Authors: Jenny Han
So I said, “Never mind. It’s just Shug, Shug like sugar.”
The Color Purple
is one of Mama’s favorite books. Mine too. It’s all about living free, on the inside. The main character’s name is Celie (like Celia, see) and she’s had a real beat-down kind of life. She thinks she’s nothing. Then Celie meets Shug Avery, and boy, is Shug Avery a force of nature. That’s what Mama calls her, anyway. Shug Avery doesn’t take crap from nothin’ and nobody. She’s a singer
and a temptress, too. When Shug Avery blows through town, she shakes the whole town up. Everyone’s enchanted by her: Celie, Celie’s husband, Mr._____; everyone. My mama, too.
That’s why she calls me Shug—well, that, and it’s short for sugar. Plenty of mamas call their babies Shug, but for Mama, I know it’s more than a sweet way of talking. She wants me to be like Shug Avery, to squeeze every last drop out of life and be special, the way she and Shug are. And to be beautiful, the way she and Shug are. I think Mama’s still waiting for that part, for me to grow up and be beautiful. I think she might be waiting for that part forever.
It’s ironic, because Celia’s already beautiful, and she was the one named for Celie, the plainest girl alive. I think maybe I should’ve been named Celie. Instead I am Annemarie, named for Mama’s sister who died when she was little. Mama says she was somethin’ special, wild and freer than anybody Mama knew. That must be pretty darn free.
I think that first Annemarie would’ve been worthy of a name like Shug. Not me, though. I’m like Miss Celie on the inside, scared of everything. But in the end, even that old scaredycat Celie finds out how to live, how to
be
. She shows everybody what she can do; she shows them all. I want that too.
Celia comes home early the next morning and goes straight to bed. She is always cranky after a sleepover with Margaret, and then she sleeps till noon. When she finally emerges, I am sitting at the kitchen table, reading.
Our kitchen is one of my favorite places in the whole house. There are lots of windows, and the sun shines through all day. Mama has Marc Chagall prints on the wall. They used to scare me, but I have come to admire them.
“Hey, Shug. Where’s Mama?” Celia asks, pouring herself a glass of orange juice. She rumples my hair and sits across from me.
“She went to the art museum with Gail,” I say, taking her juice before she can have the first sip. Gail is Mama’s
friend from work. Mama is the part-time activities director at the Rosemont Retirement Community, and Gail is one of the nurses.
Celia snatches it right back. She drinks some, and hands it back to me.
“What did you and Margaret do?” I ask, finishing the glass.
“We just hung out with some of the guys,” Celia says vaguely. “You want lunch?”
I say yes, and Celia cooks us cheddar omelets and bacon. As we eat, I watch her and think about how much she looks like Daddy. She has Mama’s green eyes, but the rest of her is all Daddy. Her hair is soft and brown like a puppy’s, and she has Daddy’s smile. Her hair hangs down her back in soft curls, and she is wearing her old Snoopy T-shirt. I’m so busy thinking how pretty she is that I almost forget to tell her my big news.
My mouth full of bacon, I say, “Celia, guess what.”
“What? And don’t talk with your mouth full; it’s gross.”
I open my mouth wider and stick my tongue out, bacon bits and all. Celia shakes her head in disgust. “I like someone,” I say.
“Who?”
And then, in that moment, I know I can’t tell Celia. Not
this time. Not before I get him, and not until he’s mine.
The lie comes out before I even have time to think it through. “Kyle Montgomery.”
“Kyle? Didn’t you have a crush on him in fourth grade? I thought you were over Kyle.”
“Yeah, but that was kid stuff. I didn’t really know what love was back then. This is the real thing,” I say. It is the real thing too. It’s as real as anything I’ve ever felt, and when I am old, people might try and tell me different, I might even tell myself different, but I know that at this moment, I love Mark Findley.
“I see him in a whole new way now. I see him … as the boy he is today, and the man he will one day be.”
Celia laughs. “You’re still such a kid, Shug. What you’re feeling right now is just puppy love. But don’t worry: Kyle’s sweet. He’ll make a good first boyfriend.”
Ha! What does she know? Celia, who’s had more boyfriends than I’ve had socks. She doesn’t know the first thing about true love.
“First of all, I’m not a kid anymore,” I say coldly, ignoring Celia’s smirk. “And second of all, that’s the whole problem, Miss Expert on Love, always thinking you know everything! He doesn’t like me.”
“Why not?”
“He likes someone else.”
Celia’s eyes narrow, and she looks just like Mama. “Who?”
“Just some girl at school,” I say. “She’s a bit more womanly than me.”
Celia snorts. “You, Shug? A woman?” She throws her head back and laughs like one of those crazy hyenas from
The Lion King
.
I glare at her. “Oh ha ha ha, poor pathetic Shug. I come to you for advice about this—this harpy, and this is what I get.” We learned about harpies during the Greek mythology unit at school last year. Harpies were monsters who were part woman, part bird, and they had talons and they would shriek and laugh at people. Sounds like Celia to me.
“Look, Annemarie,” Celia says, sighing. “Forget about this other girl and worry about yourself, if you really want to be a contender. You’ve got to get in the game before you can knock out your opponent. So quit feeling sorry for yourself, dummy. Take action. Do yourself up; flirt with his friends. Make him notice you. Make him
work
for it.”
“Will that really work?”
“’Course it will, Shuggy Pie. It works every time. Boys are essentially all the same. They need you to do the thinking for them. Trust me, he’ll come around,” she says confidently.
“You’re not bad lookin’, even if you are a pain most of the time.” Celia sticks her plate in the sink and says she’s going to the lake with Margaret and Kristi and Jake and everybody.
I hope she’ll invite me, but she doesn’t.
After Celia leaves, I call up Elaine. Nobody answers, so I call Mark next.
“Hey,” I say. “What are you doing?”
“Some of the guys are over here,” Mark says.
“Like who?”
“Just some of the guys—Jack and Kyle and Tommy.”
Ha! My first big chance to make Mark notice me, make him see me for the woman I am! I’ll make the whole room notice me! I’ll be the femme fatale I was born to be! I can see it now: me, slinking around the Findley’s rec room like a real temptress, the boys, hovering around me like nervous little bees, eager to do my bidding.
“What are you guys doing?” I say, real casual-like.
“I don’t know. Just hangin’ out, playing video games and stuff,” Mark says distractedly.
“Can I come over?”
“If you want.”
“Okay, well, maybe I will,” I say. He says okay, and we hang up.
I put my dishes in the sink and go to my room. I’ve been to Mark’s house a million times or more and not once have I thought about what I was wearing. But there are going to be
guys
over there, not to mention this new Mark. And if I am going to be the femme fatale, I’ve got to look the part.
I look in the mirror, and I am sorry to see it’s still just me there. Who was I trying to kid? I’m no femme fatale. I’m not the kind of girl boys like.
My hair is a lighter, less special version of my mother’s. It’s like dirty straw: There are no reds or golds, and it’s too fine to curl the way Celia’s does. It just sits at my shoulders and hangs. Elaine’s hair is long and coffee black, and I envy the dark richness of it, mine being just a pale imitation of someone else’s hair. My eyes are brown, the muddy kind of brown you get when you mix a bunch of watercolors together. My body is bony and stickstraight, not soft and curvy like Celia’s. I am tall, too tall for my age, and I have no womanly curves to speak of. I can’t fill a pudding cup with what I’ve got. But worst of all are my freckles. I have freckles scattered all over me, like sprinkles on a crummy cake no one feels like eating. No one else in my family has freckles.
I wonder if I’ll ever be pretty. Probably not. Not Mama and Celia’s kind of pretty, anyway. Daddy says I am like a
baby colt, and that one day, I will be a real knockout. Don’t fathers know that you’re not supposed to say,
One day you will be a knockout
? Don’t they know that you’re supposed to say,
You are a knockout right this very minute, just the way you are
? Daddy’s just as bad as Mark; neither of them ever know how to say the right thing.
But Celia said I wasn’t bad lookin’, and that’s something. Maybe “not bad” is good enough for Mark to like. Anyway, it’s not like he’s some prize. His feet smell like nachos half the time, and Mrs. Findley always cuts his hair too short in the back. Still, he’s Mark, and he’s mine.
Mama said to make love or make war. I know she doesn’t mean I should go and have sexual relations with him, but that’s about all I know. Should I just forget the femme fatale stuff and tell him that I am in love with him, and that he should love me too, or else? Or should I be coy like Celia said, and make him wildly jealous so he’ll come chasing after me? I knew Mama wouldn’t be any help. Come to think of it, neither was Celia.
When you walk into Mark’s house, you are overcome with the notion that a real family lives there. Family portraits are lovingly hung on every wall, and Mark’s school pictures have the seat of honor above the fireplace. The one from second grade is my personal favorite. He’s missing one of his front teeth, and his hair is slicked to the side like a used car salesman.
There are little baskets of potpourri all over the place, and Mrs. Findley’s ceramic teapot collection is displayed throughout the house. And it always smells the same, like pumpkin pie and fresh laundry. It smells the way a house should smell—warm and good and safe.
I walk right through the front door because I’m
practically a part of the family. Mrs. Findley is icing a red velvet cake in the kitchen. My favorite.
“Hi, Mrs. Findley,” I say.
“Hello, dear. I’ve made cream cheese icing, just the way you and Mark like it, extra sweet.” She gives me her special smile, the one where her nose wrinkles.
“Thanks, Mrs. Findley.”
She sprinkles a handful of chopped pecans on top of the cake and says, “Sit with me a minute and chat, Annemarie.”
So I do. Talking to Mrs. Findley is as easy as talking to Elaine or Celia, but in a different way. She listens and nods, and she makes you feel safe.
When I told Mark that my mama was a whole lot prettier than his, I was only five, so what did I know about anything? It may be true that Mama’s prettier, but Mrs. Findley has a warm kind of beauty few people will ever be able to fully appreciate or comprehend. It’s in the way she touches people, looks at people like they’re something special even when they’re not.
Her hair is light brown and beginning to gray at the crown of her head. Her eyes are the color of Daddy’s bourbon, wise and gentle. Mrs. Findley is a few years older than my mother, and I suppose I should mention that she is not from the South. She’s from the Midwest. This may seem
like a trivial detail, but somehow, it matters. She is different; she is unique.
Mark will never know how lucky he is to have been born to a lady like Mrs. Findley. People who have it that good rarely do.
I get so comfortable talking to Mrs. Findley, I sort of dread the thought of walking into a den of boys. There is something about walking into a room full of boys that makes you feel exposed and somehow all wrong. You feel inadequate, like you come up short in every way that matters. It didn’t used to be like this, and I don’t know when it changed, but now it feels like it was always this way.
That’s why I’m relieved when Mrs. Findley suggests that I bring the cake down to the rec room. It gives me some sort of purpose, a reason to be there. Plus, it’s always easier to walk into a room carrying something—a purse, a cake, a baseball bat. Anything to make you look like you belong.
The boys don’t even look up when I come into the room. I am carrying the cake, and plates and forks underneath it, and when I say, “I’ve got cake,” they finally look at me. I am wearing an old yellow sundress of Celia’s, and I have tied my hair back with green ribbon. I think I look real nice. And all they see is the cake.
Mark says, “All right!” He grabs the cake and sets it on
the coffee table. “Hey, where’s the knife?”
I glare at him. “It’s your house. You go get the knife.”
That bum Jack Connelly says, “Aw, pipe down, Annemarie. You’re the girl. Well, sort of.” He smirks. “Girls are in charge of the food; that’s the way it is and that’s the way it’s always gonna be. You better get used to it.”
“You’re a pig, you know that? Oink, oink. You just roll around in your own feces all day thinking stupid thoughts.” I laugh at my own joke.
“Why don’t you go home and play with your Barbies?” he snaps. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
I hate Jack Connelly.
I’ve hated him ever since the third grade. It was lunchtime, and this was when we still had assigned seats in the cafeteria. Jack was bragging about how he had been tested for his IQ, and the doctor had told him he had a genius IQ of 300. I told him that I knew for a fact that he didn’t have an IQ of 300, that a genius IQ was 140, that Albert Einstein himself only had an IQ of 160, and besides, Jack could barely spell his own name. Jack got mad, and before I knew it, we were kicking each other’s chairs, and I kicked so hard he fell out of his chair and I stubbed my toe. The cafeteria monitor yelled at us, and we both had to skip recess that day. From then on, we were sworn enemies.
Every day at school we would try to outdo each other. He told everyone that I was born with both girl and boy parts. I told everyone that his own parents had tried to sell him on the black market, but nobody would take him cause he was so ugly. Then one afternoon he tripped me on the playground, and to this very day, there is a tiny scar on my left cheek. You can barely see it anymore, but it’s there, and it’s all because of Jack Connelly.