Stubborn as a bull

If she had asked me to drop the ceramic Tupperware on the kitchen slab, I definitely would have said a “No! No!” Not because I didn’t want to, but that she had said so. She didn’t ask anyway, so I dropped it hard, it crashed to the floor.

“Oops! That just happened,” I said, feigning regret. 

My stare remained firm and un-darting from the anger brewing over her face. She looked like the blight might bite, and I gave a mock smile, waiting for the worst she could possibly muster.

If she did say something, I sure would have had a perfect comeback to drain her off her high horses. I was brimming tonight on a roller coaster of offenses. ‘What wouldn’t I give to make a terrible ruin on her perfect little home party?’ Her friends had come to the house earlier than expected, smiling, giggling and making all of the wrong remarks. If they had come to make a toast to her new marriage, then they were only moments away from facing the disappointments this union beheld. 

She said nothing to me, and rather strode in happy pretense out the kitchen, to where her cohort of friends cheered on. I didn’t clean the mess I had made; I walked out the door instead, taking the back road to Rosemary’s, reminiscing and patting my heart for every hurt I had inadvertently caused on myself.

Amanda and I have been over the banter for everything since she successfully whipped dad away from my mum, walked him down the altar and put a ring on that finger. We are in all ways different; she is tall and slim, I’m stout and chubby. She is sassy, wears sleek dresses and never fails to ensure skin glow and manicure, I wear baggies and I’m not so in for all the sassyhood. I had never applied to be the bane of any divorcee’s new marriage – that grouchy teenage stepdaughter who always got it wrong and could never be tolerated, but here I am filling the role quite perfectly and doing my best to win a Nobel at it. 

“Sad news, Rosemary. Sad news!” I said, when I got to her house.

Her mum took one look at me and continued vacuuming. She had never been one to like me, especially since she was friends with Amanda. I on the other hand, had never bothered to care. If my only solace away from my dad’s apartment were hers, then she would have no choice but to tolerate my frequent visits, for I had no plans of retracting. 

“You should have seen the way she stared at me” I said to Rosemary when we entered into her room, far away from the prying ears of her mum, “like I’m of no importance.”

“That’s enough.” she offers me a glass of water and I take it. “Maybe you should stop doing this”

“I guess not.” My eyes are cloudy like I might cry, but I don’t. 

“I can’t stand the sight of her Rosy, she is the reason my family is disoriented at the moment.” I rose up from the chair, pacing the room and taking many steps in rhythm as the clock ticks by her wall.

I wondered what might have been our current circumstance if Dad never met Amanda. If she never played my mum for a fool, by visiting home all too often than is normal, and regularly and acting to my mum as a friend who would go the distance for her. My parents had had matrimonial issues and she was her succor in those times. I wondered if those issues had arisen because she stepped into the picture or because other pictures had long been kept rolling. One thing is certain though, her presence in the house aggravated every little flame that could have been easily blown out. 

The day I caught her out of Nadrem with dad, hands intertwined like the best couple the universe could have produced, I hadn’t believed me. I felt my eyes had faltered and my brain had been floating downward in the abyss. It didn’t take long before the family took to a quake and we resulted to what we are now, – stone flakes and dismembered bodies. My mum says life is what it is; hurt and disappointments are the inevitable circumstances that make us stronger. She stays many kilo miles from us with my little brother, wanting to put as much distance as she can from the memories of here. But I chose to remain, partly because of school and because I can’t stand giving Amanda the pleasures of seeing us off the window. This has gotten too far, I know honestly that I might have to stop and let two adults choose for themselves the life they want. But the stubbornness is my bane and it is obviously too vast to let things careen off like nothing ever really happened. 

“…the thing is, being this way will only keep eating you up. You’ll have to let it go and move on…” Rosemary was saying but I hadn’t been paying much attention. She had always been the sane one, with all the better ideas of making peace.

“Maybe, just maybe.” I said. Putting down the glass of water.

She might have been right. Her words might have been enough to soothe me for the moment, but that was only momentary, because by morning the next day, I and Amanda were at it again. This time, she was clearly on the red for walking into my room unprecedented. Privacy is a thing to honor with teenage girls, but she clearly hadn’t learnt that in all her years of growing up. 

“I don’t want to see this in this room any longer. Understood?” making a shift by the pile I had kept by the door and keeping up with the look of disgust and disdain. She tried to seem all bossy like the perfect mother who gets disgusted by her daughter’s ineptitude.

“Thanks, you can stop acting like my mother now, because you clearly can’t be one.” I say, turning my back at her.

“What does that mean?”

“Hasn’t it been said that you could never bear children because you long sold your womb to the devil!”

She didn’t hesitate to latch me by the hair, slapping the senses out of me.

I didn’t think to register the hurt of that, and so I latched back. We were at this; back and forth, hair dragging and hearts pounding till dad came up front, separated the obvious fight and hit me hard.

This is my dad, the man who never once hit me. My dad was the perfect father, that kind of man who listened to each sides of a story before making his conclusion; you could count on his judgment, because he never abruptly picked sides, no biases. Here he was instead, getting all worked up on me for a mistress who have clearly divided the family and turned his head away from the sacredness of one whole home.

Silence greeted the atmosphere.

 “What’s gotten to you Ada, what’s all of these?”

My eyes were clad with tears and hurt, holding the side of cheek that hurt the most. 

“Me!” I’m the one being questioned? Someone is clearly invading my space and I’m the one being questioned for it?” I turned away from them both and got packing, throwing all of my possible belongings into the open traveling box. Anger fuming out of me in no way I can explain.

Mr. Dad stood there watching, holding his wife and stroking her by the back, while she acts like the victim of unknown circumstance 

“What are you doing?” he asks finally, firmly. “What are you doing?”

“Getting out of this hole. Going on to where I belong”

In a good sense, I do not know where I belong, my mum was long gone, and even though she calls me on the interim, of what use is a mother to a teenage daughter when she’s nowhere in sight. I do not know where I belong, but I have no reason to continue hinging here, so I got packing anyway

“Where are you packing to Ada” he says, I see him out the corner of my eyes as he leaves his wife and walks to me. It’s not like I care or mind the action he takes, but a part of me truly wants him to choose me over her. To tell me that he’ll go the mile to have me in this life of his than her, but he doesn’t. I fear that he wants me to leave after-all, so he can have his peace and enjoy his new family.

“If you leave this house in this manner, don’t bother coming back” I hear Amanda say to me from the corner of the room, and then to my dad, “You need to learn how to discipline your little girl Dave, she can’t get just about everything she wants”

These words make my eyes burn with more tears but I won’t give nobody the pleasure of crying. 

“This is my father’s house. I can come up here just about when I want to. You don’t call the shots.” I say to her, mustering about as much dare as I could at the moment

“It is about your father’s house as it is mine and if I don’t want you here, you dare not come in.”

I stare up at him, hoping he’ll stop the free flow of words that purge out her mouth, but he says nothing, standing between us both unable to make a decision. 

Damn! My anger toppled “That’s it Dad?” you’re just gonna watch her do this, tell you what to do to your own child and you’ll take it?! Just like that, is this how the magic works?” I smirk at him, shaking my head in disdain and wishing I had a better idea than this. 

This never happened with my mum, she could never tell him what to do, he always had the final word. 

He said nothing, and after moments of long silence;

“Ada, don’t do this”

But I’m done packing up. I walk past him as he ruffles his hair clearly out of words. I pause, stare hard at Amanda and she gives me an equal look, this was an unspoken path and I’m ready to go with it to the latter. I juggled my way out of the house and hear her call behind me “farewell,” but I don’t care. Actually I do care, I have nowhere else to go at the moment, but stubbornness has bent my will out of my only option, and so I turned back, walking back to the house again. I watch her stand by the foyer giving her very confounded kind of look.

“You know,” I say, confidence seething through my voice again “I go nowhere, if anyone is to leave, it’s you.” I smirk with a bitter grin.

 The battle line was still not drawn, but her face was nothing but white-washed.