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As I begin ascending the staircase, he starts up again.
“You let her talk to you like that?” Grant asks my mom. “You let her just come and go as she pleases, staying out all night with boys?”
“She’s always had a smart mouth,” my mom replies. “But she’s eighteen now; she’s an adult.”
“She’s still under your roof. Staying out all night…dressed like that…one of these days, she’s going to get what she’s asking for.”
My jaw hits the floor. I look down at my clothes—a normal tank top and a pair of cut-off shorts, just like everyone else wears in the summer, not that it even matters. “Are you just going to sit there?” I ask my mom.
She shrugs. “He’s not exactly wrong.”
I point to Grant. “If my boyfriend heard you talk to me like that, they would never find your fucking body.”
He laughs as I storm up the remaining stairs and down the hall to my bedroom. I stomp around the room, my jaw clenched as I gather my things. I take my work clothes with me into the bathroom and shower quickly. And angrily.
It’s an angry shower. I don’t know if other people have those or not, but I do. I let the water wash over me while I replay the scene over and over again in my head, thinking of all the things I wish I would have said or done, and I just get more and more angry. I floss my teeth so hard I draw blood.
And when I return to my room, my mom sits on my bed, waiting, with her arms folded across her chest.
I scoff. “If you’re here to do some parenting, it’s a little too late for that.”
“You need to be respectful to my guests in my home,” she says.
“Me?! What about him? And don’t act like I don’t pay my fair share of the bills in your home. Maybe he should be respectful to the people who actually live here.”
“He’s not just another guy,” she says.
I roll my eyes. “Yes, he is, Mom.”
“This is serious,” she says. “We really like each other. And he could change everything.”
“There’s something wrong with him,” I tell her. “You don’t see that?”
“He’s just from the city,” she says. “Things are different there.”
“What!? No, they’re not, Mom—not like that.”
“Just give him a chance. Or pretend to. I know you can reel in that attitude at work; you can do it at home, too.”
“I’m going to find a new job.”
“Well, good luck,” she says. “I work the late shift tonight. You don’t have to worry about feeding Emma; I’m going to take her to get some new shoes, and then she has a slumber party tonight. I’ll drop her off on my way there. If there’s any money left over, I’ll bring it back for you.”
“I told her she could keep it and get ice cream or something she likes.”
“Oh,” she says.
And that’s it. She doesn’t thank me for giving her money or buying the shoes. I don’t expect it, but still, every time, I wait for it just in case. Just because it would be nice to hear.
“Are we done now?”
She stands and takes a couple of steps toward the door. “Yeah, we’re done. But I’m serious about what I said. We’re supposed to be a team, Amelia. That’s the only way this works.”
I say nothing as she continues out the door because I do have to be at work and want to be done with the conversation. What I want to say is that we aren’t supposed to be a team—one of us is supposed to be the parent, and the other is supposed to be the kid.
I’m not a kid now, though; there’s no point in arguing. That ship has sailed.
And yes, I realize she’s made sacrifices for us. She’s busted her ass to make sure we at least had what we needed. She fed me, clothed me, and put a roof over my head for eighteen years.
