sugar on the street

So, I don't do a lot of creative writing, despite the fact that I enjoy it, and every time I read a good book (/essay/graphic novel...) I think... I want to write! Anyway, today I was vaguely inspired, and below is the result. Its essentially un-editted (as is nearly all of my work...including a good many college papers--due, I suppose, to my tendencies of procrastination...) so please forgive its rawness. Also 1. I have been reading "Tar Baby" by Toni Morrison (which I recommend) so my writing might have taken on a brief Morrisonian touch. Who can say.
2. Mom suggested I edit the part about Dad swearing at the sugar-break so it doesn't sound like he swears all the time. I said, no! thats funny! Can't sensor your kids after a certain age, you say something and it might get quoted! sorry? Besides, personal writing is always subjective... Anyway, here ya go:

There I was, standing in the parking lot, on the hot, black, ugly pavement, with beautiful, white, perfect grains of sugar all over my feet. Spilling out of the bag, spilling onto the trunk of the car, my feet, and the hot, black, ugly pavement. It was such a contrast, those whites and blacks. Ugly and beautiful. I stood there for a minute, not reacting, just looking at it. Then I quickly righted the bag, and laughed inside my head at dad swearing swearing away at the pete-for-damn's-sake of the situation. He went in to exchange the 25-pound broken bag for a brand new one, because otherwise, there go our savings! And in this perfect, consumer world, we do NOT tolerate a broken bag. Oh no.

So he went in, and I stood there and looked at the sugar. White on red. White on black. And white, tiny-sticky all over my feet and flimsy leather sandals I'd bought in Nicaragua for about one U.S. dollar, proud of bargaining down the price using my then-mediocre Spanish skills. And then it hit me. All that perfect, beautiful white sugar that was more perfect and more white than sand, more perfect than natural... I knew where it came from. I've seen the sugar cane fields, the poor Haitians, illegally crossing the border into the Dominican Republic to work for slightly-better-than-starvation wages. Seen the Haitians hop out of the bus when it was stopped on the road for passport inspection. Held little black braided babies who couldn't stop touching my blonde (how so blonde?) hair while the boys and soon-to-be-men played a game of beísbol in the crooked, ugly field. Seen the fiery hell-factory where the workers with black, wet-black skin worked by the furnaces, worked on the docks, worked in the trucks, worked with shovels, to put huge loads of cane onto the conveyor belt. To grind and pound. To heat and melt To refine, refine, refine. That sugar comes out cleaner than anything those men own, and it gets shipped away so fast they hardly see it. Or maybe so they don't touch it. Just back to the fields. Back to the factory, back to the black coals and ashes that don't make marks on their skin, but do on their lungs.

And there I was, brushing it off my feet, self-conscious of the bikers nearby, laughing—where they laughing at me? Laughing at my sugar spill? It wasn't my fault, the bag had a hole. They were not laughing at me, they didn't even see me, and wouldn't have cared if they had. No one cares about a bit of sugar on the ground. But I've seen huge mounds of sugar. They do that, you know? They dump in on the ground in huge, bigger-than-life-ant-hill piles, I couldn't climb a mountain like that. Not if I tried, that hill of sweet, sticky, perfect white sugar, piled before they bagged it up and shipped it to my country, for me to spill on the ugly, hot, black cement and take back, demanding a refund because of the little pile that was sitting on the ground that I could not use. I moved my feet out of the way, but when my dad came back, balancing a brand new big blue bag on one shoulder, he made new tracks on the perfect, too-perfect white-sand sugar. What happened to the old bag? That he took back? Do they throw it away? Or does some unconcerned employee take it home to put that perfect sugar in a fresh peach pie? I hoped so, and we drove away, off of that hot, black ugly pavement of the parking lot onto the hot, black, ugly pavement of the road, just drove away.