Sweeter
The saltwater taffy machine kneaded, folding in on itself, stretching sugar and color in magical ways, each rotation familiar but new. Meanwhile, Mommy and her boyfriend Darren, pivoted, arm-in-arm, toward hot fried dough topped with a mound of cocaine-textured sugar. They didn’t notice Georgia wasn’t with them until they’d had their fix and managed to amble all the way to the ferris wheel. That’s when they stopped laughing.
“Jesus, Georgia,” Mommy hissed after she and Darren had stomped back through the fair, retracing their steps. “Just pay attention, for once.”
Mommy wrapped her blood-red claws around Georgia’s arm and jerked her away from the glass window of the kneading machine.
“Let’s get outta here before CPS shows up and takes you again,” Darren said and sniffed twice. “Or hell, maybe we should stay and wait for ‘em.” He wiped at his nose and turned.
Georgia shook her head like a wet dog. She preferred the latest ache of bruises in shape of fingerprints on her arm, to a foster home filled with lice, mean kids, and cat pee. With care, she kept her right fist inside her pants pocket, balled around a single piece of summer sky-colored taffy. Blue raspberry. It was her favorite flavor of candy, the kind her teacher gave her in school.
A wrinkly man with hair the color of Cool Whip gave it to her after she watched him clean the machine. He hung an apple-green blob on the stilled arms and the kneading began again.
”No charge,” he said with a grin and winked at Georgia.
“Thank you,” she said in a whisper, not taking her eyes off the treasure in her palm.
The old man hooked his thumbs around the straps of his cotton candy-colored apron and nodded. “Now don’t forget, when you eat it, you be sure to make a wish.”
Later that night, Georgia sat cross-legged on the mattress in her room, the blue sky candy in her hand. She removed its waxy wrapper with a reverence she reserved for reading library books, and made a wish.
The sweet and tart of the taffy made her taste buds sing. Her mouth filled with saliva faster than her eyes filled with tears. She leaned back against the wall behind her and could feel Darren’s music on her shoulder blades. But she didn’t care. Not this time.
All night long she smiled, dreaming of Mommy and Darren on the taffy machine, being stretched and pulled into something sweeter.
Lara Hussain, a former environmental journalist, spent years making good trouble in the corporate realm. She currently writes and teaches young souls in Denver, Colorado.