- Penelope Simmons: My mother was Sug to everybody.
I called her Mama, too, but I called her Sug.
- Suzanne Wayne: Where did she get her name?
- When she was a little kid, she would climb up
on the kitchen table and eat sugar out of the sugar bowl,
and so they started calling her "Sugar." [laughter]
And she loved us, but she was nowhere near a hovering mother;
I mean we did run wild.
- Now what's the story about taking target practice?
- So, my one brother, he would
make my other brother put on layers of clothes.
And then he'd take a BB gun and shoot him.
- But he'd have to run around the yard.
- He'd have to run around the yard. [both laughing]
I mean, you know, Sug wasn't around all the time!
You'd go tell Sug that you'd cut your foot.
It could be hanging by a piece of skin, and Sug would go,
"Oh baby go get a Band- Aid, you'll be all right."
Everybody loved Sug.
And everybody would come to the house to see my Mama,
and they would talk and talk.
And I remember, as a teenager, getting up in the night,
and it'd be 3 o'clock in the morning,
and my mother would be sittin' at the table with somebody
that had a sad, sad story.
And she listened to everybody.
I remember seeing this, she had her chin on her hand
with one eye open.
She was so tired, and somebody would be telling her a story
and she'd be going, "Uh huh, baby, yeah, I understand." [laughing]
And she was very beautiful.
And she was vain, and she would admit that she was vain.
You would not see my mother without makeup,
and I know when she got really sick, she was worried
about how she'd look when she died.
I said Sug, "I'm carrying lipstick in my pocket
all the time, and I promise you,
I will have lipstick on you when you die." [sniffles]
- Suzanne Wayne: Sug died on December 23.
- Penelope Simmons: She did.
And we had her funeral on Christmas Eve.
- Mm-hmm.
- And all the people showed up at our house
for the Christmas Eve party that we've had every year,
and I think almost everyone who came
knew that she had died. [voice breaking up]
But I remember a man sobbing.
Cause he walked in the door and asked, "Where's Sug?"
[tearful breath]
I mean, I was only 13 when she died.
- Yeah.
- But she was an important woman.
I'm very lucky to know her.
♪ ♪