I listened as Allison picked apart my appearance. My hair was too short and the color was dull. The shoes I wore were from two seasons ago and not nearly feminine enough. My clothes … Well, apparently mysloppyattire looked cheap.
“Why do you insist on walking around here looking like a tack head?” Allison continued. The insult was her way of belittling me, calling me both stupid and tacky at the same time.
“Allison, keep your voice down,” my father grumbled.
“Seriously.” She crossed her arms over her brand-new breasts, her blue eyes piercing. I wasn’t sure until now, but it was clear, she’d finally received the enhancement she’d wanted after all. She flipped her blond extensions from her shoulders, sat up straight. “I can’t believe you.”
I frowned. “Believe, what?”
My father leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “Imagine our surprise when I received a call from Darrell asking me where his wife was.”
“Ex-wife,” I corrected curtly, just at Moses reappeared. “And what did you tell him?”
I felt my brother’s eyes on me as he slid back into the booth, but I didn’t dare look at him. I loved Moses, but we operated on a strictly need-to-know basis. Once I needed him to show up, that’s when heneededto know my business. Other than that, we barely talked about relationships.
“We told him we didn’t know,” my father explained. “I also mentioned that if I got in touch with you, I’d send you home.”
“That’s unfortunate, Dad. Even if you had the power to send me anywhere, there is no home to go back to. Your precious son-in-law gambled away—or smoked—our savings, took the mortgage money to do other shit, and the bank foreclosed.”
Moses glanced at me again. “What?”
“Need to know,” I reminded him.
Allison shook her head, disgust on her face. “How dare you embarrass us like this? To find out that our daughter had divorced her husband—the senator’s son—from someone else? Foreclosures? You’re ridiculous. You’ve always—”
“Wait,” Moses interrupted, “what the hell is wrong with you, Allison? Do you really think I’m going to let you talk to her like that?”
“I’m not talking toyou,” Allison retorted. “Stay out of it.”
My brother never got along with my father, and he couldn’t stand Allison. Unlike me, he had never fallen prey to her machinations because he’d never been forced to live with us. Even though his mother wasn’t present, she had a large extended family. He was able to move in with an uncle.
“It’s fine.” I placed my hand on his arm before I shifted my gaze back to them. “I don’t have to clear my activities with you. I’m a grown-ass woman. You should be glad I left that muthafucka. He stole from me and cheated on me with every available woman he could find, and here you are … blaming me for finally leaving him?”
“What you should’ve done was be a good wife,” Allison continued. “Instead, you were too busy working when you should’ve been making a home. I told you a long time ago that your job was to serve your husband, but no … You chose to go everywhere except where you were supposed to be. Now, you’re divorced. Who’s going to want you now? Your best bet is to talk to the senator and beg for their forgiveness.”
Despite the evidence presented to her of Darrell’s indiscretions, her only concern was the scandal surrounding it, the gossip among her friends. After all, her daughter was divorcing the son of a United States senator. It didn’t matter that the senator himself—along with the rest of Darrell’s immediate family—had given me the blessing to leave. As long as I agreed to keep the sordid details quiet. They’d even offered to pay for the court proceedings and give me a monthly stipend, which I declined.
I shifted in my seat. “That’s never going to happen.”
“You’re not even worth the time I spent to get you into shape,” she spat.
“Are you just going to let her talk to your daughter like this?” Moses growled.
When I turned to my brother, his eyes were trained on my father.Oh Lord. “Mo, please don’t—”
“Like my wife said, this has nothing to do with you, son,” my father said.
Gregory Keyes was a successful musician who’d seemingly read the tea leaves and left his popular boy band in the late ’80s and became an award-winning music producer. Then, a successful businessman in the tech space. To this day, he was still sought after by industry legends and up-and-coming artists looking to sample one of his iconic tracks. Despite his accolades, though, he sucked at fatherhood.
My father only stood up for me one time, and it didn’t go well. After that, he’d closed himself off to me. Most of my childhood memories of him consisted of cheap gifts on Christmas and a little cash stuffed inside impersonal cards. We didn’t have heartfelt father-daughter conversations. We never went fishing together. He’d failed to teach me how to perform routine maintenance on my car, how to shoot a gun, or even how to land a punch. He didn’t show up for birthdays, and he missed my high school graduation. My life wasn’t his concern. At least until I met Darrell. Then, he just pretended to care.
“This is some bullshit,” my brother grumbled. “I swear. You always sit back and let her talk shit about us, treat us like shit, act like a shitty person.”
“Shut up,” Allison hissed.
“No, you shut up,” Moses interrupted.
“Don’t talk to your mother like that,” Dad said.
