Page 49 of Apparently, I’m A B!tch

Chapter26

Nikki

Saturday afternoon

The dial toneof FaceTime droned on and on, until finally, my sister picked up my call with a yell. “Nikki! How you doin’?” I smiled at Andrea’s distorted face as she pressed too close to the camera and greeted me with her typical Great Lakes accent.

“Hey, how’s my chubby bubby doing?”

She reared back and let me see the cluttered craziness and movement in the background.

My mama yelled out, “You wait ‘til dinner! Don’t you touch the potatoes! Elena, get your son away from my table!” at the same time as Andrea said, “He’s teething now, and he’s got a mean bite on him, you should feel it.”

“Alright, Ma! Alright!” Elena yelled back with just as much faux hostility.

Andrea made a noise in her throat. “Look at you, dressed all fancy. Every time we talk it’s like you sound fancier, you look fancier. No wonder you’d rather be there instead of here with us.”

My chest squeezed at hearing her t’s turn to d’s. All my time in Manhattan and I hadn’t met a single other person from North Chicago. When I first moved here, it took a while for me to pick up on the way I used to lengthen and stretch my vowels, but now I think I had a pretty good handle on my Midwest accent.

“Trust me, I wish I could be with you guys. Everyone at work still hates me. But it’s not all bad. Tristan and I–”

“Who’s on the screen, Andrea? Who is it?” My father’s voice boomed around my sister, an echo that made Elena, my mother and the small gaggle of kids turn from the dining table to peer at me.

Andrea tilted her head and yelled, “It’s Nikki!”

“Oh, Nikki!” My father exclaimed as my mother gave an excited yelp in front of Elena. My eldest sister rolled her eyes with a bright smile, and I was reminded of where I learned my prominent habit of eye rolls from.

My dad, so wizened and hunched from years of working outside, shuffled over in a way similar to Uncle Henry. Where Uncle Henry suffered from hip problems, my own father’s knees were giving out on him.

His face took up half the screen as he nudged Andrea to one side, and my mother sandwiched my sister in. Mama was as straight-backed as always, and sporting her usual brown and blonde perm with a red-lipped smile that made my heart jiggle in my chest like I was an excited puppy about to be given a treat.

“Is so good to hear from you, tigris,” my dad said.

I hadn’t been called a tiger in so long, I forgot what it felt like to hear it. My dad had given each of us the name of a type of feline growing up. Since our last name meant kitten, he wanted to remind us that we could grow to be powerful too. Elena was a liontari, a lion, and Andrea was a gatopard, a cheetah.

Even though I always cringed at how cheesy the nicknames were, I had to admit, those names suited us. Andrea’s quips were faster than anything I could ever come up with, and Elena had a cold regal vibe to her whenever she was mad about something. Dad always said I knew how to stalk and take down my prey like a true hunter, and, once the cringe wore off and homesickness set in, every time I felt like chasing down my law career might’ve been a mistake, his belief in what I could do kept me going.

“When are you coming home?” my mama asked.

“I’m working a big case right now. I don’t think I can come home anytime soon.”

Mama’s smile faded as my dad grunted. “But, tigris, even the Law and Order people get breaks. Is been so long. How long since Christmas now?”

My mama answered. “Six months. That’s too long.”

My father and sister nodded their agreement, neither of them looking at me.

I suppressed a smile. “Dad, that’s a show, this is real life. I can’t just drop my work and come home. I’ve got this big case right now, and I might be able to–”

“I don’t like you being in that city by yourself.” My mama said with a stern undercurrent to her voice, leaning in as if she could convince me by her closeness to the camera alone.

“I’m fine, Mama.”

Andrea clucked her tongue and tapped Mama on the shoulder. “That’s not true, Ma. She was saying before that work’s been tough. And I think she’s gettin’ lonely up there in that apartment.”

I rolled my eyes and caught a glimpse of Elena waving to me before running off to help one of her kids.

“Is worse than I thought,” Dad said as Mama clucked her tongue.