“You have any coffee?” I asked.
“Do I look like a café?” she asked back, spritzing and wiping the pad in the playpen.
Okeydokey.
Seemed our sister bonding was an anomaly.
I could give up.
But I was me.
With Dream, or anything (save Knox, gluh) I didn’t give up.
“You want me to do that while you get ready for work?”
She straightened and turned to me. “I know you think I can’t tie my own shoelaces. But this is part of my job. My business. I don’t need your help.”
All right.
I’d just woken up, but I’d had a pretty shitty day yesterday. I wasn’t feeling her adding a split personality along with all the other baggage she laid on me.
I stood and stated, “I know we got up in your face not long ago about you taking advantage of?—”
She headed to the kitchen. “I’d rather not go over it.”
“What I’m trying to say,” I said to her back, “is that Mom, Dad, me and Raye were over you blasting through boundaries and expecting us to kick in to help you deal with decisions you made, instead of asking us if we’d help.”
And that was the deal.
She used to borrow money on the regular, not a little, a lot.
She also used to dump her children on one or the other of us, also on the regular, and not for things like dentist appointments or job interviews, but for things like tarot readings and Reiki sessions.
And she not only didn’t have a job, at that time, she hadn’t told her baby daddies they were baby daddies, so she didn’t have any financial support from them either.
But to put a fine point on it, for me with my sister, this kind of thing had been happening all my life.
Dream was somehow persistently put out with me, like I’d done something, something horrible, inflicted some wound that would not heal, and I had not.
But that might just be my take.
I followed her to the kitchen and stood in the door.
She was stowing the cleaner under the sink.
“You know,” I began, “yesterday, you were really cool with me, and I appreciate it.”
“Whatever,” she mumbled, walking toward me.
I didn’t get out of her way.
When she stopped in front of me and sighed extravagantly, I said, “No really, I appreciate it. And I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. You’re my sister. I love you. I want a relationship with you. It’s not like I don’t want to be there for you, and I definitely love the kids. So maybe you can park the attitude, and we can talk this out.”
Her head tipped sharply to the side. “When’s that gonna happen? When I’m waitressing? When I’m pouring candles? When I’m dragging packages to the post office with three kids in tow? When?—”
I cut her off. “That’s the point I’m making, Dream. You don’t have to go from one extreme, thinking we’re all gonna cover you while you go about your life like you didn’t birth three babies, to doing it all on your own and in the meantime”—I threw up a hand to indicate her—“wasting away and wearing yourself down.”
“Oh, so now I look like shit too?” she demanded.
