Sugar Sauce

By Giggles Anderson

Addie walks into her Mother’s kitchen and hears either John or her cousin, Will, say, “Take it. She won’t even miss it.”

The two boys were standing near the kitchen counter. John was holding a large plastic container filled with white sugar. Will was triumphantly gloating over a large cup of the glistening white granules.

“Where didja find the sugar?” she asked.

“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” John told her. “The less you know, the better off we are. Just get outta here, Ad.”

Addie sauntered off to her bedroom without any information regarding the sugar’s fate. She was feeling dumber than a cup. At least a cup could be trusted to hold all kinds of stuff.

Addie couldn’t hold a secret to save her life. Or her parent’s marriage.

Addie reached under her mattress and produced five chocolate candy bars from her secret stash. Candy always made her feel better and Addie kept bags of them hidden in different parts of the house.

Mother found this sort of candy hoarding appalling and like a crazed Gestapo, rid their home of any foods she thought were contributing to Addie’s burgeoning body.

The Battle of the Bulge had turned into a “take-no-prisoners” War. It was Addie and John against Mother. John’s sugar discovery would be a tasty victory.

She couldn’t wait to sink her teeth into whatever sugary concoction her brother would present to her at their midnight planning session.

Addie marked a large red X on her Britney Spears calendar. It was the day of Father’s wedding, August 27, 2005, just one year after he left home and three days before Addie’s birthday.

Addie, who is two years younger than John, didn’t find out about the wedding from her Mother, her Father or her brother, John.

No one ever told her anything.

Well, except for that one time.

“We used to play together,” wrote Addie in her hot pink faux leather Paris Hilton journal. “Gina was the best. She had all the latest toys and the best imagination. It was great to play CareerCenter with a girl for a change. Me and Georgina take turns playing Mommy, Nurse, Dr. Laura, Hostess or Princess --all during peace time. When I blew out the candles on the cake presented for my 12th birthday, I wished that I could trade John and have Georgina as my sister.”

Addie liked playing with Georgina mostly because they looked so much alike.

They had the same button nose and a wide gap between their front teeth. They had the same Hazel eyes on faces lightly tanned without the sun. Two oval heads crowned by a curly field of easily tangled orangish-red hair. The two same-aged girls dreamed of bras, braces, breasts and boys.

And not those fake boys at Crescent Elementary School. Real boys. The kind that show up right before a Spelling quiz, whisk them away to a well-furnished apartment, and buy them anything from the Mall.

There was one dream and one thing, inextricably connected, that the soul sisters did not share.

Addie alone dreamed of being thin. Then, she could borrow Georgina’s clothes, with or without permission.

Addie loved her Brother and liked playing with him. But, he was no Georgina.

No matter what role he was assigned, John would always form an army of rebels and attack the CareerCenter. John was a natural fighter who dragged Addie into this war with Mother just as he routinely dragged her dolls into war.

Addie didn’t want to fight; she preferred eating.

When Mother severely slashed her access to sodas and fast food items, Addie didn’t complain. When Mother banned potato chips and other fast food items from the house, Addie cringed.

The straw that finally broke Addie’s back was Mother’s outright ban of all sugars and chocolate candies. Addie, feeling annoyed and unfairly persecuted, reluctantly joined forces with John, who had declared war months before.

She already lost Father; she would not give up Chocolate without a fight.