Chapter 4 - The Apartment Was Not Empty
We stayed at the hospital until almost three in the morning.
Emily and the baby were stable, but the doctor was firm. No lifting. No standing for long periods. No stress. No cleaning up after grown adults who should know better, though the doctor said that part with his eyebrows, not his mouth.
When we pulled back into the apartment complex, Emily was asleep in the passenger seat.
I wanted to take her to a hotel.
She wanted her own bed.
So I carried her inside.
The living room looked almost exactly the same.
Pizza boxes still on the table. Soda cups still everywhere. A blanket dragged across the floor. The sink had three new cups in it.
My mother was asleep on the couch.
Brittany’s door was closed. Kayla’s music thumped softly from the spare room. Lily had left a plate on the floor beside the TV.
I stood there with Emily in my arms and felt something inside me go cold.
I put her to bed, tucked pillows around her the way the nurse showed me, and waited until her breathing evened out.
Then I went back to the living room.
“Mom.”
Teresa opened her eyes slowly. “What?”
“Get up.”
She sat up, offended. “Do not speak to me like that.”
“Pack your things.”
For the first time that night, she looked fully awake.
“What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
Brittany came out first, hair wrapped in a satin bonnet, phone in hand. Kayla appeared behind her, annoyed. Lily followed with a blanket around her shoulders.
Mom stood. “You’re throwing your own mother out in the middle of the night?”
“I’m giving you until morning.”
Brittany laughed. “Over dishes?”
“No,” I said. “Over two months of bullying my pregnant wife in the home I pay for.”
Kayla threw up her hands. “We live here too.”
“No, you stay here. Living here would imply contributing.”
Mom’s face hardened. “Everything I sacrificed for you, and this is how you repay me?”
That was her favorite weapon.
Sacrifice.
She used it the way some people used prayer.
“I’ve been repaying you since I was sixteen,” I said. “Your rent. Your prescriptions. Your bills. Their bills. Their mistakes. I carried everybody.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Because family carries family.”
“No,” I said. “Family doesn’t make an eight-months-pregnant woman wash dishes while they eat her dinner.”
Lily looked down.
Good.
Shame had finally entered the room.
Mom pointed toward the bedroom. “That woman has turned you against us.”
I stepped closer.
May you like
“That woman is my wife.”
Teresa stared at me like she had never considered that sentence could outrank mother.
