Chapter 7 #4
“Now you know I’m gon’ finish what I started.
I’ll be ready in a minute. Check on them bedrooms too.
I got on them kids when I got here ‘cause I know you ain’t done it.
” She laughed but she was serious. Couldn’t stand her sometimes.
I did a damn good job raising my kids. “I don’t know what you got these kids up in here doing.
Oh yeah I do. Nothing. Spoiled tails.” She spoke in a playful tone but again…
she was serious. Taking multiple digs at my parenting.
That’s what Evelyn did. What she’d done since I had Aubry.
“I put them to work and all they did was moan, groan, and complain. Gabe’s room was a mess.
Aubry’s too. Had makeup she don’t even need all over her bed, and vanity.
And I’m not gon’ get on Ms. Honesty. She had clothes all over the place.
And that bathroom? Chile, look. Clean it or I will.
I don’t know what y’all doin over here but we gon’ get it together! Tonight!”
“Ma,” I groaned. “We ain’t gettin’ nothing together tonight. I’m gon let you finish the dishes, we gon’ talk and then you gon go home. I had a long day. I am not about to be cleaning with you all night. I love you. I appreciate you. But no,” I seriously said.
Evelyn didn’t know shit about being an entrepreneur or giving a damn about your mental health.
She went to God for every single thing and while there was nothing wrong with that, for some instances, God couldn’t be the only thing you leaned on.
Sometimes you needed extra help and regardless of how she felt, that’s what therapy was for me.
When it came to working hard, she barely did that.
For a very long time, my momma was a stay-at-home wife.
Up until I was in middle school, I think.
And when she did get a job, it wasn’t like she worked long hours.
She worked as a contingent nurse, barely working twenty hours a week.
Didn’t have to work for real. My daddy worked long, crazy hours at Chrysler.
He took care of every bill, the mortgage, and everything in between.
The only reason she got a job was because my sisters and I got older and more independent and she needed something to do.
Plus, she’d gone to school for nursing and didn’t want her degree just collecting dust.
What got me was how she was talking like she took such good care of home back then but after she went to work, it was me doing all of the housework.
Crazy right? Since she worked me like a slave, I was supposed to work mine like one?
Hell naw. We did what we could, when we could.
My household was very laidback. She’d probably lose her shit if she knew I hired cleaners to clean twice a month.
“Mmhmm,” she groaned, back at the sink, scrubbing at backsplash that did not need all of the elbow grease she was using because the cleaners had done it about two weeks ago.
“Well listen. You got yourself a big pretty house. You gotta take care of it, NeNe. Just like you gotta take care of everything else.”
She was hitting me with jabs and left hooks wasn’t she? Trying her damnedest to have a conversation I refused to have in front of my kid.
I didn’t say anything; just headed for the stairs to speak to my other children. I wanted to shower—bad but I wanted her out of my house ASAP. When I made it to the stairs, I peeked my head in Gabe’s room. It was clean. Not spotless. Gabriel’s level of clean.
He looked over his shoulder from the TV at me. “Hey ma. NaNa had me clean my room. Is it straight? You think she gon’ say something about the bed not being made?”
I walked into the room and draped my arm over his shoulder before leaning down to kiss him on the top of his head.
She’d say something for sure but fuck that bed.
Did it need to be made? Yeah. I would have liked for it to be made, but…
fuck it. Not because I didn’t care but because I wanted to spite Eve.
She wasn’t coming up here to check the rooms, anyway.
I was getting her out of my house right after our little talk.
If I had to, I’d send my daddy a quick message to call her off of me.
“The bed is fine, baby. You had a good day?”
He told me about his day, respectfully complained about his grandma, and I left him to his game after telling him to wipe his TV stand and dresser down.
After speaking to and spending a little time with Aubry and Honesty, I made my way down to the office.
“What’s going on, baby?” She asked, as soon as I closed the door to my office. Damn a bitch couldn’t even sit down. “I thought things were great over here.”
“They are,” I lied. “What you mean?” I asked, pretending I didn’t know what she was talking about, as I sat in a chair next to her.
My home office was set up completely different from the one at Couture.
At home, I wanted to relax. Didn’t want to be so…
business like. It doubled as a little haven.
So, although I had a massive glass desk, there weren’t chairs seated in front of it for guests.
I had a seating area with a chaise lounge I frequently used, two big high back chairs, a cute dainty coffee table and a twenty-four-inch TV on the wall.
The color scheme was fuchsia, taupe, and white. Soft, and feminine like me.
“You know what I’m talking about. The house don’t look like it’s been clean in days, the kids doing whatever they want to do and…” She paused, pursed her lips together, and furrowed her brows like what she was about to say was so horrid. “You left your husband.”
I laughed. Not hysterically, but I giggled because come on now.
Why the damn dramatics? My house had been cleaned.
I didn’t just rely on the cleaners. They did deep clean, I picked up here and there, swept, mopped, kept the house decent enough and the kids had chores.
Sure, the stove needed a really good scrub down.
The tile on the backsplash might’ve had a little spaghetti sauce on them, and yeah…
the dishwasher probably did need to be filled but my house wasn’t nearly as bad as she acted like it was.
My kids were my kids, and I raised them the same way I’d been raising them since I had Sparkle.
Without shackles on their feet. There was nothing new about the way I took care of them.
They were breathing, weren’t they? Fed, with A’s B’s and C’s, and clothes on their backs.
I’d say they were doing good enough. My parents knew that.
She was very well aware of how we raised our children.
The only thing that had to come as a surprise was me disappearing for a few.
Since everybody thought Duke and I had this picture-perfect marriage.
I didn’t leave his ass though.
“You so dramatic,” I said with a light laugh. “The house is okay. I work a lot of hours—”
“Hours you don’t have to work. You have little bitty kids and—”
“Hours I choose to work because I love what I do. Little bitty kids that are very well taken care of. They alive, respectful, and do good enough in school. I don’t have to breathe down their necks, ma.
And I didn’t leave my husband. I took a day to myself.
I’m good. I don’t need you worrying about me. ”
She wasn’t really worried. If she was, she would have had a little consideration for me just leaving therapy.
She would have treaded lightly and treated me like someone who was already emotionally drained.
Especially since she knew something was up.
There was no compassion in her tone. Just…
judgment and I was very uncomfortable. I didn’t like this.
All of my mess just… out in the open, on the table for her to pick through.
I didn’t have anyone to blame but myself for that though.
I broke. Not just mentally, and emotionally.
I broke character. The facade deteriorated a little bit.
Now, I had to find another one. One that said I go through shit, but I hold it together just fine.
However, it wouldn’t be a facade. It would be the truth and to be honest even though I felt raw and exposed…
living in my true identity would be a lot easier than wearing a mask every time I was around family.
Well… it should’ve been easier. For someone like me who really wanted that picture perfect life to be reality, it was harder than it should’ve been.
People knew now and that… it made me uneasy.
“You don’t look good. You seem stressed. Losin’ too much weight too,” she said, sizing me up. “You know you can tell me anything right?”
Losing too much weight? Damn, she was chewing me up, wasn’t she? I did lose a little but that was alright because I had a lot to give. I wasn’t the biggest, but I did weigh about one-eighty. Damn near two hundred on me at 5’6 was thick, but I could stand to lose about ten, fifteen more.
“Mmhmm,” I mumbled.
No, the fuck I couldn’t tell her everything.
Evelyn couldn’t see past a perspective other than her own.
I could literally tell her the truth… about everything and she’d come at me with some religious bullshit I didn’t want to hear.
Religious bullshit I knew was sitting on the tip of her tongue.
You see how she told me to go to God instead of therapy?
Yeah… I didn’t want to hear any more of that shit.
I didn’t have anything against religion…
no, let me not lie. I did. Religion to me, was control.
People used it as a weapon. And while everyone was different, all of my life it had been used as a weapon against me.
The church had never been fair, understanding, or good to me.
When I was pregnant with Aubry, the church treated me like shit.
Pastor, bishops, entire congregation. Momma included.
The only member that treated me like they loved me was my daddy.