.

It was ironic, what happened with the yellow fever that year, that summer. It passed by the city, with its stinking prison, its crowded slave pens, its filthy docks. No, that year the fever went straight to the summer houses of the rich, and ravaged them.

They say she went peacefully.

They lied.

She fought every inch, all sweat and tight-stretched skin as the fever rose, delirium rising within her and issuing forth from her eyes and her puckered mouth. I saw her once, but they ushered me away, saying that it lacked decorum, to see her in such a state, her nightgown plastered to her body and effluvia staining her flesh and beddings.

After, the fear of epidemic meant an unmarked grave. And much as the doctors who had trained in France warned against it, they with their fancy notions of cleanliness and sterile instruments and "proper disposal of corpses", the grave was set beside the water, where moisture leached in, and eventually undermined the bank one stormy night.

They tell the story, still, of how the dead rose from the graves, struggling through mud, vestments tattered, skin mummified and mouths agape, only to wash away into the bayou, floating away into darkness, away, away.

I fear I must stand--the ground is too damp for me. And my bones do not take so well to it, anymore. Twelve years, it's been, since the day I stood before her beside a carriage. Twelve, since that summer fever. Hush--

Do you hear?

No, it must just be a snake a-slither in the mangroves.

I married, you know. Had children. Lived the life of an ever more prosperous clerk. I bought a house, and eventually held galas there in my own ballroom in New Orleans. I delighted in my little girl's first pinafore, in the reckless joy

of my son as he raced hoops down the street or played in mud crafting lofty castles. And my wife... Nothing like Stephanie. Robust and full of laughter. Steadfast and joyful and a pillar of my strength.

But the fevers this year... have been very bad. The doctors, they say there is nothing to be done. The caskets are already purchased. The funeral cortege is assembled, and the servants have already gone to dance their vodoun dances in the woods. And I--I wait here, in this bayou.

Some say Sugarheart comes only to those who need her. I wonder if she is still flighty and fanciful, still the girl I knew who stamped her foot prettily in the drive. I will not look away, whatever guise she offers me. I will come close, and offer to dance, like we did years ago, beneath chandeliers with tinkling glass. Look! The Spanish moss shines like that even now.

Some say that to taste her kiss is forgetfulness. It would ease my heart, to know it so. If it drive me mad, any madness is better surcease than the dreams I have at night.

I think, however, that she may ask me a question. Whether I still love her. Whether I have come to take her to bride. This is the last year she will come, you see. I am sure of it.

A dozen years, it has been, since she asked my oath. Soon she will go to her rest. And if she offers forgetfulness, or whether we venture deep into the waters as lovers, well.

Is there a difference?

Water drips from the boughs. I hear the coming of a barge, poled through the mangroves. Look--there.

Isn't she beautiful?