1/
fiona
Past
“Mom?”
“What is it, child? Can’t you see I’m busy?” My mom waved me off with a flick of her wrist, ashes dropping from her cigarette onto her pants as a result. Her tongue slowly swiped between her lips, and she groaned as she dusted her jeans clean.
“Can you tell me one more time about Dad?”
“For the life of me, I will never understand why you want to hear about that piece of shit,” she huffed. I didn’t bother opening my mouth to give an answer neither of us wanted to hear now or ever again. Mom was a crap parent anyway you looked at it. She was too selfish to care about a kid as a mother should, but technically she reigned supreme over Dad because she was at least present in my life. The same couldn’t be said for Dad for quite some time now, but he had the ultimate get out of jail free card excuse for not being present in my life. Death. He had always been the attentive parent, the compassionate one. He had lived for his family, and Mom lived for herself, the latter part had not changed after his death.
All that aside, they seemed to balance each other out. After Dad died, it was like the passion for others that had lingered inside her was buried alongside him. Mom made sure there wereingredients in the house, but they didn’t necessarily go together. I wasn’t enough to keep her compassion alive, but I stayed by her side regardless of the many times she told me to leave. Another reason, and the most important one was, until recently, I wasn’t old enough to live on my own. Of course, I could have gone through the process of emancipation, but just the thought of going to court only to have Mom paint me as the enemy made my stomach turn.
“He didn’t love us, you know?”
“Yes, he did!” I barked. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” My lip quivered as tears burned my eyes.
“Fi, he lied. What you think was love was something else entirely more messed up. I’m happy he’s dead, and you should be, too!” she scoffed through gritted teeth, snuffing her cigarette out before she stood. “You are such an ungrateful little brat.”
I stared across our makeshift coffee table, which was actually milkcrates stacked on top of each other covered with a sheet. Like most things in our home, it looked like one thing, but was something else. Mom and I fell under this category as well. I pretended I didn’t care. She lied to herself and everyone else around us about wanting me. I wasn’t sure when other people figured out the world was shit, but I had known for quite some time now. Sometimes, I thought she only kept me around so she wouldn’t feel guilty if something bad happened to me. Not that she would know if it did. I wasn’t a stranger to the darkness in the world, unbeknownst to her.
My attention focused out the window as I ignored her insult. I refused to look at her and give her the satisfaction of seeing me break. This was what she always did. She was relentless. She pushed and pushed until I snapped back at her, despite how hard I tried to remain calm and not argue with her. She was the one who was wrong on this, not me. I shouldn’t have to sit here and listen to her spew all these untruths about my dad.
“He loved me. He did. He told me every chance he got. It was you he didn’t love, and you were jealous of how he loved me. He was my best friend, Mom. He hated you! He freaking hated you, and I see why. You suck the goodness out of everything, and for what? Because you’re miserable, and you can’t stand anyone else around you to be happy. Can you?” Tears sprang free from my restraint, and a loud crack of thunder boomed through our empty house. My eyes shot to her face as she stepped toward me.
“You know, Fiona, youareright. Hedidhate me, but not for the reason you think. He hated me for not wanting you, and I hated him just as much for feeding us all those stupid lies about love. Love is nothing but a bunch of lies people tell each other to make them feel better about each other. The fact that either of us ever though it was anything else was stupid.” Her palm flattened, and her fingers quivered with anticipation as she sulked toward me painstakingly slow. “Love lies. Do you hear me? Wake up from all this love bullshit and start living, Fiona. The sooner you accept the truth, the better off you’ll be.” Her feet stilled a few inches away from mine, and I stared at her freshly painted pink toenails, knowing what was coming. I had pushed her to the edge, and she was barely teetering there on a thread. I didn’t care to walk on eggshells anymore. I was done.
“You’re the reason he left that night. Do you know that?” My voice cracked through my incredibly dry and burning throat. I lost the battle with myself about being quiet—not that I ever really stood much of a chance anyway. I was, in fact, my mother’s daughter as much as I would have liked to deny it.
Her palm smacked me across my cheek and mouth with such force specs of silver dance in front of my eyes. My body lurched sideways against the couch cushion, and I didn’t bother moving from where I landed. My tongue swiped against the corner of my mouth that throbbed with pain, and the familiar taste of rust soon coated its tip.
“Classic, Bonnie Jane, folks,” I narrated to the almost empty room. My fingers swiped across the fresh wound, and I swallowed a mouthful of blood. I pushed myself up to a sitting position. I was stubborn, but lying around on a couch moping wasn’t my style. Maybe I did in the beginning when the abuse first began, but now, it was all I would be what I would be doing the majority of my time.
When I opened my mouth to argue, I was already committed to the fight I knew was coming, but now, my claws were out and dug so deeply into the situation that I could almost feel the air pulsate around me. My eyes darted from the white cushion and the red on my fingertips a few times before I made my mind up. Tonight was the last night I would allow her to treat me like this. Even if she’d forgotten about my birthday yesterday, I hadn’t, and neither had Trinity. Trinity was the only person in my family who had never had a hidden agenda with me. Of course, Dad never asked for anything from me either, other than the normal things a parent would, but he wasn’t here to add to the equation anymore.
“You wouldn’t,” she warned, her eyes blazing with hate as she caught onto my plan.
“Oh, I definitely fucking would, Mother.” My fingertips pressed against the rough fibers of the stupid expensive couch Mom had no business having in our house—she literally had dodged the rental people so they couldn’t repossess it and made me do the same—and I drug them down the surface as slow as I could manage, never breaking eye contact.
Her mouth twitched as her hands balled into fists at her sides. “Fiona,” she breathed, “remember you asked for this.” Her head shook slightly from side to side, and her eyes closed. “I’m not your mother, so...”
“I know. I know. I’m adopted, Bonnie Jane. You don’t have to remind me,” I scoffed after interrupting her, holding my handsabove my head. It hadn’t been a secret for a while that I didn’t biologically belong to my mom. To be honest, I didn’t know why Mom had not let me look for my birth mom after Dad passed. It would have been a lot easier for all of us. Despite every bad moment the two of us had spent fighting, this woman was all I knew for a mother, and I was under no illusion that I was any less of a jerk. “None of us are here to take responsibility for anything. I figured that out a long time ago. Don’t worry, I’ll be out of your hair soon enough.”
“I wasn’t saying that. You’re not eighteen, so as long as you live under my roof, I deserve respect from you.”
“That’s fresh. Ha!” I sarcastically laughed to myself. “What I learned was in order to get respect, you have to earn it.” I threw her words that she said on a regular basis when I asked to be seen at the very least as her equal back at her. Considering I had basically taken care of myself for five years now, I thought it was the least she could do.
I hurried to continue my rant, knowing if I didn’t get it out, I might never. “To be quite frank, I really don’t care anymore. Neither of us have to pretend we do after tonight. That’s all I ask for is tonight. Give me tonight, and I’ll be gone by morning. You will never have to deal with me,” my hand smacked against my chest, “the kid you never wanted. So now, after all these damned years, you get your wish. I’m gone. Okay? You can have yourperfectkid free life back,” I assured her, forcing the words to find volume. One would think at some point in my life I would have grown numb to her verbal and physical abuse. This was the second most painful conversation I had ever had in my life. The one that held first place, gutted me when it happened, and its reality continued to do so daily. It was when I found out dad died.
“You don’t have anywhere to go, Fi. Where do you think you’ll go? No one wants you in their life, remember?” She threwmy own words back at me from a fight we had earlier today in the car.
“I do, Mom. I want me in my life. There has to be something better than this,” I huffed while standing and pushing past her, half-expecting her to grab me and throw me back onto the couch. When she didn’t do it immediately, my heart hammered inside my chest, waiting for the moment she would snatch me up to teach me a lesson.
“Maybe you are right, Fi,” she answered so quietly I almost thought I made the words up in my mind. Truthfully, it was way out of character for her to admit I might right about anything, so maybe I had. I could count on two fingers the times she had admitted, and both had happened within the past hour.
“I don’t plan to ever speak to you again, Bonnie Jane,” I replied in a similar tone as hers, not caring if she had or had not actually spoken the previous sentence. I needed to get out of here. I couldn’t breathe. I guess we were both taken back in this moment. I was really getting out of here, and she was finally getting rid of me. Waiting until morning wasn’t an option anymore. The longer I stayed here, the chance of me actually leaving drastically dropped. The guilt of the hateful words I spewed toward her was already starting to sink into my bones. Despite how crappy of a relationship we had, somehow, I learned how to be a semi-decent human being. This was not how you were supposed to speak to your parent, and it absolutely wasn’t how they should talk to their child, biological or not.