His Muse

τριάντα τέσσερα | bellum (1)

                            34| war (Part 1)

"Mama" I sobbed, and heard a quiet grunt as she stooped down, meeting my crumpled body on the floor. I wept into the crook of her arm, my chest and shoulders rising and falling in unison, and my lungs squeezing with every wave of a sob.

"Oh Vee" she whispered, my heart cracking at her familiar, mellifluous voice as she addressed me. I didn't know just how much emotion I had gripped on to, but it all came back, spilling over my control with a tsunami-like rush, drowning me in its tempestuous waters and pulling my rational, always-prepared mind into the bottom of the sea.

Though the tears blurred my vision, I could still make out her beautiful features, her fiery green eyes, upturned in the corners – like mine – but more in a way that adjusted her face to something more ethereal and mystical. It was pushed higher when she smiled, her high cheekbones, rosy and shiny as she did.

"You're so gaunt" she exclaimed, her arms dropping as I finally rose, and instead digging into my shoulders with knowing precision, "your lovely frame is withering Ivory, what is happening?" though I smiled at her motherly concern, my brows knitted, focused on not shedding more tears. It had been a while before she'd noticed any change in me.

Before she died, addiction has stripped her everything off her; her body, her mind, her happiness, but also the pride she took in being a good mother. It instead tilted her focus and efforts into getting the next high (or low), so all her money went to that, at the detriment of food, and utilities. Briony initially tried to provide, taking evening shifts to cover the necessary bills but even she too, got tired of it – she was only seventeen when it started and she resented me for that, blamed me for ruining her youth in our usual morning-before-school spats whilst one of us made sure my mother was awake and not choking on vomit.

I knew she was saying it because she was overwhelmed and didn't have anyone else to vent to, but it hurt, nonetheless. When James moved in, with his bunch of riff-raffs leaving burns and light-coloured rings on the dining table, the one I had bought in a junkyard sale that served as my homework table despite its wonky legs and annoying grooves, I started doing school projects at Nalani's house, and eventually had a drawer in her room where her parents would wash and iron clean school clothes, and nightwear for me. It was quiet and peaceful, and homely, her older brothers involved me in conversations, her parents paid for school trips, so I didn't miss out on all the fun, and I had somewhere to lay my head for a bit. But that soon stopped when James and my mother drove down to their house in a drug-induced manic rage, damaged their front door and scrawled Kidnappers on their windows, threatening to kill them if they carried on 'raising [their] child'. Nalani's dad couldn't take the harassment with his weak heart, and the entire street were so offended by the raucous, everyone felt it was best to look out for me from afar.

James was a dealer, which meant, for the most part, the bills were paid, and food was provided for, but neither Briony nor I could bear to be around him. I spent my nights wondering if he too had abused Briony, the way he did me and maybe that's why she left as soon as she could.

But all of these memories flooded in and left as quickly as I heard her call me, as I saw look at me, not through me. Just hearing her notice something about me reminded me of the better times. I remember her saying on umpteenth 'Day 3' of her self-recommended rehabilitation and 'journey to sobriety' at the house, the four walls still jampacked with the worst kind of triggers – drug paraphernalia and bottles of vodka , saying how much she despised addiction. How it robbed her of any form of stability and made her doubt her every reasoning before when that need came over her, her mind became completely occupied in identifying all the avenues to get that euphoric high. It made her wonder if she spent all the other hours of the day on a low.