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“What have I told you about calling me Barb? It is disrespectful, and I will not allow it,” she admonished in her exaggerated Southern drawl.
“I’m sorry, Grandmother. I thought you couldn’t hear me. I was just trying to get your attention.”
It was truly incredible how easily I reverted to the anxious, eager-to-please eleven-year-old child I’d been when she became my legal guardian more than ten years ago. And had been even a couple of years before that, if we’re being honest.
“Never beg for attention, my little charm. Demand it. Inspire it.”
Calling her Barb must have fulfilled my quota of boldness for the day, because I just nodded as if I had taken her pithy saying—one of hundreds that she always had locked and loaded—to heart.
It was by her insistence that I only ever called her “Grandmother”—probably because it held the air of regality that she coveted. Grandmother even preferred that I not use pronouns when speaking about her. If she ever overheard me using even the most benign of phrases, like “She said this” or “It’s hers,” she’d make a point to confront me with a scandalized “She? Her?” as if I had been spreading the worst imaginable gossip about her.
Everything about Barbara Ann Copeland was carefully crafted to project the image of authority, charm, and idyllic Southern grace.
It was much the same vibe that the Fortuna Casino & Resort had.
Everyone she encountered was instantly drawn into her orbit by her unassailable magnetism, and no one ever imagined that other, darker facets could exist.
“I’m not impressed by your attitude today, my charm.”
I looked up, ready to show what I hoped was the opposite of an attitude, but she had turned back to her machine as if I needed to sit and think about what I’d done for a moment before she deemed me ready for further conversation.
The way she was sitting, I found myself at eye level with her gravity-defying, dark-brown bouffant hairstyle that she maintained by way of a standing bimonthly appointment with Fortuna’s salon. She was wearing a dark-colored pantsuit with one of her signature large ornate brooches. Her ears were typically adorned with clip-on statement earrings, and she always wore a gold cross necklace and a gold ring on each ring finger. The left was set with a large opal.
I recalled most of those things purely by memory. It would not do to be caught staring at her, which would be taken as an act of war. Kind of like the silence she was wielding against me now. Waiting for me to break.
Which I did.
“Grandmother?”
She gave one last spin of each machine and turned back toward me. “Yes?”
“I’ve just finished work in the suites, but I got your message, so I decided to walk on over,” I explained, gesturing vaguely to the grand hallway that eventually led to elevators to the suites.
She raised her eyebrows, silently encouraging me to pay one more due.
So, I did.
“I’m sorry, Grandmother. I was disrespectful.”
Satisfied with my deference, my debt clearly paid, she stood up from her stool, which might as well have been a throne given the way she had been perched on it, and gave me her full attention. “Sweet girl, I have told you time and time again that you mustn’t be wasting your time and your talents cleaning rooms. I am just about done with that nonsense. You have been given every opportunity to elevate yourself, haven’t you? Thousands of dollars invested so you could be the best you could be?”
What she didn’t know—and would hopefully never know—was that there was more to my cleaning the suites than just filling a staffing gap, though it wasn’t like anything could’ve changed her response. She never missed an opportunity to bring up the countless things she had paid for me to do over the last decade—including, but not limited to, dance, piano, and sailing lessons.
And all it did was make me feel like both the most qualified and unqualified almost-twenty-two-year-old in existence. I had all these pieces but had never found anywhere to put them.
In the silence that followed her rhetorical questions, she’d thoroughly looked me over before deploying the most lethal tool in any Southern lady’s arsenal: an insult disguised as concern.
“You look tired.”
Her comment didn’t sting as badly as when a male classmate or co-worker would ask, “Are you sick?” on the one day you skipped wearing makeup, but at least those guys were clueless. Grandmother knew the power of her words and wielded them well.
And this one hit its mark best because it was true. I was tired.
Betrayal and abandonment weren’t easy enemies to overcome, and I’d found that the most effective weapon against them was kinetic energy. To that end, I’d shifted the jobs I took this year to avoid the casino floor and its triggers as much as possible. Housekeeping, waitressing, kitchen prep, and even some groundskeeping—all of which helped delay the war of dealing with my… excess of feelings.
My lack of response and obvious zoning out during our exchange had Grandmother sweeping her gaze over me again in blatant inspection. I grew all the wearier for it, knowing that what she saw would always displease her. Wavy auburn hair kept off my face with a well-worn red bandana, conspicuous freckles on every visible surface of my skin, gray eyes the exact same shade as my father’s, whom she’d despised, and no makeup.
If I were to run into a male co-worker today, I was absolutely in danger of being asked if I had the flu.
