now?”
“Mom, stop it,” Nick said.
“You stay out of this,” my mother said. “What the hell were you thinking, Michelle? Getting knocked up? Charging back into town? Did you think you could stay here rent-free? Raise your child under my roof while I spent my hard-earned money feeding your mouths?”
“That’s not what I thought at all,” I said.
“And she’s got a job, by the way,” Nick said.
“Oh, really? And what job is this?” my mother asked.
I was curious to know that, too.
“A friend of mine from high school just opened up his own bar in town. Called Devil’s Delight. Michelle just accepted a position to waitress there.”
Nick squeezed my shoulders, cluing me in on what I needed to say next.
“Yep,” I said. “Just accepted this morning.”
“So, you’re gonna be pregnant with some bastard child while working in some smoky, dingy, run-down bar in a hometown you tried to leave behind because you thought you were better than us.”
“I never thought I was better than you. I just wanted to strive for something better for my own life. And I’m still going to get it. I can waitress at the bar and still have time to do my medical transcription work. That’ll bring in enough money to get my own place and feed my own mouth and raise my child without you breathing down my damn neck,” I said.
My mother slowly rose to her feet, but I stood my ground. Andy wasn’t going to push me around, Gray wasn’t going to push me around, and my mother wasn’t going to push me around.
“Who’s the loser father?” my mother asked.
I bit down onto the inside of my cheek as a sick grin crossed her face.
“Looks like you’re not much better than me anyway,” she said.
“Give me two weeks and I’ll be out of your hair for good.”
“Trust me, I couldn’t get you out of my hair if I wanted to,” she said.
“Mom, enough,” Nick said. “Whatever the hell’s gotten into you, cut it out. Your daughter’s pregnant and she needs you.”
“She never needed me! I gave her everything, and she threw it back in my face when she left with that Andy character without so much as a damn goodbye!”
“You wanted me to say goodbye to a mother who constantly threw how worthless she thought I was in my face!?” I exclaimed. “You wanted me to come home and wrap my arms around a woman who constantly told me I’d amount to nothing! That I wasn’t allowed to have college ambitions with C+ grades? Are you serious?”
“You will not come into my home and talk to me that way. I’m your mother!”
“And you’re a shitty excuse for one,” I said.
I ripped away from my brother’s grasp and started for the stairs.
“Get back here! We’re not done talking!” my mother exclaimed.
“You might not be done, but I sure as hell am,” I said.
Then I stalked into my room and locked the door behind me.
Dropping the plastic bag onto the floor, I collapsed onto my bed in a fit of tears. I heard Nick and my mother arguing downstairs. Like they always did after my mother dug into me. How in the world was I going to do this if I didn’t even have my own mother on my side? If there was anyone who understood my predicament, it was her, but instead of stepping up and helping me in an area where she knew a thing or two, the only concern of hers was how to make me feel like shit.
Again.
My only hope was that Nick’s job offer was serious. That he would come up the stairs and tell me the job I had supposedly accepted was real. True. Bonafide. Because the only thing I could keep doing was pushing forward.