Sugar

By Kayla Gajewski 

My sister Isla has always believed that if you say something sweetly enough, it will become so sweet it has the potential to undo all the wrong in the world. 

I think this as she smooths the sleeve of her blue and pink floral dress as if it’s offended her. The fabric catches under her evenly manicured pastel purple fingernails as she presses it flat, smiling to herself when it quietly obeys. Across the room, a man clears his throat too loudly. Somewhere behind us, a chair scrapes against the floor. 

“It’s nicer this way,” Isla says, gesturing vaguely around us. “Clean and calm.” 

Everything here has been arranged with a careful hand: the chairs in neat rows, the walls printed in muted decorative swirls, with soft lighting that flattens faces and makes everyone look muddy through squinted, blurry eyes. On a small dark wood table in the corner sits a box of tissues and a large glass bowl full of various colored candies. The off-brand kind that dissolves without so much as a taste of anything mimicking their bright shells. 

Isla walks over as I follow her. She reaches for a green one, placing it on her tongue. She always does that, reaching for the sweetness first. 

When we were kids, she used to do the same thing with medicine. 

“A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down!” She’d sing as she shoved the sugar jar in my face. She said it tricked the mouth into forgetting what came next. 

I watch her as she sucks on the supposedly ‘real’, non-artificially flavored green apple colored candy, her jaw turning it over slowly. She looks composed even as the coloring begins staining the edges of her lips. 

“Do you want one?” she asks, shamelessly picking up the entire bowl, holding it out toward me. 

“A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down!” 

“No.”

“Suit yourself.” She shrugs unbothered, turning to walk away from me, bowl still in hand. 

People move in clusters around the room with their voices lowered, words leaving their mouths as if they’ve been sanded and softened at the edges. My sister leans into each conversation, nodding, smiling, and hugging people when appropriate. Offering candy to every single person, even when it wasn’t appropriate. Even those who decline the sweet treat harshly still receive a practiced, manufactured smile from her despite her front teeth being stained like a tie-dyed egg at Easter. 

Instead of joining her in the ‘sugar-coating’, I found a chair and focused on the carpet instead. It’s patterned in a way that’s meant to distract, saturated in dark tones of brown speckled with miscellaneous light grey splotches. They look like inverted inkblots, the Rorschach Test. Also known as the ‘What might this unsuspecting blob appear to be’ test. It’s a type of word association exercise, except that instead of giving you a word for you to associate, they show you a series of cards with ink-like shapes splashed on them. It’s more about the generalities than the specifics of what you see. 

“The magenta pink peonies were a fantastic choice.” My sister interrupts my carpet gazing, “They’re tasteful.” She shrugs, proud of the choice to pepper four dozen bunches around the room.

Isla’s not one for generalities. “They were expensive.” 

She gives me a look, not quite a warning but close. “You always do that.” “Do what?” I say, turning my eyes back to the floor. 

“Always pointing out the negative.” 

I don’t answer. The negative has always been my problem, according to her. Gloomy and pessimistic. She prefers things lighter, softer, and easier to swallow. She explained everything away for me. She explained moods. She explained absences. She explained why certain words landed like battleships and then vanished as if they had never been spoken. She was very good at explaining. 

“She did her best,” Isla says now, as if reading my mind. 

I shake my head at her, “You don’t know that.”

“I do.” She says, frowning gently, “Why does everything have to be hard to move on from with you?” 

I want to tell her it's only hard because she keeps trying to coat it. Wrapping it up tight, like a bitter pill pressed into caramel layers, twisted and shut at both ends so no one has to see what it really is. She believes that if you coat it enough, smooth the edges and call it a treat, it will stop hurting. Candy will still break your teeth if you bite down too fast. Sugar doesn’t soften the blow of what's underneath. It just delays the moment when you taste it. Instead, I say nothing. 

Across the room, someone is crying. Isla notices immediately. She excuses herself, grabs the bowl, and moves to them. Her hand was already reaching for a candy and a tissue before they asked. She presses both into their palm, murmuring something I can’t hear with a smile. 

I stay where I am. 

The room empties slowly. People drift out in pairs, then singles. Each goodbye is soft and careful. As if too much noise might disturb something. The door opens and closes again and again until it eventually doesn’t open again at all. 

We are alone. 

Isla returns to my side. The candy bowl is nearly empty now. 

She picks up an amber colored one, then hesitates. “I don’t think I want another,” she says more to herself than me. 

“Are you sure?” 

“You don’t need to sound so surprised.” She sets the candy back in the bowl. “It was good. All of it. It went well.” 

“It went,” I say. 

“Stop making it harder.” She says, turning to face me fully. 

“I’m not making it anything.” 

She opens her mouth to argue, then closes it. Her gaze drifted past me to the front of the room. To the thing we both have been carefully avoiding, sugar coating, making it harder.

“I thought if I kept it light,” she says,” If I didn’t let it get too much–” 

Her voice wobbles as she clears her throat. 

“She was complicated,” I admit. 

Isla lets out a breath, “That’s one way to put it. I tried, I really did.” 

“I know.” I nod. 

She takes a step forward, then another. I follow. 

The polished oak wood gleams under the low light. Everything about it is smooth, finished, and sealed. My sister places her hand on the top edge, fingers tracing the grain. 

“She looks peaceful.” 

“She doesn’t look like anything,” I say quietly. 

Isla’s breath catches, as her lips fold in on themselves, all the careful sweetness cracking at once. 

“I can’t make this sweet–” she whispers. 

She leans forward, pressing her forehead against her clasped hands on the edge of our mother's casket. I noticed a single chip in her nail. And finally, she cries.