A Jar Full of Sugar

A woman is so much more than loose change left behind at the bottom of a broken barrel. We’re widows. Mothers. Ruths from time to time. Jezzabelles always, but hey, don’t judge me. I am far beyond perfect. I’m an artist. A Christian artist at that, which means I'm eighty percent religious, ninety percent liberal, and about twenty percent accurate when it comes to equations and percentages. Still, I come bearing gifts. I’ve always been a woman of the arts. I was born with brushes as fingertips and acrylic paint moving through my veins like electricity. I am like Picasso, but a woman. Van Gogh, but far from cocky. A woman like me with gifts like mine is quite frankly a rarity, and if I'm being honest, I'm okay with that. Very seldom is good art similar. And I’d rather be a woman scorned for being peculiar than a bone buried beneath the same damn dirt as everyone else.

Good art is never an imitation of life but a variation instead. It’s unique. Complex. Complicated. I’m not just a dainty white woman eager to maneuver and mend a polarized world–no, I’m a wife. A mother and an artistic one at that. I see the world in every color: sepia, black, white, gray. I view the world differently, I always have, but it’s not like I have any other choice. When you're a southern white woman raising a southern black son, you see the world differently. Jesus is brown. Kinky is just curly. Black is obsidian. Beautiful. Rare. If you expect less from a diluted world, you’ll learn to love it in color first. Good lord, I miss my son. Honestly, I loved my son. Unsurprisingly, I still love my son. Without a doubt, I will always love my son. In any way and every color.

Oh, pardon me, I’m getting a little ahead of myself. You know, I do this thing now and then when I talk about my son, where I talk fast and say too much, but I promise I’m working on it. I get a little ahead of myself when reminiscing and have to slow myself down. Grief, in a way, is like painting. Some days, your strokes are soft and light, adding one layer after another, and other days, it's almost as if I’m struggling to lift the brush. My name is Adderly Mae Agnew, but you can call me Addy. I’ve just opened my very first pottery shop on South Lee Avenue, and I can’t wait to tell you all about it. It’s a small space, big enough for three, but only one works here now. My husband has gone on to glory, bless his heart, and my son? Well, let's just say he’s always with me.

I started molding a new project today, and I must admit: every time I sculpt something new, I feel like God over and over again. Art is a diverse imitation of life. Grief is its canvas. Grief is an act of creativity. And maybe God was grieving when he created us? Maybe, since he knew what was coming, he started grieving his son early. Making random things with fur and stripes, calling them animals. Mixing dirt with dust, water, and clay and calling it a man. Adding rib bones to the mixture just to conjure up a woman. He takes a little dust and a little water and creates a plethora of things. I take a little dust and a little water and construct a plethora of things. Vases, canisters, sugar jars–you name it. And as I stand here conducting the elements like God, I can’t help but notice the memories flooding my head as the water rushes between my fingers. Memories of my son that I wish I could forget, but can’t seem to let go of.

Eugene was the best son a mother could ask for. He helped around the house without being told. Took care of his father in the last days of his life. Became a man. The king. A prophecy. A masterpiece in a world designed to swallow him whole. Everything I asked of him, he did. Anything I forgot to ask for, he reminded me. He was far from imperfect, yet despite my inability to understand mathematics, I'm one hundred percent sure that he was ninety percent perfect. Eugene was my everything. He was caramel with almond undertones, had gorgeous eyes, and was a heartbreaker on and off the playground. One time when he was little, a little white boy ran and pushed him into a barbed wire fence, and that boy got up, dusted himself off, and told that bully he’d pray for him. And ever since, his classmates, the girls, and the bullies all called him Sugar. Because he was just too sweet.

He also had an eye for good art and even better taste when it came to pottery. He was skilled. Styles and techniques that took me years to learn, Sugar would pick them up in months and sometimes even weeks. He was equal parts me and equal parts his father. He was just a silly thing. Always laughing and throwing paint across the walls just to prove he was a free man. A comedian. And the boy was just as curious as he was sweet. Sugar loved to ask questions, and as a matter of fact, he almost always had one to ask.

“Mama, where does paint come from?”

“Daddy, do babies come from clay?”

“Are babies made of clay?”

“Mama, is it okay if I kiss Sara Lynn on the lips on the playground at school tomorrow?”

That boy would ask anything and everything. And despite my complaints and all one thousand of his questions, I’d give everything I have to answer a thousand more. Sugar wasn’t like everybody else. Sugar was different. He played differently. Loved differently than everyone else. He never met a stranger, and if he did, they were friends by the fifth question. He was loved by many despite being a black man in a white South, but even still, he was able to see the world as a place of love, color, and art, and I loved that about him. I loved all of him.

Sugar loved water. I thought he was gonna turn into a damn fish when he was little. He couldn’t swim at all, but he did what he could. He stood up in shallow water and waded just to convince himself he was a swimmer. He fished. Found solace in the silence. He did whatever he could to be in or near the water, regardless of his inabilities. Sometimes I feel like he had a spiritual connection to the water. He didn’t just wade in the water; he submerged himself in the thought of submerging himself underneath it. Bathtubs, rivers, lakes, baptismals, you name it. Whether it was the shallow part of a lake or the center of the tub, Sugar was going to be there.

I miss him; there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of him, and I remember that day like it was yesterday. Sugar came and asked if he and a few friends could spend the day together. I was hesitant to let him go, but he’s a young, handsome man. I know what I was doing at his age and how hungry I was for adventure, so I bit the bullet and let him live. Now, to be fair, a lot of black boys have gone missing around town lately, so my hesitancy made sense, but still, I caved in. Being the mother that I was at the time, I knew that being a black boy in this day and age is a death sentence, but that doesn't mean he had to stop living. So I wrapped my arms around him, kissed him on his forehead, and told him to be home before the streetlights came on, and I let him go and enjoy himself. And as the moon had passed and the sun began to seep through the horizon, I never heard from Sugar again.

The next morning, I awoke to news that no mother is ever prepared for. There he was, stretched across my front porch, beaten till unrecognizable and unconscious. I was told that he and his were at the wrong place at the wrong time, and Sugar somehow was caught within the crossfire. Do I believe that the boys were doing something they shouldn't have been doing? Absolutely, but I also know that boys will be boys, as does everyone else, but somehow my son was the only man in the group. Somehow, my son left home as a boy begging his mother to play and came back a dead man, all in the name of collateral damage, and I’m just supposed to be okay with that? A group of black boys breaks into a convenience store just to say they did it, and somehow my son ends up beaten to death, and for what? Because he’s different? Because he’s sweet?

I was able to get him to the hospital, but it was already too late. He was dead before daylight, and it was already too late. The doctors told me that he was in some sort of coma and that I could either keep him there or take him home with me, so I did. I brought my sweet baby boy home, and I followed the instructions that the doctors had given me for seven days. I brought him home, and I put him in his bed. I stood back and I waited. I watched him silently as he lay there still. Adrift and lost at sea, and again I felt like God. I felt everything that God felt as he watched his son die, except the ability to bring him back. No matter how much dust and water I have, I’ll never be God. I’m just a mother. I'm just loose change left behind at the bottom of a broken, barren barrel. But still, I had to try something.

On the first and second day, God created the heavens, so I painted a baby blue sky with fluffy clouds and angels on Sugar’s bedroom ceiling. On the third and fourth day, God created the land, the seas, the sun, and the moon, so I painted the world on one wall, the moon on the other, and the sun in every corner. On the fifth and sixth day, God created animals that could fly and swim, so I bought Sugar, a parrot, a goldfish, and a small dog. And I named them all Tootie. I didn't know if coma patients can hear or differentiate people and things, so I named everything the same thing–please don’t judge me. I did all of these things like God because when God did them, he created life. I’m a mother; everything about me is creation. Or at least it’s supposed to be, and I just want to create life. I just wanted to create life, but I couldn’t. And by the time the seventeenth day arrived, Sugar had passed away.

Grief, although a work of art, is an awful thing to witness. It’s one thing to lose a son, but another to watch him die slowly. Is this what God felt? Watching him lie cold in a cave for three days? Is that fatherhood? Is this motherhood? Is this art? I loved Sugar, I did, and I always will. That’s my boy. My only son and his death makes me feel like a Judas. Like letting him go with those boys that day was my greatest act of betrayal. That maybe, just maybe, had I not let him live, he may have come back home that day. I’m a widow, and now a barren woman. I didn't have money for a funeral, so I had no other choice but to cremate him, so I did.

It still hurts, from time to time, and every other day feels like I'm drowning, but painting after painting, mold after mold, I can tell that I am getting better. I have changed my perspective on the word. I'm seeing things differently and painting hope on every canvas on every floor in any space that I inhabit. And by the way, remember that new project I was talking about earlier? The new one I’ve been working on for quite some time now? Well, I finished it. It was time for Sugar's ashes to be moved into a different container, and I wanted it to be special. I chose to make him one. It was fairly easy; all I needed was a pinch of dust, a little water, and a whole lot of sugar, and behold: a work of art. I moved his ashes into the jar that I made. I laughed a bit, reminisced, and then cried.

Who would have known that the greatest art I’ve ever made would be a jar full of sugar?