Page 32 of Honey Sugar
My heart bled.
“I need you to take care of Ivy. I need you to be strong and keep protecting her like you’ve been doing. She’s been taking care of you these past four days more than any cousin ever would. Don’t focus on Beau. Focus on Ivy.” Mama’s eyes were watery. Her tears begged to be let free. The smile she gave Titan and me was the saddest thing I’d ever seen.
“I will, Auntie. I got both of you forever.” He rolled his lips between his teeth. I noticed he’d been doing that a lot to stop from crying. The only time he cried was when he saw his mother face down on the living room floor in a pool of her own blood with a bullet in her head. It was traumatizing and I had nightmares about it. I think we all did because sometimes I would hear Mama up and moving around, creaking the floorboards while she walked aimlessly until she settled down.
“I know. You gotta ignore Beau though. He’ll poke at you but he’s not going to do anything. At least not to you. I think I’m the only one he wants dead.”
“Mama, can you please not say stuff like that?” I frowned at her until my eyebrows burned.
“It’s true, Ivy. He rarely comes after you. His rage is directed toward me.” I saw her having far off thoughts that she had to rope herself in from. She sighed and lifted the corners of her mouth in a weak smile. “Y’all just keep each other straight. I’m going to finish with these papers then I’m going to sleep. I’ve never been so tired before.” She shook her head and looked at me like she could see every moment of my life from birth until right then.
I’d never seen an expression like that. It made my skin tingle and my stomach twist. I didn’t know how to comfort her. I felt like I was drowning in grief.
Mama and Titan were so different. She was depressed but not in a way that I knew how to deal with. She was depressed in an unreachable way. No matter how many times I tried to engage, she refused. I understood grief but I didn’t understand the way she was right then.
I could navigate Titan’s landscape a little better. He was sullen and withdrawn. He was becoming even more recalcitrant than he’d been before. I understood him at least. I could speak his language without any words.
“Mama, are you okay?” I knew the answer to that. She wasn’t okay. She’d never be okay. I just wanted her to be sad in a normal way though. Not this far away sadness that made my body cold with chills.
“I’m fine, Ivy Lynn. I’m trying to resign myself to seeing my big sister in a casket. I can’t do it.” She shook her head and tears spilled down her cheeks. I abandoned Titan’s hand and hugged her tight. She didn’t hug back and it stung. I was used to her hot and cold personality every other time but right now, I couldn’t take it.
Not when we all were aching. Not when I was the only one that nobody considered. Not when I was trying to be strong for her and Titan at the same time but crumbling underneath my own grief.
I loved Aunt Sarah too. I hated that she was gone. I hated that she was ripped away from me and that I’d never get to be close to her again.
I pulled back from the one-sided hug and wiped my eyes, quick to stuff my hurt feelings down deep even though every place inside of me was raw with pain.
“I can’t do it,” Mama muttered again.
“I know how you feel, Aunt Liv,” Titan said, his chin tucked against his chest. He was fighting off tears again.
I felt helpless.
I wanted to soothe someone.
I wanted someone to soothe me.
Like Titan could hear my heart screaming for relief, he held my hand in his and gave it a squeeze. Such a simple gesture unsnarled me until I was hanging on by a single thread of sanity.
“No, I don’t think you do, Titan. I know Sarah was your mama and nobody is hurting like you but she was my only sister and nobody is hurting like me either. She was going to help me leave Beau. I was going to go for it this time, I really was.”
Mama’s words were news to me. I blinked rapidly and found my ear with my fingers. I tugged and rubbed and pulled until my earlobe turned hot.
“You were?” I blurted. She simply nodded in response. Her eyes were distant and not attached to anything in that office. She was staring at something far away. Something beyond our realm.
“I was. Without her…I’m alone again.” Once again, her words stung with no reprieve. “Without her, I’m still stuck here.”
“Auntie, you can still leave.” Titan lifted his head and turned his eyes to her.
“I can’t. Not without Sarah.” She caressed her sister’s name so gently it brought tears to my eyes. Titan turned his head and looked at me because I don’t think he would be able to hold it together otherwise. “Anyway, you two go on to bed. I know you’ve been sharing a room. I don’t blame you. Family needs to stick together. Besides, Ivy did always feel safer with you around, Titan.” She gave him a hug then she rubbed my back and kissed my forehead.
I didn’t know what to think of it once I was back in my bedroom. Losing Aunt Sarah seemed to mess all of us up beyond repair. I didn’t know how to fix it.
The need for Xanax hit me out of nowhere like an impossible itch. I grabbed the Tylenol bottle from the nightstand and Titan snatched it away from me before I could fix my lips to protest.
“I told you to stop this shit,” he growled.
“I need some kind of relief, Titan. I am swimming in so many feelings I don’t know which way is up or down or anything.” My voice wobbled as my throat grew too thick to continue speaking.
