“You know what, Mandy? Adele was right.”
“Um, she was?” Mandy looks confused.
“I feel bad for you, too,” I say, and Adele suddenly grins, but the smirk doesn’t last for long because I keep talking. “Yeah, I feel bad that you’re such a shallow person you have to put others down to feel good about yourself. What is this? Third grade?”
“Hey,” Janet inserts herself into the conversation. “That’s not nice.”
“Oh, you want to talk about ‘nice’? Is that what you want to do? Sure. We can do that. Let’s talk about how nice it is that your husband cheats on you with Adele when you’re not around. Let’s talk about how he was arrested for drunk driving three weeks ago. Oh, or we could talk about the fact that you’re still unemployed because no one wants to hire an employee who steals.”
“Melody!” Mandy tries to shush me. She looks around wildly, like someone is going to hear. “That’s not polite.”
“No, it’s not polite, Mandy. It’s not polite that Adele is a cheater. It’s not polite that she thinks it’s okay to mess around with her cousin’s husband. It’s not polite that you’ve known about it all year and never said anything. It’s not polite that you’ve slept with him, too.”
“WHAT?” Janet shrieks and starts hitting Mandy before I’ve even left the bathroom. I should feel bad about everything I just said, but I don’t. For the first time I can remember, I stood up for myself, and it feels really good. It feels great.
I head out of the bathroom and walk straight to my car. I don’t bother looking over at the park pavilion or peeking at who is gathered there. I don’t want to say goodbye to my parents or aunts or uncles. I don’t plan on speaking to them again.
After today, they can consider the relationships severed. I don’t know why I didn’t do this before. I don’t know why I wasn’t brave before. I don’t know why I didn’t stand up for myself before.
The truth is that not talking with them isn’t going to change my life in any way. I’ll still go to work. I’ll still pay my bills. I’ll still study in my free time and I’ll still hang out with my friends. The difference is that I won’t feel guilty when my mother sees me eat food. I won’t feel bad about myself when my father wants to know why I don’t have a husband. I won’t be comparing myself to my little sister.
I’ll just be able to be me.
I get to my car and unlock the door, but before I can sit down, I feel someone grasp my arm.
“Mother?” I ask. Her hair is wild and her eyes are wide.
“What did you do?” She says through gritted teeth.
“Did you just race over here? Mom, you know you can’t run. Your asthma is too bad. Do you need a puff?”
“I do not need a puff, young lady,” she says, but she’s breathing hard and I know she needs her inhaler.
“For the love of dragons, mother! Take your inhaler. I’ll be waiting right here and you can yell at me once you can breathe again.”
She glares, but fishes the inhaler out of her pocket and brings it to her dry, chapped lips. She pushes the top of the inhaler and dispenses a single dose of her Albuterol, then shoves it back in her pocket. I give my mother a second to start breathing normally again. I shouldn’t. I should take off, but I don’t. I wait a second.
“What did you do?” She repeats. I raise an eyebrow, but she just motions toward the bathrooms where Janet, Adele, and Mandy are screaming obscenities at each other.
“I believe I used the toilet and now I’m leaving,” I say. It’s time to grow up. It’s time to be strong. I will not apologize for what’s happening in there. Old Melody would have faltered. Old Melody would have instantly said, “I’m so sorry.” Old Melody would have taken the blame.
I’m done with all of that.
“You little bitch,” my mother growls at me, and for just a second, my mouth drops open. She’s always been mean to me, but
she’s never been this cruel. “I know you said something to stir up shit. That’s what you do, Melody. You’ve always caused trouble for your sister and she hasn’t even done anything wrong.”
“She slept with Janet’s husband,” I say, baffled at what’s happening right now. “You don’t think there’s anything wrong with that?”
My mother waves her hand like she’s brushing away the idea that this is an issue. “That’s conjecture,” she tells me.
“Yeah, you’re not a lawyer, Mom. You can’t just use terms you hear on legal crime dramas and use them to win arguments.”
She frowns and crosses her arms over her chest. Once again, I’m struck by the fact that my mom is really thin and small, but more than that: she’s frail-looking. When did that happen? When did she start to look old? Weak? When did she start to look so damn breakable?
“Go apologize to your sister,” she says. “Go fix this.”
She’s not going to change.