Ignoring her fake pleasantries, I barge my way past her and spin around as she’s closing the door. “Why didn’t you tell me it was your egg that was used to get my mother pregnant?”
Her eyes flicker away for a moment. “Oh,” is all she says.
“Oh? Is that all I get? An oh?”
A frustrated breath leaves her lips, and without saying anything she walks towards the kitchen where I swiftly follow. Once there, she starts busying herself, putting a kettle on the stove and proceeding to boil some water before placing teabags into two mugs. She takes her time with it all, making my frustration levels reach tipping point. When I’m about to press her, she finally turns to me.
“It was your mother who carried you. She was the one who was going to be your mother, not me.”
“But you really are my mother, despite that, and you didn’t think that was an important detail to tell me?”
“As I said, I wasn’t the one who carried you … gave birth to you.”
Pointing an angry finger at her I spit, “I know exactly why you didn’t tell me.”
She gives me that same disgusting smirk. “Oh, please … enlighten me.”
“Because by saying you're my aunt instead of my actual mother doesn’t seem as bad to you, makes it less awful when you’re a bitch to me. What mother treats their daughter the way you have? What aunt even would? You think that by being my aunt makes it look better, but it will never take away from the fact that you are one of the most horrid people I have ever had the displeasure of knowing.”
Her shoulders rise with her anger, and her lips thin. I’ve definitely hit a sore spot. “You come in here and speak to me like this after everything I’ve done for you? I raised you, child, and don’t you ever forget that. All you are is an ungrateful little bitch. You stole Alan away from me, and now you’re trying to steal my Jake. What do you think that makes you? A daughter would never do that to her own mother!”
I have never wanted to hit someone so badly in all my life. Angry tears well, but I force them down. No matter how much it hurts to know she’s my own flesh and blood and is treating me this way, I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing that she’s making me hurt inside.
And I do hurt. She’s my mother, for fuck sake. Isn’t she the one who is supposed to nurture, care, love, and protect me, no matter what the cost? Isn’t she the one who’s supposed to trust me … fight in my corner? Instead, all I see is anger in her eyes. I believe without a doubt that she fully believes everything she’s just screamed at me.
“I was twelve when the abuse started. Twelve!” I shriek. “I may be in love with Jake—I don’t care that you know that—but what I absolutely refuse is for you to try and make the actions of what Alan did somehow my fault.”
“Whatever,” she dismisses, like all that happened meant nothing. She doesn’t give a shit about Alan. In fact, she doesn’t give a shit about Jake. She’s a user. She’ll take and take and take until she can’t take any more. I still have no idea why she left Jake if she was living the life she had always dreamed of. Every man she’s lived with has taken care of her financially. She’s never had to work a day in her life because of it.
I’m thinking she’s done talking and that her “whatever” is the only word she’s going to offer me.
I’m wrong.
“Doesn’t it disgust you to be in love with a man who’s gotten your mother pregnant?”
I hiss in a breath. Again, I feel like I’ve been slapped in the face with that one sentence. Of course, I feel disgusted. I felt disgusted when I found out the first time around, and then I felt disgusted again when I thought she was my aunt. Just hearing her say the words out loud puts it all in to perspective for me.
I’m sick.
Sick for wanting a man who could be having a baby with my sorry excuse of a mother. Sick at the knowledge that I am too weak to push him away if he pursued me. Sick that despite knowing I am having a brother