Honey Daiquiri Finale
It’s been real guys! Well, almost. Want to meet Honey or Daiquiri see our real lives: @BracketRocket and @MiniqBrown…
Honey’s Hiatus
Swimming across a lagoon. Feet kicking, not finding land, thick, gel-like water that leaks into my mouth but tastes clean, sterile. Creatures nipping at my toes and just knowing I have to get to the other side. She’s waiting for me. She’s standing on the shore and her piercing blue eyes cut across the distance to meet me, and I’m coming. I’m coming…
I wake up on the train, yet another Fatty-McBlue-Suit taking up residence in my oesophagus. ‘Excuse me!’ I demand as I peel his sweaty girth off of me. My own fault for falling asleep on the London Bridge train, and the 151, and while walking through New Cross Gate, which in hindsight is insane, I mean Goldsmiths thinks it’s a fancy college but this is still Lewisham.
It’s my last ever day! My sentence has been commuted, the stigma of my conviction abolished, I am free at last, free at last- and the slave reference is entirely intentional. That’s right, I, Honey Marie Saks-Adams have Finished My Bachelor’s Degree!
I no longer have to nod along to white guilt on a daily basis pretending I care. I no longer have to think of a thousand ways to make my face look like listening to hours of evolution and Darwinism is interesting- I may never have to hear the name Friedrich Nietzsche again- I need a cake people! Where’s my friggin’ cake! All I’m waiting for is my grade so that I can come back on graduation day and give all of tutors and classmates subsequent hand gestures, ‘This one’s for youuu, and one for you Dina…’
How to celebrate… Well, about a term and a half into my capture I started an alcohol fund that is not yet depleted. I see Tequila in my future, and rum, and Gin- and I don’t even like Gin- Vodka, Vermouth, Sambuka, Sake- Suddenly Fatty-McBlue-Suit’s evil twin, Sweaty-McTracksuit, boards the train bringing with him the smell of Benefits… I mean a double cheeseburger and Versace Blue Jeans. My stomach does a flip flop and before I can understand what’s happening I’m doing it, I’m barfing in public.
Que…?
‘Dooo it,’ Daiquiri said as I held the package in my hand looking down at the blank canvas of my lower abdomen trembling. ‘Just dooo it.’
‘Can you stop looking at me like Gollum.’
‘Do it!’
‘I’ll do it in my own time!’
I opened the package, without thinking about it loaded the cartridge and assembled the needle just as I had been taught while Daiquiri tapped her fingers against her lips basically salivating. I held the trigger.
‘Okay,’ I said, and pinched the fleshiest stretch of skin I could find.
‘Omigod, no! Don’t do it! I can’t watch, but, DO IT!’
‘Daiquiri calm down.’ She squealed.
I let out a slow breath, brought the device above my pinched skin, and fired.
A sharp scratch, a pinch of blood, not as bad as I thought it would be, and it was done.
‘There,’ I breathed while Daiquiri cheered. ‘It’s done. I, Honey Marie Saks-Adams am officially fertile.’
‘I got the job!’ Whit exclaims as he bursts through the door to find me sitting on the couch staring at the blank television screen.
I turn to him and blink. ‘Hmn?’
‘I got the job!’
‘Right, with your cousin! Amazing!’ I try to sound enthused but I’m pretty sure I just sound hungry.
‘I start immediately. It’s more money than I’ve ever made. It’s a less creative roll, but you know, I’m fine with that.’
‘Beats freelancing.’
‘No. It doesn’t. It won’t ever, but I won’t be working from home anymore.’
‘Really and truly!’ I leap off the couch into my husband’s arms.
‘There you go,’ he breathes and I hold him tightly.
‘Whit this is so great. So great. You have this new job, and we’re earning more money, and Goldsmiths is probably going to burn to the ground, and I’m pregnant…’
‘Why would Goldsmiths burn to the-’
My husband freezes. He pulls back from me, his bright blue eyes reminding me of Lee Evans’ monkey-boy face.
‘Whitaker Adams, Sir Chairman of the Unfortunate Names Committee, you are a father.’
‘Wait, Honey, what?’ he takes it down a second, squeezing my hand as I nod. I want to be crying, but I’m not crying. Crying would suggest I have processed the information.
‘I’m pregnant. We’re pregnant. We’re finally pregnant.’ Whit wraps his arms around me and we stand there a full five minutes in reverent silence.
‘Thank you God,’ he whispers in my ear, and we sink down onto the couch. ‘This is happening.’ He joins me in staring at the blank television screen.
I unlink my fingers from his and place them nervously on my abdomen just below the scar from the needle. ‘Hello baby,’ I breathe. And finally, a tear.
FOUR MONTHS LATER
10 Things you need to know about pregnancy:
1- Being pregnant is actually really sexy. What with the giant, succulent, sensitive, aching Despicable Me Minions I call my boobs, and the uncontrollable flatulence. Gotta love that.
2- You don’t have to go Vegan! It’s not a requirement, but, you know, it’ll happen. I lost three kilos in my first trimester, and no, I did not celebrate.
3- Morning sickness feels like reading in a car with all the windows up while a rooster takes up residence on your diaphragm. No joke. Ask anyone in their first trimester, most accurate description ever.
4- Peeling regurgitated antenatal vitamins from your sick puddle, rinsing them off and… you know the rest, not even frowned upon. Thems things is expensive!
5- Pregnancy brain, that’s a real thing and it starts immediately. I sat outside Bentley’s house in my brand new four-year-old car- finally passed my driving test #crushedit- and wept helplessly because I couldn’t find the door.
6- Absolutely everything you do becomes awesome because you’re pregnant. ‘I just climbed a flight of stairs without passing out and I’m pregnant!’ #bosslevel.
7- Ish gets real with your mom when you’re pregnant. Your whole relationship changes in ways that will blow your mind, and then make you cry, and then make you pee… again.
8- Labour isn’t scary, it’s the goal. Pregnancy is the marathon and labour is the finish line; the painful, groaning finish line that is actually a ring of fire.
9- Your partner will go from King of the Universe to Scum of the Earth in a heartbeat depending on what’s in his hands when he comes home from work.
10- You should not watch One Born Every Minute. I know you think it might help. Don’t do it. Do Not. Do That.
‘I’m small. For the first time in my life I’m small and I don’t like it,’ I tell Daiquiri as I examine my twenty-one week bump and beg my daughter to move into a more rounded position. She lies perfectly still of course, she prefers to save her alien wiggles for the middle of the night when I’m desperate for sleep.
‘You’ll fatten up,’ Daks reassures. ‘Pretty soon you’re gonna be so fat you can’t see your feet. Then your ankles will swell and your boobs will drop and then you’re vagina-’
‘Dear God woman, is this supposed to be a pep talk?’
‘Sorry, I’m a little out of it.’
‘Why?’ I ask, although I know the answer is bound to be-
‘Bic! He is such a douche. He acts like…’ And off we go on another Bic Daiquiri adventure. Lately all they seem to be able to do is complain about each other. One will call me seething, the other will call me sighing, the arguments are varied but the result is still the same- one hundred and twenty minutes a day of my life that I won’t get back. I want to be talking to my baby, singing her the song I wrote her. I want to be reading What To Expect When You’re Expecting while scrolling down the Mothercare website, but instead I’m-
‘You know what I mean?!’ Daks growls. I try not to roll my eyes. ‘What?’ Failed.
‘Nothing.’
‘No, what?’ she says, stopping what she’s doing and facing me, her jaw set.
‘All you guys do is fight. It’s like you think of ways to make each other miserable.’
‘I don’t! I try!’
‘You don’t try.’
‘Yes I Do! You can’t say that I don’t try. You don’t see what I go through.’
‘I do see-’
‘You hear what he tells you.’
‘No I hear what you tell me. I’m not saying that you don’t care, but you say you want this relationship and yet all you do says the opposite.’
‘How dare you.’
‘I’m just saying what I see. You two are the ones always asking my advice about everything. Be together, I don’t care. Don’t be together, I don’t care. I’m having a baby, but all you guys seem to care about is dumping all your crap on me. And somehow that makes me the bad guy? For listening? For caring enough about you to try to help you mature in your understanding.’
‘That’s all you ever say Honey. I’m immature.’
‘Because you are.’
‘No I’m not!’
‘Believing that you’re not immature is the first sign that you’re immature.’
‘You just think you know everything and you can’t be wrong.’
‘That’s not true. I can be wrong. I’ve been plenty wrong, but not about this. Maturity isn’t ever something that you reach. It’s something you process and progress. You think I’m sitting on this horse looking down at you, it’s not true. But I’ve been where you are. I’m not any more, I’m not going to deny or apologise for that. I’m not waiting for you to catch up. I’m not expecting for you to be anything that you’re not. It just irritates me like hell when you pretend that you are and you’re not fooling me.’
‘You know what, fine. We’re not going to agree.’
‘No, we’re not.’ The frosty air settles into a rink around us, and suddenly I am overcome by sadness.
This is supposed to be the happiest time in my life, I think as Daks turns her back and resumes her life. God forbid I’m ever special for five months in a row.
What am I even doing here? Why am I always here? I don’t live here anymore. It’s not like I’m here for any other reason than to help, and guess what, nobody needs my help. I’m a married woman with a child for goodness sake. And I’m here having a shouting match with my baby sister like an infant. This is insane! I want to go home… and this isn’t it any more. I want my family, and that’s Whit.
Nearly two years of being married and finally I feel married. Whit is my family. Whit and Rainey- I’m gonna call my daughter Rainey, the Committee is a tradition after all.
I love my sister, of course I do, and I’m not excommunicating the Saks’s, but I’m growing up. Goodbye Helper Honey, so long Honey the Heroine. Hello Honey the Host, how you doing Happy Honey. Hola Honey Marie Adams. Welcome to your hiatus.
