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“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” she snapped defensively. “Your father was a good man, and a good provider.”
“There you go, justifying. Yeah, he was a good father. And, yeah, he was a good provider. But he was also a damn good cheater with a good and stupid and desperate wife who”—I jabbed a finger in the air at her—“flitted around this house pretending everything was alright, playing Suzy-Goddamn-Homemaker while Daddy was out fuc—”
Before I could get the rest of my words out, she lunged toward me and slapped me, causing me to see stars. Porsha’s and Paris’s eyes popped open. “Don’t you ever,” she said through clenched teeth, “talk to me like that, again!”
I could see the hurt and embarrassment in her eyes. I had struck open an unhealed wound. She fought back tears. In that very moment, I knew that in our mother’s anguish she saw the enemy—me, my sisters, and any other woman who shares another woman’s man. For her, we were the home-wreckers, even though we tried explaining to her that we weren’t sharing a man who was already attached to another woman. To her, it made no difference. It was all in the same.
I sigh, shaking that night out of my head as I reach into my bag and pull out my BlackBerry Torch, then scroll down to turn the ringer back on. I have thirteen emails, three text messages, and two missed calls.
Against my better judgment, I return my mother’s call, first. “Hey, Mom,” I say the minute she answers, pulling out the latest issue of Vogue from my desk drawer. I start flipping through the pages.
“Hey,” she says, sounding out of breath. “I tried calling you girls earlier, but didn’t get any answer.” I smirk, knowing she called Paris first—since she’s her favorite, then Porsha. And, when she couldn’t get a hold of either of them, she called me.
“We were out,” I tell her, purposefully leaving out that we were out having breakfast. I sit back in my chair, knowing she already knows, anyway. “Is everything okay?”
“Of course it is.”
“Ohhhhkay, so why are you calling me?”
She lets out a loud, frustrated sigh in my ear. “Persia, I don’t know why you must always be so goddamn—excuse my French, snotty.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say sarcastically. “What were you calling for?”
She huffs. “To see if you and your sisters were RSVPing for Pasha’s wedding.”
Pasha is my mother’s first cousin, and technically my second cousin. Pasha’s grandmother is my mother’s aunt, and my great-aunt. She’s considered a success story in our family. Having lost both of her parents to murder, she’s the owner of one of the hottest hair salons in the Tri-State area. And, quiet as it’s kept, engaged to one of the biggest dope slingers in the game. He’s been home from prison for close to two years and word has it, he’s still up to his same old shit. I guess bad habits don’t die easy. The Feds are hot on his ass, but somehow he keeps slipping through their fingers. You’d think after doing four years in prison, he’d learned his lesson. Oh, well. Not my business, nor my headache.
“I don’t know,” I tell her.
“You know your Aunt Harriett would love to see you and your sisters. She always says you girls don’t even call her.”
Mmmph, I think, rolling my eyes. That’s because her ass is always trying to get us to sit in church, or starts spewing scriptures. “The invitation didn’t say anything about us being able to bring a date, so maybe not.”
“It’s nothing personal,” she calmly states. “With the baby and that gigantic house they recently bought down there by the shore, they’ve had to downsize the guest list...”
Yeah, from one-hundred-and-seventy to a hundred guests, I think. Word has it that she and her fiancé, Jasper, purchased an eighty-seven-hundred square foot mini-mansion on three acres of sprawling property. It’s where the entire wedding celebration will be. I pull the white and red embossed invitation from out of my top desk drawer, then stare at it:
IN THE CELEBRATION OF LOVE...
MRS. HARRIET ALLEN
REQUESTS THE HONOR OF YOUR PRESENCE AT THE MARRIAGE OF
HER GRANDDAUGHTER
Pasha Alona Allen
TO
Jasper Edwin Tyler
ON SATURDAY, THE TWENTY-SEVENTH OF AUGUST
TWO THOUSAND AND ELEVEN
AT FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING
She sighs. “...It seems like everyone else’s daughters are getting married, except for my own.” She sounds disappointed. I toss the invitation back into my drawer, rolling my eyes up in my head, again.
