Isat on the bed knowing I should feel comfortable, but I just didn’t. I knew Uncle Allen was sincere every time he repeated how he didn’t mind having me here, but I couldn’t shake the fact that I was already 18-years-old. It didn’t matter that I still had a good eight months left of my senior year of high school; I was technically a legal adult. The weight of knowing that Uncle Allen and Aunt Sheri didn’t have to take me in felt like an enormous burden on my shoulders.
It felt like pity.
And not only was I, now, invading my uncle and aunt’s lives, but I was invading my cousin, Alexandria’s, life too. They were taking in a girl who they were lucky to see during the holidays, if that. While I loved my uncle, aunt, and cousin, my parents had made it difficult to maintain a real personal relationship with them. Oh, we chatted on social media and sent texts and stuff like that, but we were hardly ever around each other. My mother married money and she never looked back.
Now, it wasn’t as if Uncle Allen was living in lower poverty or anything, but even his impressive income that boasted of a four-bedroom, three-bath house, wasn’t enough to make him eligible to remain on my mother’s list of priorities. But, then again, I hadn’t even been on my mother’s list of priorities.
I should have felt comforted as I heard the voices carrying into the bedroom, but I wasn’t. My entire life has shifted, and I was being left to deal with it on my own.
“What do you expect me to do, Allen?” my mother yelled loud enough that I thanked God my aunt and cousin were out grocery shopping. This situation was embarrassing enough without having people hear how my mother didn’t want to deal with me on top of everything else. “You act like I have a whole lot of options here.”
“She’s your daughter, Gladys. Your only child, now that Kaden is gone,” Uncle Allen yelled back, as if she needed reminding. “You don’t think this is hard on her, too? And you’re going to leave her alone to deal with it all?”
“I’m not leaving her alone, Allen,” she pointed out. “I’m leaving her with you guys.”
“You don’t think she needs the comfort of her parents?” he said, still yelling at his sister. “You and Donovan get to support each other throughout the fallout, but Kenzlee gets shipped off to us?”
“If you don’t want her here, just say so, Allen!”
There was a slight pause, but my uncle’s voice rang clear. “Listen to me, and listen well, Gladys,” he barked. “Kenzlee is myniece. She’s the only niece I have, and I love her dearly. She is my family, and she isalwayswelcomed here. We love having her here and she will be loved here. So, don’teversuggest that she’s a burden or an unwelcomed guest here. I’m just saying that, not only was it fucked-up what you and Donovan did, but dumping Kenzlee off here to deal with it alone is really chickenshit of you guys!”
“Kenzlee will do what needs to be done while Donovan and I figure things out,” she retorted.
Everything was quiet for a few seconds before I heard my uncle say, “It’s only money, Gladys.”
“We lost everything, Allen,” she hissed. “We are poor!”
“You’re bankrupt, not dead, Gladys, so stow away the theatrics,” he said unsympathetically.
“We lost more than our money, Allen! We lost our home, our friends, our everything!”
“Look, I’m not going to try to convince you to do right by Kenzlee, but understand this, Kenzlee stays, Gladys,” Uncle Allen said. “You willnotcome back in three or four months and disrupt her life again. And, since she is legally an adult, Iwillbe able to stop you from plucking her from our home.”
“It’s for the best, Allen,” my mother assured him. “And Kenzlee will be fine.”
“Are you going to tell her goodbye?”
There was a slight pause, and I just knew, if my mother could, she’d get out of telling me goodbye, but since Uncle Allen was already judging her, she said, “Of course, Allen.”
My hands went inward beneath my thighs, and I sat on them because I didn’t want to accidently go to hug her goodbye, only to make her uncomfortable. I sat and stared out the window that boasted a view of a wooden fence that separated the adjacent neighborhood yards.
I waited patiently for my mother to come to me with a final goodbye to everything I’ve lost. My father has spent the last three weeks holed up in his study in an empty mansion with my mother. His final goodbye was to tell me good luck before shutting the study door behind him. After weeks of whispered arguments, I was dumped here.
I heard the click-clatter of her heels and I knew she was entering my room when the sound disappeared with the plush support of the carpet. I didn’t look towards her because what was the point? She didn’t really want to be sharing this moment with me, anyway.
Her weight sunk onto the bed and I could see through my peripheral vision that she was looking out the window at the same mundane view I was. The silence was profound. It summed up everything that was my relationship with my parents. But this was her dump and desert. She should be the one to speak first. So, I sat and waited.
After a few uncomfortable minutes, she finally said, “It’s for the best, Kenzlee.”
“Are you going to, at least, let me know…where you guys end up?” I didn’t really care. I mean, I did, but…I didn’t. I mean…I cared because they are my parents, but I didn’t because they didn’t deserve it.
“Of course, we are, Kenzlee,” she chided. “You act…you act like we’re just abandoning you, even though you technically are a grown adult.”
And there it was.
The only thing missing was the act of my mother dusting off her hands.
I was a grown adult, so I was no longer her problem. And because I was a grown adult, I was at the mercy of my uncle’s generosity.
