Aphrodite #3
“I haven’t spent a dime since I’ve been gone.
Not even on tampons. You can feel how you want to about Anthony but he gives me the emotional security that you and Dad couldn’t be bothered to try to fake.
And that’s fine. As I said, if you want to show up as parents and not a pseudo coach and pretend PR person who allows lies about me to spread you’re more than welcome.
Until then, I have nothing to say to you. ”
“And just what do you think this boy is going to do for you?”
I could hear the jealousy in her voice and I had to acknowledge that my being happy with Anthony would never make my mother happy. Instead of being mad at my dad she’d just try to sow discord in my relationship so I was as miserable as her. Damn, is that why she was pushing Christopher in my face?
“Mother, I don’t need him to do anything for me. And Anthony is not a boy; he’s a grown man—”
“Yeah okay. He’s an athlete .”
I chuckled at her hypocrisy trying to keep myself from lashing out. “Spoken by a woman married to one.”
She practically hissed the words at me and I knew her face had as heavy a scowl as her tox would allow. “Exactly. I lived that life and I know what the hell I’m talking about. You don’t. You have no clue how lonely this life is and the only thing you have to fill up the empty space is things.”
I had to sigh because this woman loved to blame her spending on being lonely. I was sure that was part of it but the truth was my mother liked having nice things and being able to flex over anyone around her. “That’s not true—”
“How are you going to tell me?”
I sat back against the headboard, her revisionist history pissing me off.
“Because you seem to forget I lived it with you! Watched that man kiss us both on the cheek and tell us not to wait up. Never mind he’d been gone for days or even weeks with trainings.
He’d drop off his bags and then go hang out like he was single and you never spoke up to tell him not to go. ”
“Because what good would it have done?”
My mother’s frustration was being vented at me when she needed to aim it at the serial cheater I was sure wasn’t even home right now. Her calling me was a way for her to provide usefulness to him. Keeping me in line meant that she would get praise from him. That was all she lived for.
“It would’ve shown your daughter that this wasn’t what a healthy relationship looked like.
That it’s not okay to be trotted out for press and pictures and then patently ignored unless I’m being trained to death.
But instead you made me in your image. You had me chasing after a man’s love by pushing myself to the brink.
And for WHAT? To make him feel better about himself?
To make you feel okay for how you would drag me along to follow him whenever he snuck out?
It’s not like he wouldn’t have told you if you would’ve asked because he knew you weren’t going to leave.
By the time I was seven, even I knew you weren’t going to leave.
But instead, you allowed me to suffer with you.
To wallow in that gilded palace that kept us both trapped.
And now you want me to stay in it with you just to feed his ego?
Where is Dad right now, Mother? He’s probably out fucking somebody else and having you sitting at home like a good pet—”
“You will never disrespect me!”
She screamed far louder than I had ever heard her before and I guess I struck a nerve. But again, it wasn’t my concern.
“Funny, you haven’t had an issue with Daddy doing it for three decades. Had a baby on you that you happily let him neglect. Blatantly cheats on you with anyone. And then he’s emotionally negligent to the one child you do have. It’s crazy that you say you had nothing—”
“And I did it all for you!” And now we’re at guilt.
“Don’t lie to me! You did it for yourself!
For the lifestyle that you’re afforded for keeping your mouth shut.
The money that he’s been taking from me for years kept you happy as long as you kept me in line.
Don’t lie to me! You put me down, you try to keep me in a box so the least you owe me is the truth.
There has not been one moment in my life that you weren’t trying to use me to gain his approval.
And for so long I was doing the same thing you were: shrinking myself to make him look better.
Finding fault within my every action so that I could make his criticism of me feel less severe because I agreed.
And all it did was damage my self-esteem and my mental health.
Hell, I risked my physical health because I was letting him train me to death just to prove I could hang.
I hope you enjoyed the years you had me under your thumb because they’re over.
This is over. Whatever happens between you and him from now on, I’m not in it.
Y’all have triangulated me into your fucked up relationship for too long and I’m taking a step back.
Anthony cares about me. Told the whole world when he provided me shelter when cameras just wanted to capture my pain.
And the man proves it every chance he gets.
When the two of you tried to hold me back he gave me the peace I needed with no questions asked.
So never try to tell me that love doesn’t exist because you haven’t experienced it.
I have. Every morning I wake up with a smile on my face because Anthony Phillips gives me what you guys never would. ”
“Are you done?”
I bit back what I wanted to say and huffed a laugh instead.
“Yes, with you and with this. Don’t call me when shit falls apart.
On top of your husband being a cheater he’s also a gambler.
You were holding on to a man for a lifestyle he had to use your child to provide.
And you alienated her. I hope the two of you can figure out how to make things work. ”
“You’d let us lose the house?”
“No, but you won’t be living in it for much longer.
Your husband signed the deed over into a trust for me to ensure that you couldn’t get your hands on it if you ever divorced him.
It was also collateral for a small business loan I had to pay back for him so it’s mine in full.
You all will need to find somewhere to go.
” I knew the wheels in her head were running rampant with the information she either didn’t know or turned a blind eye to.
“You’d put us out on the street?”
“I’m not sure what part of cut off you didn’t grasp but I’m not joking.
I’ll be selling it and if you all can buy it at market price, have fun.
My things have already been removed and the home has been documented so any damage that is done will be on you guys if you try to destroy anything.
And I will sue. You know Billy already has an attorney for me lined up.
” I smiled thinking of the paperwork we’d gone over at lunch.
“I can’t believe that you would do this. And for you to think your father is broke is ridiculous.” My mother sounded so personally insulted at the idea her man was broke I had to clue her in on the life she seemed to happily float through on other people’s dime.
“Your charge cards, I pay them. I never told you because I wanted him to still keep his pride and stay off my back. I hoped that by letting him save face he would give me leniency but that stunt with Christopher was the end of that. His anger at my having to handle his responsibilities still hasn’t earned me the respect I deserve as the breadwinner in this family.
Instead, y’all seem to think I’m beholden to you both and that ends today. ”
“Aphrodite—”
I shook my head refusing to let her bait me into staying on the line. “Goodbye, Mother.”
I hung up the phone and felt lighter and also heavier at the same time. My sigh came from the weariness of my soul as I leaned my head back and stared at the ceiling.
“You good?”
I jumped at the sound of his voice and looked at the door. Anthony’s concern was all over his face and I hated that he saw me allowing them to get to me again. “I thought you were gone.”
“It’s just a lift day so it wasn’t going to take hours. Told you that I had everything under control while you were worrying.”
I smirked thinking about our early morning session he referenced. He was making me cum and I was worried he wasn’t going to be on point today. “I was doing more than worrying.”
He nodded with an arrogant smile on his face as he dropped his bag on the floor and walked toward where I was on the bed.
“That you were. That pussy was weeping tears of joys and I was happy to be the reason for it. But don’t try to distract me from all that. Are you good?”
He lay down on me stretching out so his head rested on my chest. My hand immediately went to his hair and I rubbed my fingers onto his scalp through the carefully stitched rows.
“Yeah. I’m not worried about them.”
“Have they really been fucking with your money?”
I sighed again thinking about how much further ahead in life I would’ve been if I hadn’t been footing the bill for everything. At least my father treated his hos on his own dime. Mostly.
“Yeah, for a while now.”
“You sound calm about it. Stealing from your kids is like the lowest shit you can do.” His anger stemmed from watching it happen to his brother and even facilitating it. I could hear the guilt along with the digs in his voice.
“I truthfully have just looked at it as the cost of them raising me and now I don’t have to think about hearing them scream about what I owe them.”
He lifted up on his hands with his chest hovering over mine. The cross he wore around his neck with his initials on it gave me flashbacks to this morning.
“Owe? Damn, I guess they didn’t break the mold when they made my mama and daddy. That’s definitely something Jill would say.”
“How do you handle it?” Anthony skated over the pain like it was a familiar friend never letting it slow him down or stop him.
“Don’t really talk to her like that to be real. She’s messy. My mama is my mama and I try to love her, but ‘Twan has been more of a parent to me than her or our sperm donor. We’ve been close all our lives so the shit I did really tore me up.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew I'd let him down. I was selfish and it was the last time I listened to Jill about anything.”
“You wanna tell me about it?”
The sadness was back on his face. Anthony had the most expressive brown eyes. If you looked closely enough you could read how he felt. Right now they were cloudy as he relived what he’d done.
“She was saying she needed money. She didn’t really, she was just pissed that my brother cut her allowance.
She told me I owed her because I needed to make up the shortfall.
That’s why that owe shit struck such a nerve.
I know how that guilt can feel. At first I was just giving her the money that I got from him but I couldn’t do that shit every month because I was a brat and used to having a lot of money to play around with. ”
His nostrils flared angrily and I really hoped I never had to meet the woman who gave birth to him. It worried me hearing him say he still loved her because I wondered if she could still get to him.
“Not a brat, maybe just spoiled.”
He gave a half smile but kept speaking. “Definitely that. But yeah, I was doing too much and it caught up with me. Got some money from a booster and somehow the press found out. I was out of school within the next week.”
“They didn’t even make you pay the money back to potentially mitigate the severity of your punishment?”
“Nah. It was one of those zero-tolerance things. You gotta understand that program is huge and they want the people that look like me. But the state? The press? They still doing whatever they can to keep our people down. Folk gotta hol’ of the shit I did and were callin’ for my head like I murdered somebody. ”
Knowing the types of games my parents played something about that didn’t seem right. I ain’t going to speak on it because we needed a minute that was stress free.
“Enough of that. Come lay down and get some rest.” I patted my chest and his eyes roamed my flesh.
“I put my head on your tits one gone end up in my mouth, AP.”
I shrugged and patted my chest again. “You acting like I’m complaining. But you need to sleep first.”
He leaned down and captured my lips before letting his hand roam the plane of my body. “Questioning my stamina? Bet. Let’s put this theory to the test then.”