Page 2 of The Deadly Candies

A man coughed two rows ahead. A baby wailed near the driver. Kathy pressed her mittens to the glass, melting a porthole in the frost. For a breath, she imagined the bus was still parked, that Carmelo would fling open the door, snow clinging to his lashes, and on his shoulders, and that paperboy hat he loved to wear. He’d shout:“Found you, Bella. Found you like I said I would!”

But the road kept extending.

Her stomach growled—not for food, but for him. For the attic’s single lit lantern and the hard floor, they made a bed of pillows upon. For the soft kisses he pressed to her closed eyelids when he thought she was sleeping. For his snoring and farting in his sleep. For her soulmate.

The baby’s cry sharpened. Kathy closed her eyes.

Let the snow erase me. Let the road take me.

2

On The Road (Greyhound Bus), February 1949

Dear Diary,

Harlem’s just a shadow now. Every mile this bus groans, South feels like another nail in the coffin of the life I knew. Three days to Mississippi. Three days of freezing air biting through the cracks in these busted windows—colored windows, because God forbid, they let us shut out the cold proper. Mama warned me about this, but I didn’t believe it’d be so miserable compared to the misery in my heart. They equal, both the same.

Met an angel, though. Name’s Sadie Henry. Old enough to be my grandma, tough enough to stare down the devil. She’s got this laugh, deep and warm like Sunday hymn-singin’, even when she’s grumbling about the “damn fool whites” who designed these buses. Told me Baltimore’s where the real trouble starts. “Ain’t no kindness in the bathroom signs down there,” she said. I’m appreciative. She held my hand when I sobbed about Carmelo. Didn’t preach, didn’t judge. Just let me spill my guts like he was worth mourning.

Of course he is.

They tore him away so fast, Diary. One minute, his heart was tangled in mine, the next… Don Ricci’s men dragged him off like he was trash. Papa says they’ll kill me if I stay. Kill him if I don’t go. So here I am, shivering in this back-row purgatory, clutching Mama’s old coat and this gold ring Carmelo slipped on my finger at Mama Stewart’s.

“Marry me,” he had said.

But how?

Sadie’s teaching me survival tricks. Made me stomp my feet at every stop so the cold doesn’t turn my bones to ice. Helped sweet-talk Gus, the colored mechanic with kind eyes, into fixing the windows. Now, only two stay open, whistling like ghosts. Progress, I guess.

But when she falls asleep, and I’m left alone to my misery, my mind wanders to the bakery and our little time of heaven. When the snow protected us, I fell so deeply in love with my Melo.

Why doesn’t he come? Why ain’t Carmelo fought harder? Maybe my daddy’s right. Maybe love don’t beat blood. Or prejudice.

Mama packed me a box for lunch and the Green Book. “Follow it like gospel,” she said. But I keep staring at the ring. At the “sempre,” he carved inside. It’s Italian. It means always. God’s gotta see that, right? Gotta make a way where there ain’t one.

I hope.

—K

* * *

“You hungry, baby?”Sadie asked, unwrapping wax paper from a lumpy sandwich.

Kathy’s stomach growled, but she shook her head.“No, ma’am. I…got my own, I’m saving for later.”A yawn cracked Kathy’s jaw,and her spine screamed over hours of being pinned to the bus’s cracked vinyl seat.

Sadie clucked her tongue.“Ain’t no heroics or charity on this bus. We all the same back here. We protect and feed each other. Eat.” She thrust the bologna sandwich into Kathy’s hands,the bread smeared with mustard like a golden promise.

Kathy nibbled a corner.“Thank you, ma’am.”

“We hit Baltimore soon,”Sadie said, eyes scanning the aisle.Two white men near the front kept glancing back, their stares lingering too long on Kathy.“Driver’ll swap out in D.C. tonight. You ain’t stayin’ at that motel they got for travelers. Buzzards roost there.”

“Mama gave me a lock,”Kathy said.She patted her coat pocket where a rusted door wedge bulged.“Told me to call her from the payphone. She’ll know I made it that far.”

“Good. Good. Your mama smart,” Ms. Sadie said, her grey hair peeking from under her scarf. She had dark skin that seemed to shine with youth, though she boasted her age was close to seventy.

Sadie’s mouth tightened.“Knoxville’s worse.Rain, snow, don’t matter—they make us coloreds wait by the gutter near the street while the whites eat and dine inside.Rooms they rent?Cockroaches bigger than your hand.”She nodded at Kathy’s hand,where Carmelo’s cheap gold band glinted.

Kathy curled her fingers into a fist.“Mama gave me the Greenbook. She circled a number in Tennessee.A family’ll fetch me. Safehouse, Mama said.”

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