Page 76 of Honey Sugar
“What are you up to?” I quizzed.
“I have to call Bear and handle some business. Things got pushed back when you went to the hospital, that’s all.”
“Okay.” I bit my tongue because there was an apology dying to leap out of my mouth. I had to stop apologizing my life away.
I hopped off the counter and went up to the tiny apartment over the sweet shop and started a shower. While the water turned hot and steamy, my mind wandered. I thought about what a life free of Mama and Daddy meant. My heart sank a little at the loss of my mother but when I searched for grief surrounding my father there was none.
The only thing that reverberated was a strange numbness. It occupied the space where mourning should have been. I never remembered a time where love ever pumped through my veins for my father. He was vile. He spewed hatred every time he opened his mouth and never once did I feel like his little girl. I always felt like a burden. Like I was the thing that made him mad all the time.
He used to tell me that things were good between him and Mama before I came along. So I tried to apologize every chance I got. It still didn’t work. Daddy hated my life. He hated Mama’s life and he damn sure hated his own life.
I let the hot shower water run over my face with my eyes closed.
I was free.
I felt it in the pit of my stomach that Daddy was dead and it lifted a lifetime’s worth of chains from my feet. Chains I didn’t even know were weighing me down until I walked away from his body at the house. It made me think about what Mama said to me in one of her more nurturing times. She told me that sometimes we come into life with bitterness stuck to our spirits like gum on the bottom of our shoes. Sometimes the only way to dissolve the bitterness is with honey.
I never knew what she meant until freedom swelled around me like a cocoon the second Daddy’s heart stopped beating.
Dissolve the bitterness with honey.
Break the chains and never look back.
I didn’t plan on it.
Good riddance.
…
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
When I heard the clank of the pipes behind the walls, I knew Ivy was in the shower or at least getting ready to get in. I called Bear on his direct line and he answered right away.
His voice was void of feeling. It was a monotone sound that made me wonder what killed his spirit. He wasn’t much older than me. He had to be in his early twenties and he sounded like someone who’d seen shit that would give grown men twice his age nightmares.
“What’s up, Shadow?”
“What’s good, Bear? Listen, my girl is out of the hospital so we can carry on with this Mario shit.”
“Cool. She doing okay?”
“She’s fine. Just had a little scare that’s all.” I shrugged my shoulders and walked to the back of the sweet shop near the kitchen.
“Can I ask you something personal, Shadow?”
“Yeah. Go ahead.” I pressed my ear to the phone to make sure I heard what he had to ask. Bear didn’t strike me as the kind of guy to be curious. I had to make sure I stayed on my toes and didn’t let a single word slip by.
“I did some digging and I found out your girl and your cousin are one and the same.” My body went rigid.
“Who have you been talking to?” I scoffed.
“Nobody you know. Your answer just told me everything though.”
“I’m don’t understand what that has to do with anything.” I felt myself tensing up.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with what we’re trying to carry out. I need to know who should be looked out for when all this shit hits the fan. I don’t want my soldiers looking out for your little cousinandyour girl if they’re the same person. I need a headcount.”
I skimmed my hand over my face and nodded against the phone. “Who said something?” I asked. That time my words were crunched between my gritted teeth.
