Old Josh, in: Sugar-eyeing

((1870s) (Episode: 69))


Sweet Molasses

Silas did have a young lover (a few of them), sweethearts; one of them, her name was Sweet Molasses (Jefferson, if you want to add that onto the name, although they were never married to Josh understands). She was born in Ozark, in the shanty town near by it anyhow, and had a child named Minerva, born 1873. But let me backtrack.

The child was born but didn’t seem to cry enough, as it would have appeared it should have, after birth, and within the following two weeks of the birth.
Sweet-molasses was where she waned to be, it must had been because she could have left, it was no longer the slavery days, she was free to do as she pleased, but she stuck around for some reason.
At birth of the child, it cried once, and she waited or it to cry a second time, but it didn’t. Silas become melancholy, he knew it was his, but Sweet-molasses didn’t announce who the father was, for personal reasons.
Sweet-molasses was no child, not in 1873 anyhow, born 1856, she was seventeen-years old, and she was in love with Silas, whom of course was much older than she. The child was named Minerva.
You might say, Sweet-molasses was a girl of her times, she wanted the child, and the father, Silas, but she didn’t want to live in the south, she wanted to North, her aunt was living in some cold city up in Minnesota, and she was invited to join her.
She begged and cried and shouted for Silas to leave the plantation and go North with her, and Josh heard about it, didn’t take it too lightly. Said Josh to Sweet-molasses one evening, “Enough of those tears, youall want money from boy, take him away up North, an’ he aint got any to give yaw, so take your bastard girl and leave us alone!”
“Much obliged,” she told Old Josh back, and so ended any future conversations between those two.

She then went back to help with the wash at Mr. Henry J. Birmingham’s small farm across the road, he being in his mid-seventies and his maid, as she was referred to, Mahogany, now in her early eighties, and Sweet-molasses asked for her advise.
“Cant find my handkerchief,” she said to Sweet-molasses, she was still crying, and not sure if that was a pun or sincerity that came form Mahogany, but she added to her dialogue, “Maybe you ought to wash those tears off your face, you got a child to raise, no sense in waitin’ for a Silas, youall be waitin’ tell the boy is grown and gone on his own, you gots to figure out a plan, and work it child; Silas he was just sugar-eyeing you for sport, men like to do that, you got to give them an ultimatum, one of those things that say, you will or you wount, and if-in you wount, I is goin’ north, and youall will never see that child again.”
“Ok,” she said, in a rut of dismay, “I be goin’ to tell him this one way or the other, and I goin’ to tell Old Josh to shut up and it none of his business, if´-in he comes to bother me again I mean to be takin’ that train north.”


(A week later, in the afternoon Silas meets Sweet-molasses down at Goose Creek; the child is now two-weeks old.)

“Maybe I could write yaw,” said Silas, “if-in you is set on movin’ up north?”
Silas knew what the conversation was going to be, and said what he wanted to say right away, before Sweet-molasses could even present her case.
“It then sounds like you be still in Ozark I guess, I was hopin’ but no use in talkin’ your mind’s made up I see…”
“I know hit,” said Silas, “that right…!”
“Can you imagine everyone around saying…this and that, and your pa, he sayin’ I a whore, and the child a is a bastard, youall be a-shame of me, soon after ef-in I stay and we marry down here in Alabama. They die laughin’ Silas!”
Silas listened carefully or so it appeared, but didn’t give much sympathy, “Yessum, I guess I understand, but too many folks up yonder there and I hears it cold as that there North Pole, beyond.”


That evening Silas talked to his father about his situation, and didn’t get much sympathy either, he kind of got what he gave to Sweet-molasses, a blank face, “If-if you go sugar-eyen and you anit doin’ any empty talkin’ what-youall think is goin’ to happen? Its better to go possum hunting than sugar-eyein’, cuz you don’t get in all this trouble.”
“Well,” said Silas, “aint we got to make find some moonshine, its gittin’ late, and I bet Granny Mae, or Lula has some in the kitchen.”
“Yessum, lets go fetch some…” said Josh.



Note: written out on Restaurant paper, at the “La Mia Mamma,” 11-11-2008, and rewritten 11-21-2008, at home, in El Tambo, Huancayo, Peru