‘What was all that about? Who is John Dixon anyway?’ I ask.
He turns, looking down on me. He looks pensive, his voice a faraway whisper. ‘He’s just another one of the many people who came here to pay their respects to Cherry.’
‘What happened nearly thirty years ago?’
The blood recedes from his skin, leaving his face a brown mixed with ash. Sugar doesn’t answer; instead he returns to the mourners inside his house, leaving me standing in the gusting wind, alone.
CHAPTER 2
‘You’ve got to tell him.’ Joe’s insistence is irritating, infuriating.
We’re standing at the corner of the stairs on the first floor, black bin bags in hand. The wake’s over and we’ve been patrolling the house and grounds collecting plates, plastic cups and empty bottles.
Angrily, I bat back, ‘I can’t. Not today.’
Joe’s impatient lengthy sigh brushes my cheek. ‘Then when? He needs to know that you’re going to start looking for your birth mother.’
Clenching up, my gaze dips. I feel sick just thinking about it. How do I tell the man who in my heart is my father that I need to find my birth mother? Will he understand? Or will he see it as a betrayal of all that he and Mummy Cherry have done for me? The last thing I want is for this amazing man to feel I’m kicking him while he’s grieving.
Sugar and Mummy Cherry adopted me from the children’s home when I was eight years old. Even thinking of that place, twenty years on, makes the bile heave in my throat. The only good thing I took away from there was the Good Knight. Everything else, including a pathway to success, Cherry and Sugar gave me.
Nevertheless, Joe’s right, I have to tell Sugar what I’m planning to do. I respect him too much not to.
I pass my black bin liner to Joe and give him a nod. He sends me off with a thumbs up. Downstairs I see a woman clutching a dustpan and brush, sweeping up crumbs and depositing them into her own bin liner. I thought all the mourners had left.
‘Hello,’ I call out, making my way towards her.
She straightens up and I see she’s somewhere in her late forties, possibly touching fifty. She doesn’t strike me as one of Mummy Cherry’s church ladies. The women from the church use funerals as an opportunity to be glammed up to the max. The shades of black clothes this woman wears are mismatched. Her expression is not the chin tilt of one of those who walk with ‘the Lord’， but brooding, skin scarred with the downbeat lines of someone who rarely smiles. Her head and shoulders are stooped. The tightness of her slimline cornrows matches the crimp of her mouth.
She ignores me, whipping out a duster and proceeding to vigorously polish the heavy oak door that guards what Cherry always called ‘Sugar’s Room’。 It’s his private space and we were both strictly forbidden from ever entering it. Cherry explained that while some men have their sheds, Sugar has this room. Perhaps that’s true, but I don’t think most sheds are guarded by thick doors and a system of locks that wouldn’t disgrace a bank vault.
‘You don’t need to do that.’ It’s time to shoo this mourner on her way. With a dramatic flourish, I check my watch. ‘It’s getting late. Have you got far to go? Perhaps I can call you a cab?’
She looks me up and down as if I’m the unwelcome guest and she the daughter of the house. Then she resumes polishing with even more vigour. My jaw tightens. Can you believe the nerve? I don’t want a scene on a day like today so reluctantly I leave her to it, but she’s near the top of my list when I see Sugar, after I tell him about my birth mother, of course.
Gathering my courage, I do what Sugar and Cherry taught me to do in times of despair, in moments of stress. I reach for the names of strong black women who are no longer with us, but who left behind their courage for us to nourish on and grow. I find the perfect woman; the woman who inspired me to become a doctor. I say her name.
Mary Seacole.
Mary Seacole.
Mary Seacole.
When I find Sugar in the conservatory he’s doing the last thing I expect. Dancing. Surrounded by Cherry’s treasured bamboo-style furniture, Sugar shifts and sways to her favourite song, Millie Small’s ska classic, ‘My Boy Lollipop’。 My heart lurches because I’ve never seen anyone dance so beautifully with a face screwed up in such hideous pain.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw him when he and Cherry came to the children’s home to meet me. I’d seen few black men in my life back then and Sugar was a revelation. He wore his blackness with the softness of a loving embrace, but also with the tough texture of polished armour ready to deflect the unfairness of life. He wore it in a blatant way while young-me had been made to feel ashamed of who I was. His blackness brought tears of hope to my young, drained eyes. Four weeks later I became their child. I love Sugar with a daughter’s heart and that’s why I will never go against him.