Penny Candy
When I was just a bitty girl sometime in the early 1960s, my great-grandfather took me into Dinwiddie to buy penny candy. Dinwiddie was only about two streets long trailed by a recently-poured concrete sidewalk. There wasn’t much road, mostly dirt, but there was this sidewalk.
My aunties, cleaning up after Sunday dinner, clucked like hens when he said he was taking me. “Daddy, whatever for? What nonsense… You know it’s dangerous for a little white girl out there! Will that awful Clarence be with you? Oh well, I see you are set on it.” Then to me: “Suzi YOU BEHAVE.”
Great-granddaddy owned most of the land in the county back then. It wasn’t worth much. It wasn’t an investment. It was a family blood debt to take back everything that had been stolen. But I didn’t know or care anything about that, being a tiny child.
I was, moreover, a tiny child being raised up north in a big city. A trip “home” was to be in an ocean of cousins and good food and strange customs, like the winning lottery ticket that was penny candy — the ability to fill a small brown paper bag with candy priced at one penny each.
That day Grandaddy wore, as always, a rusty black suit with a starched white shirt and suspenders. Maybe one of my aunts had made it. Maybe it came from Belk Tyler, which had opened a store just two hours away. He wore a slouch felt hat under the sun, and walked with his stick.
It was hot as only an August Sunday in the south can be hot. The air was so thick and heavy it sat on the skin. The humidity caught in the throat making it hard to breathe. The sun glared in my eyes, forcing me to gaze away from things right in front of me. The cicada sang their mournful dirge. Everywhere, there was the smell of pine.
I was in my Sunday best — a yellow dress ironed and starched to perfection, scratchy cotton lacy petticoat, a big bow at back. The dress would have been going limp in the heat, my white blonde hair plastered to my face with sweat. I remember listening as my Mary Janes squeaked with each step, dust and sweat muddying my lace ankle socks.
As we approached the storefronts, people took their hats off, bowed their heads, stepped off the sidewalk into the dirt street. Their clothes were handmade, mended multiple times, dirty.
A man approached us, eyes on the ground, hat in hand. Before he spoke Clarence, the giant colored man always with my grandfather, came upon him from behind, bat in hand, and stood silently.
The man glanced at Clarence, mumbled something. He looked at the ground, not daring to look my grandfather in the eye. Clarence repeated what the man had said to my grandfather, although we both had heard the man perfectly well the first time. From my toddler vantage point below I could see the man’s gums were bloody. There is something rancid, like bad eggs, on his breath. My grandfather nodded.
The man gently held something out to me … a butterscotch? A nasty candy that I hated. The wrapping was loose; there was dirt on the candy.
My grandfather’s hand on my head, moments ago barely noticed, tightened on my scalp. “Pretty is as pretty does, Suzi” he said, a touch of steel in his voice.
I smiled, gave a hint of a curtsy, whispered “thank you,” took the candy. Then I hesitated, my grandfather again tightening his grip on my scalp. I realized I must eat the horrid butterscotch, partially melted and gummy in the heat, even as the awful man looked on, only two teeth in his mouth, eyes bloodshot, rags nearly unrecognizable as clothes.
Grandfather nodded. The people stepped back. We walked back to his ancient car, sitting in the dirt, not even a parking lot or a road in this horrid place. “But, granddaddy, penny candy?” I asked. “You’ve had your candy,” he said.
