Page 72 of Tangled at the Root
Rosemary laughed.
I grinned, satisfied.
The sadness returned after we were done with dinner. Aunty Dominique had dozed off in front of the television, her hand, loosely clutching the remote, resting on her frail chest.
Rosemary had been staring, her own chest heaving. She’d watched her father just like this before he’d passed, drinking him in almost without blinking, wanting desperately to commit every inch of his final days to memory.
I could tell it wasn’t long before her mother would follow suit.
Those days had been a painful reminder of Rosemary’s immortality, had made her rage and curse at the gods and at her ancestors for blessing her with a curse.
That night, I’d told her to pad our walls with eshé—wrap it so tight not a single sound escaped. Then I’d fucked her, hard. I’d make her come, over and over and over again, with my hands, my mouth, and my body, in as many shapes and forms as she could take. I feasted on her until she forgot about anything but two of us inside that bed.
And when I was pulling the final orgasm from her, when she couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t stop pleading—I sank my fangs into her neck and drained her blood. I didn’t stop until her body went soft and still. Then I waited as she healed, as her blood quickly replenished itself, her heart pumping feverishly after that brief, delicious pause when it’d been still in death.
The eshé rushed to her form, as though, even unconscious, it still responded to her, filling her, aiding her recovery.
I kissed her when she’d taken her first breath, and she’d clutched me tight. We exchanged kisses as she strengthened up with her eshé-enchanted caramel.
She fell into a dead sleep immediately after, her head thankfully empty, and I smiled as I did the same.
I’d woken up a few hours later to find her missing from the bed.
My heart had leapt with fear. It’s a testament to how safe I feel around her that I hadn’t even noticed her leave.
She’d known it, somehow, when her father had been about to pass. He and Aunty Dominique had visited, just like this, and sometime in the night, he was gone.
My knees had nearly buckled when I sharpened my hearing and picked up the sound of their voices outside, in the gazebo. Rosemary had just finished saying something when I tuned in,the silence warm and comfortable. I was about to tune back out, to leave them to their privacy, when Aunty Dominique’s next words made me pause.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”
The responding silence felt weighty. “Mummy,” Rosemary began, but it sounded like,please, don’t.
Aunty Dominique kissed her teeth. “Eh, stop it. Enough of that. Let’s be frank, eh? We’re both adults here. We both know I’m not much longer for this world.”
“Mummy.” Rosemary’s voice was thick.
“I don’t want to have any regrets when I’m traversing the otherworld, or in my next life. So, I’m just going to say it. I’m sorry.” I frowned. “I don’t think you understood what I did back then.” Aunty Dominique swallowed. “When you were five—or was it six?—years old.”
Another weighty pause.
“I understood,” Rosemary whispered. “Eventually.”
I heard Aunty Dominique swallow again. “I’m sorry, edémi. I wish—I made a mistake. It’s not an excuse, but I was panicking, and I needed to be sure, but I still shouldn’t have done it. Perhaps if I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have thought that was the only way to please those useless girls in your school, to get them to befriend you—”
“Mummy—”
I’d tuned out then, choking down the rage I still sometimes felt for those girls. Rosemary no longer woke with nightmares of that time, but still. I used to fantasise about going to Maraya to track them all down, give them a taste of their own medicine. Except, of course, they’d never wake again.
That night, as I’d predicted, and Rosemary had feared, Aunty Dominique had taken her final breath.
In the present, Rosemary presses a kiss to the tips of her fingers, then touches them to each tree, her final gesture of “farewell” and “see you soon”.
She turns to look at the village in the distance, as she always does.
“Thinking about visiting?” Everyone who’d ever known her is probably either really old, or already dead and gone.
Rosemary shakes her head. She turns to smile at me. “Let’s go home.”
