End Game

End Game - Chapter 4

Chapter 4

            Walking back to Rayanne’s room killed me. I had kept so much from her and now I know that I have to tell her about my mom. I stopped in front of her door and knocked.  

            “Get in here bitch,” she said through the door. I opened the door and it screamed Rayanne. Loud, colorful and carefree, just like her and like I so desperately want to be. She was sitting on her tie-dye beanbag in the corner of her room. “So, are you going to tell me what that was all about? What else don’t I know about your mom? I know that she never paid you any attention and always made you feel like you owed her something. Of course dealing with her being sick must have been hard. So what don’t I know?” she asked me.

            I sat down next to her and let her know what my mom was like. I told her how my earliest memory is of her telling me I was a waste of space in the world. How every morning she would come in my room smelling of vodka and cigarettes and wake me up by telling me I was a nothing but a mistake. I never once was told I love you by her. I had to listen to her go on and on, while drunk, how I was a fat ugly worthless piece of shit. I always hoped that it was the alcohol and not my mom. However, the truth is I knew that wasn’t true. She never loved me. I would lay awake at night and just wonder what the hell was so wrong with me that other people’s moms loved their daughters, but mine wished I had never been born. Lying in bed, I would listen to her scream and moan about how her life was over because she got stuck with a fat, lazy and ugly kid. She would get in my face saying if I had been pretty or skinny she would love me, which would honestly just make me eat more. Then I started to tell her the worst part of all of it. I stood up in front of Rayanne and lifted the hem of the dress to show her my stomach. I saw her face wince when she looked at me.  

            “What the fuck is that?”

            “Cigarette burns, Rayanne.”

            “She fucking did that to you!”

            I nodded to her and told her about the first time my mom did this to me. I was ten years old and my Aunt DeDe had just dropped me off from a doctor’s appointment. She came in and yelled at my mom about how useless she was and how ashamed she should be with herself. I needed a physical for middle school and my mom didn’t care. When the school contacted my Aunt about it, she ended up taking me. My mom simply got up and laughed in my Aunt’s face. She told her she didn’t care what a whore thought about her mothering skills, because I wasn’t a bastard like Rayanne was. Rayanne’s parents married when Rayanne was four and are still married today. However, since they weren’t married when she was born, Rayanne would always be a bastard and my mom called her that every time she saw her. My Aunt DeDe came, hugged me, and whispered in my ear, “I love you. I’m sorry.” I never knew if she was sorry for leaving me with her, even though I begged and begged to go live with her, or just my mother herself.

            I ran up to my room because I knew that mom would not be happy for having Aunt DeDe take me to the doctor, even though I had nothing to do with it; the school did. It would still be my fault. I went straight to my bed, which was the only thing I loved in my room. My grandma got it for me and let me pick it out, and it was the prettiest girlish thing in the world. All pink, ruffles, and I loved it. My mom knew that if she ever did anything to it my grandma would cut her off, and she couldn’t have that.

            Something I still can’t understand is why everyone in my life, from Aunt DeDe to my grandparents, knew what kind of person my mom was, but they never tried to take me away from her or help me. I knew deep down it bothered me a hell of a lot more than I let on. Why didn’t any of them love me enough to take me away from her?