Page 51 of Sweet Venom

My fingers slide over its scratched exterior as I recall the day Mama gave it to me. It was for my sixth birthday and one of the few presents I ever received from her.

I pull it open, the scrape of metal against metal loud in the silence. Inside, there are other things Mama gave me.

A blue clip with ribbons that she bought me from a thrift shop because I kept looking at it. A cheap pair of sunglasses that one of her customers left behind. Pearls I unclasped from around her neck after she died because the people came and took everything, and I didn’t want them to have the necklace. Mama always said her mama gave them to her—a family heirloom of sorts.

My fingers wrap around the most prized possession she gave me. A gold bracelet. It’s nothing much, just a slim gold chain with a flat rectangular plate in the center about the size of a dog tag but much thinner and sleeker.

“Maybe it’ll do you some good,” she said, throwing it at me when she was coughing up blood right before her death.

She’d been sick for a long time by then. Customers dwindled and she barely had anyone over. We had to move to a smaller place with no heating and black mold on the walls, and it made her coughing worse.

Her hatred for me as well.

Even weak and lifeless, even as I wiped her down, mimicking the stupid TV shows, thinking it would make her better, she said, “It’s all your fault, you little whore. All my misfortune started when I became pregnant with you, and you sucked out all my good luck and opportunities. I was beautiful,sobeautiful…the most beautiful…no one could resist me.No one.” She laughed as tears streamed down her face. “Look what I’ve become because of you.”

“I’m sorry, Mama.” I hugged her frail body, moisture staining my cheeks. “Please get well soon.”

“Stupid bitch.” She shoved me away, sending me against the wall, crying and coughing and laughing. “You ruined my life, but I ruined yours, too, so let’s call it even. I hope you die in a shithole, all alone and miserable and ugly just like me.”

“Mama…” I stood up and walked to her on unsteady feet. “I’ll be good, so, please, can you love me?”

She stared at me for a long beat before she let out a hollow laugh. “No one loves the reason for their demise, demon.”

When I woke up the following morning, it was silent.

There was no coughing or shouting or slamming doors shut.

And my mama was motionless, frothing at the mouth, her dead eyes staring at nothing.

Overdose, they said.

I was ten years old, but I could tell it was because of the white stuff she sniffed on the regular.

“She was already dying anyway,” the cops whispered to each other.

“Poor girl,” the neighbor who gave me food told her scum husband. “Savannah wasn’t much, but she was Violet’s only family. Now, the girl will be abused in the system.”

“That slut shouldn’t have had kids,” another neighbor said. “Now, her daughter will be the same. With a face like that, there’s no doubt.”

“Drug overdose. Tsk. That’s what you get for sleeping with other women’s men. Karma, I’m telling you. Poor girl, though.”

“Poor girl.”

“Poor girl.”

Poor. Goddamn. Girl.

Another statistic.

Another name.

Another ‘single-mom tragedy’ as they called it.

No one asked me if I was okay after I lost my only family at ten years old. No one stopped to wonder why I wasn’t crying and was in complete shock for days, sneaking into our house and calling Mama’s name, only to be greeted by silence.

I wanted my mama. I wanted the only person I had.

Maybe it was Stockholm syndrome. Maybe I was too attached to my abuser, but she was the only person who was forced by biology to be there for me.