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But now, hearing girls laughing in their backyard, under my window? I felt the urge to call her. I even grabbed my phone twice.
I didn’t follow through. It would mean a war. A war between me and Lucas. A war between me and his football buddies. A war between me and every half naked-girl at that party. Because my curtains were closed like every other night, but I could imagine what they looked like. It seemed like there was a dress code for these parties. If your ass or tits weren’t about to pop out, you were not dressed accordingly.
Everyone would be pissed at me for ruining the social event of the year and that didn’t fit with my attempts to stay out of everyone’s sight.
A loud thud mixed with Sylvia’s scream came from downstairs and cut my dreams about ruining Lucas’s party. Usually, I wouldn’t even think of checking up on her, but with all those people so close to our family mess, I couldn’t risk it for her to do something that would embarrass me. It was embarrassing enough that I was the only one that was not attending, if you’re not counting Dylan. He was in the same boat with me when it came to Lucas’s disdain.
I got up and went down. I found my mother on the kitchen floor. A chair was next to the counter. She must have fallen, trying to take something from the open cabinet. I helped her get up without a word. She was silent too. No explanation, no gratitude. She seemed fine, nothing broken. Just drunk, as usual.
“What do you need?” I asked with the nagging feeling inside that told me she didn’t deserve my help. But I wasn’t stupid enough to let her fall again and crack her head open. That would mean countless hours with her in the hospital. They would start asking questions about her obvious alcohol abuse. I was still seventeen. They would call the police. The police would call my dad… No, thank you.
“The wedding china…,” she hiccupped. “Throw it out.”
“Seriously?” I took a deep, calming breath before I opened my mouth to speak again. It didn’t help. “You want to throw out the wedding china, and you decided to do it now? In the middle of the night? Drunk as a skunk?” I asked, my irritation raising to new levels.
“Just do it, Clementine,” she ordered, and it made me see red.
I swallowed all the accusations that tried to come out of my mouth. Nothing would change even if I allowed myself to vent. I would just give her the satisfaction of knowing she pushed my buttons.
I stepped on the chair and stretched my arms so that I could find the fucking china that just had to be thrown out that very second. The cabinet was filled with old dishes no one had used in years.
“Why the hell are you keeping things you’re not using?” I asked.
And why the hell am I still trying to talk to you?
Hannah must have gotten into my head with her be a do-gooder speech earlier.
Then I saw it. A very, very, very old and ugly mug. My sister Madison made it. I remembered the day she brought it home and gave it to mother. She had spent a week at some camp. I must have been four.
“Mom, look what I made for you!” Madison squealed with excitement and pulled the mug out of her backpack.
Sylvia took it and looked at it from all angles and simply said, “You could have done better.”
Madison looked so sad and broken. She cried for half an hour while my mother cooked dinner and ignored her sobs.
While I reacted to these kinds of insults from my mother with a violent refusal to live by her standards, Madison took the other path. She spent her entire childhood, trying to be the perfect daughter and please Sylvia in every possible way. She was a straight A student, captain of the cheerleaders, always composed and behaved. Not that mother appreciated it. She was cruel every time she thought Madison had failed in anything.
As a result, my sister was now a younger version of Sylvia. Cold. Heartless. But everything she did was flawless. She was always perfect. Just like mom wanted all her children to be.
I turned to face my mother with Madison’s old mug in my hands.
“I thought you hated this. You said it was ugly at least a thousand times over the years. Why do you keep it?” I asked, tears filling up my eyes. It was like a souvenir she kept to reminisce about the good old days when she was torturing us mentally.
“Your sister made it. You and your brother never bothered to give me anything. Madison was the only one who was grateful for everything I did for you. She’s the only one who did something for me,” she answered as if it was obvious.
“Then why the hell did you make her feel like shit about it?” I felt like I was about to scream.
“It’s garbage. I did what I had to do so that she learns from her mistakes and stops making them”.
“Are you fucking crazy?” I screamed at her. “She cried her eyes out! Your eleven-year-old daughter who wanted to give you something she made for you”.
Sylvia snorted.
“Well, I’m sorry then, I should have kept every shitty thing you three ever made, put it on a shelf, and bragged about it.”
Yes, you should have. At least while we were children.
“Your sister is a grown person now and understands. If you ask her, she would also think it’s ugly and one should not be praised for something that’s not…”
