“You’re doing the right thing.” Coming from someone who’s been down this road before, it’s slightly reassuring.
It’s a miracle I don’t keel over and start dry heaving after I knock on the front door. I want to crawl out of my skin and run away screaming. This is somehow worse than hiding under a bed thinking Jack Norton was going to kill me.
That’s a warning sign if there ever was one—one that will likely keep a therapist in business. I’m more afraid of my mother than someone who actively planned on murdering me.
The seconds might as well be hours as we wait for her to come to the door. Dad is at work, and Mom’s car is out front. She’ll be here. No doubt about it.
The circles Leo rubs over my hand don’t feel at all soothing when I can hear her coming.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I whisper just before she opens the door.
The friendly smile slides right off her face when she sees Leo, and she manages to make the clouds block the sun when her attention fixes on me.
My knuckles turn white on my hand gripping Leo’s. She says nothing. He says nothing either; I told him I want to be the one dealing with this. I don’t want to be the one to break the silence, but somehow doing it makes me feel like I’m the one in control.
“I’m here to get my things.” My throat bobs, but by the mercy of a divine being, my voice stays even.
“Okay.” Her pitch is a couple of notes higher than usual, smug and very “do what you want” but in a condescending way.
It’s the tone she uses when she pretends she isn’t hurt, but is planning all the ways she can get back at you.
Mom turns around and goes back to whatever she was doing, leaving me and Leo to walk to my old room without her hovering. So far, so good, but this is too easy. Something is bound to happen. She’ll say some snide comment or be difficult in some way.
But she doesn’t. Not once does she come out to watch us box up my things and load them up into Mitchell’s pickup we’re borrowing. By the end of it, there’s a single bed and a dresser to prove I lived there. I’ve taken anything that matters to me, like my childhood pictures and some art I made as a kid, in case Mom throws it all out.
“I’m going to tell her goodbye before we go,” I say uneasily.
It doesn’t sit right with me to just slam the door shut and leave without a word.
“If that’s what you think is best.” Leo reaches for my hand again, and the same nauseating trepidation starts up once more.
Her lack of reaction has rattled me, but I won’t lie and say that I’m grateful for it. I know she’s not doing it for my benefit. She’d be twisting it in her head somehow. I’ll say my piece, then part ways.
I find her in the kitchen rolling up lumpia to freeze for easy-to-make meals throughout the week. She doesn’t look up, and my stomach drops.
“I—” My voice breaks, and Leo inches closer to give me the strength I need. “I’m going to go.”
No response.
My eyes burn with unshed tears. I’m her fucking daughter. Can’t she look at me? Do I abhor her that much? She gave birth to me. I did almost everything she ever wanted, and I was agooddaughter. But it wasn’t enough for her.
Nothing I do will ever please her because there will never be a day that she’s content with herself and her life until she does her own soul searching.
Beneath the sadness is anger. Anger that she can’t offer me the respect of her attention. Anger that I was drowning, and she didn’t care. Anger that after a lifetime of what I’ve endured, it’s amounted to nothing.
I only wish I did this sooner.
Taking a deep breath, I try to blink back my emotions with no luck, but at least I manage to get the words out without stuttering. “I... Thank you for everything you’ve done for me, but I think... you and I need to have some distance for a bit before we can forge any kind of healthy relationship.”
Finally, she sets the folded lumpia down and crosses her arms. Her eyes lift to Leo’s before falling back to mine, and she looks down her nose at me. “We’ll see.”
My lips part as she stares me down, daring me to—I don’t know what. “Is that it?” It’s my turn to ask.
She resumes her task, effectively dismissing me. “Yes, we’ll see if we want an ungrateful daughter again.”
The blow lands in the center of my chest.
I tug Leo back the moment he starts to pipe up. “Okay,” I tell her, shaking and trying not to cry. “I do hope that one day you can be happy and find it in you to love yourself.” Her face reddens and her eyes change, the way they do before she attacks, then calls herself a victim. “Goodbye, Mom.”
