Page 36 of Honey Sugar
“Have you lost your fucking mind, Ivy?” He sat up sputtering. His green eyes were full of anger.
“Mama is dead!” I snatched away from his lose grip and shoved him with both hands. Fury crackled to life inside of me incinerating everything in my path. I wanted to burn the world down.
“What?” Daddy stumbled to his feet and looked to his left where Mama should have been. My heart squeezed and pain slipped down my ribs hitting each one like a sad note reverberating through my chest. He made his way to the bathroom where my mother was laid out on the floor lifeless in a pool of water. “Liv?” He called out timidly at first. Then he shouted because he was incapable of expressing himself in any other way. “Olivia! Answer me goddammit!” I couldn’t tell if he was terrified or pissed off that she was gone.
“She’s gone!” Titan roared. That’s when I heard the anguish in his voice stretching it thin. One more tragedy and he would break. I would too. “I did CPR for five minutes and she didn’t respond. She’s not coming back. We need to call a fucking ambulance or the police or something.” I looked down and realized our fingers were laced together. I had no idea when it happened but I was glad it happened. I needed to be connected to him. Especially then. Especially since I felt like I wasn’t connected to the world anymore. How could I be when my mother was gone?
I followed Titan out of the bedroom and down to Mama’s office. My free hand tugged on my ear so hard, prickles of pain spread across my skin. Being in that office again shattered me. That was the last place I saw her alive.
I should have known something was off. Everything felt wrong in hindsight. I hated myself for not noticing. Self-loathing was relentless as it tore at my thoughts and left behind bloody scraps of my psyche.
“Baby girl…come here,” Titan’s voice stroked my nickname so gently that I wanted to burst into tears. I didn’t have the capacity to cry the way I needed to yet. Nothing felt real. Everything felt wrong and awkward. My own skin didn’t feel like it fit properly. Everything was out of place.
When I walked over to Titan, he handed me a folded piece of paper with my name written on it in Mama’s handwriting. I shut my eyes for a moment then took the letter in my hands. I wasn’t equipped to read it yet so I pressed it to my heart and let out a wail that shook the walls.
Titan folded me into his arms and let me break down.
“Why is this happening to our family?” I asked him, my words melting into mournful tears that throbbed instead of burned. “How much pain can we withstand, Titan?”
“I don’t fucking know.” He rubbed my back and I held onto him for dear life. Life was such a precious and fleeting thing right then that I wanted to grab hold of whatever was still alive in my life and never let it go.
…
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mama and Aunt Liv couldn’t be apart.
They just couldn’t.
Aunt Liv had to follow her sister even to the grave. It was the only way she felt she could escape Uncle Beau too.
I was sick with grief. I was sickwithit and sickofit. It haunted me like a scorned lover determined to never let me get a moment of rest. It woke me up in the middle of the night and stared me in the face as I went to sleep. It permeated my thoughts and left behind a bitter taste in my mouth every time I tried to eat.
It was the worst kind of black magic. Sticky and sharp against my soul. It wouldn’t come lose no matter how I tried to shake it.
The worst part was knowing I couldn’t go to Mama with my pain and hold out my hands begging her to take it away. She was gone.
Ivy was having a hard time coping with losing Aunt Liv. She mirrored me in every way. Quiet. Withdrawn. Sullen.
We couldn’t stand to be in the house because now that we were both motherless children, everywhere we turned we saw memories of our mothers. That house was a bear trap and every spiked point was a memory or a smell that catapulted us into thorny pain.
We spent two days straight in the apartment above Honey Sugar. The sweet shop was ripe with memories too but at least those memories were coated in golden sunshine and laughter from a time when things were simpler. When things weren’t all twisted and fucked up.
I set up the funeral arrangements for both Mama and Aunt Liv. I don’t know where the hell I pulled the strength from. I could only surmise that I hated seeing Ivy suffer the way she was. I’d do anything to take some of the burden off her.
She didn’t think I noticed but she got more Xanax and stashed them somewhere other than the Tylenol bottle. She’d been out of it more than what was caused by the grief. Her left ear was permanently red now from her constantly pulling on it.
That’s not to say I was any better than her though. I was high all the time. How could I tell her not to seek solace in pills when I was escaping my reality too? My escape of choice was weed but did it really matter how either of us got there as long as we weren’t facing the anguish of losing our mothers?
“Come on, baby girl. Let’s go to the house.” We’d packed up Honey Sugar for the night and shut the lights off. Running the sweet shop was the only thing that kept us going. When the news of Aunt Liv’s death spread around Sugar Bayou, everyone flocked to Honey Sugar in droves. They all purchased lollipops and candy and the really loyal customers bought moonshine by the case until we sold out.
“I don’t want to go to the house. What ifhe’sthere?” Ivy’s throat dipped when she swallowed. She couldn’t look Uncle Beau in the eye. I didn’t think it was possible for her to hate him more but she damn sure did.
“He probably won’t be.” Uncle Beau had been on a binge ever since the night Aunt Liv killed herself. I had no idea where the fuck he was but he wasn’t my concern. Ivy was. “Come on. Just to get some clothes and take a shower then I promise we’ll come back to Honey Sugar.” She chewed on the suggestion for a moment before nodding.
When we got in the car, I reached over and rested my hand protectively on her thigh. I was going to hold her hand in mine but I needed her to know that I wasn’t letting anything come between us. Ivy would always be under my protection. I didn’t give a damn if I was a villain or a superhero, I’d always make sure no harm came to her.
She was all I had left in the world.
