Chapter 3: Every Small Thing Was A Crime
The first week was nothing but a lie. I woke up before everyone else every morning to cook breakfast, scrubbed the floors until they shone, washed the dishes before anyone even finished eating, and bought what groceries I could afford with my last few dollars. I stayed up until two a.m. every night sending resumes, taking online marketing courses, and trying to make myself as small and quiet as possible so I wouldn’t “be a burden” like my mom had kept hinting.
But my mother noticed every single little thing I did—and every single thing I did became a reason to criticize me.
The three-dollar coffee I bought from the gas station so I could sit in the parking lot and use their faster Wi-Fi to send job applications? She’d shake her head and say, “Wasting money like you’re still living in that big house of yours. You have no idea how to stretch a dollar, do you?”
The new sneakers I’d bought for interviews—cheap, from the discount store, because my old ones had holes in the soles? She’d hold them up like they were made of gold. “Frivolous. Selfish. You don’t deserve nice things when you’re living off us.”
The bowl of cereal I poured for Lily before school each morning? She’d stand in the doorway, arms crossed, and say, “That’s my food. You earn your keep before you go feeding your kid my groceries.”
My father never yelled. He never said a word most days. But his silence was heavier than any shout. He’d sigh loud enough for the whole house to hear every time I walked past him. He’d roll his eyes when I talked about the jobs I was applying for. He’d lift his newspaper up just high enough to block me out whenever I tried to say hello.
Lily noticed all of it, too. Kids always do—they pick up on tension before adults even admit it’s there. She stopped running down the hallways singing. She stopped asking her grandma questions about the old photos on the wall. Now she’d stand there for ten whole seconds, staring at my mother’s face, before she dared to speak—like a six-year-old was already learning to walk on eggshells, already learning to be quiet so she wouldn’t make anyone mad.
I kept telling myself: just hang on. Just two more weeks. I got an email back from the ad agency downtown yesterday—they want to meet me next week. Once I get that job, once I get my first paycheck, we’ll be out of here. I had no idea how fast things would explode, or how much worse it would get before it got better.
