Liar

“Please, just let me go.”

“Stop running away!”

“No!...Let go of my arm!”

“You promised we could talk. You’re always running away when you don’t wanna hear what anybody has to say.”

“I’m NOT running, okay? I tried to come here and listen to your side of things. I’m trying to be the bigger person because neither of us seems to wanna be wrong. I just wanted some answers and all you do is criticize me! I’m getting out of here before I say something I can’t take back.”

“Now you wait a minute, young lady! This is my house! You’re not about to disrespect me by walking away. Face me like the grown up you say you are.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. You act like me standing firm in my boundaries is dissin’ you, when I’m just trying to get you to-”

“Stop! You’re not gonna talk back to me either!”

“Okay, cool. Then, I’m leaving...I said let go!”

“Listen to me! You have disrespected me. You have disrespected my wife. And you’ve put our entire situation in jeopardy.”

“And, how is that?”

“You don’t think your attitude towards your step mom is nasty? All that huffing and puffing. Don’t wanna do this. Don’t wanna do that. Staying out most of the night doing whatever it is you do and sneak back in at four in the goddamn morning!...Yeah, that’s right. Blanca told me what time you stumbled in here. What’re you out there doing? Drinking all night? Drugs? Boys?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m definitely outta here.”

“Aht! No you’re not!”

“Dad, please get away from the door. You can’t hold me up in here.”

“You’re gonna face this! You’re going to be an adult and listen to the all the headaches you’re causing, ‘cause I sure as hell am sick of hearing it.”

“Oh my god! I swear, every little thing I do she runs back and tells you like an informant! She doesn’t come and address it with me, I’m like half her age!”

“That’s what she’s supposed to do.”

“What?”

“You’re my daughter. She’s got a problem with you? She can come to me.”

“That makes no sense.”

“How?”

“Well, since she’s my ‘step mom’ as you say... If there’s an issue with what I’m doing, she can tell me. Like a woman.”

“Oh, yeah. Sure. You’re an adult.”

“What about that is funny?”

“Well, if you’re such an adult...Why do you still live in my house? Eating my food? Using my electricity and my cable? Where is your car? Isn’t it still impounded from all those parking tickets?”

“Here we go.”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. Go ahead. I wanna hear more of your insults.”

“Don’t you get smart with me, girl. I’m the parent. I told you. You don’t talk to me like I’m one of your little boyfriends.”

“Might as well.”

“Excuse me?!”

“Yeah, I might as well talk to you just like you’re one of those losers! Because you know what? That’s exactly how you treat me. Like I’m some girl on the street!”

“Little girl. I don’t know who you think you’re talking to or where all this funky ass attitude came from...but you better watch it.”

“Look, just step away and I’m out. I don’t have time for this.”

“I said get in here and-”

“And I said let go of me! Can you hear?! You better stop touching me!”

“Lower your voice!”

“No! I did that for too long. I’m not doing this! Let me leave!”

“If you keep screaming someone’s gonna call the cops.”

“Good! Let them! I’m so sick of this shit! Let me out!”

“Ruth, shush. I’m sorry, hush now. Please. Calm down. I just wanna talk to you. I’m willing to let you stay and continue living here. But, there’s gonna have to be some change-”

“What’re you talking about? You’re not hearing me. I’m done with this, Dad! I’m not gonna stay here and pretend to be a happy family when we all know that’s not true!”

“Stop. Yelling. Please.”

“No! All I wanna do is leave! I can’t be here anymore. Don’t you understand?!”

“Okay, shush. Look, just come in the living room and we can have a private conver-”

“I said I’m leaving. I’m not gonna sit down and let you guilt trip and shame me into staying here another minute! That’s all you do! You take out all your anger on me when it’s her always stirring the pot.”

“Here you go blaming Blanca again.”

“No! Its not just her, it’s you too!”

“Oh, what? I provide you with food? A roof? Money?”

“Don’t you dare even say that last part.”

“You didn’t just ask for $20 last Tuesday? And Blanca? She works, she cleans, she cooks. She’s provided for you and yet you disrespect her and antagonize her every chance you get.”

“Me?! Antagonize her? Now, that’s funny. I don’t even speak to her. You’re not here all the time. You don’t even know what goes on.”

“Oh, she tells me.”

“Yeah? Some zero proof based story on a bad interaction that we never have? Oh! Or maybe it’s when I left a dish in the sink? If I’m even here I stay in my room, because I don’t even wanna cross paths with her. You don’t see the looks she gives me. The deep sighs when it’s me who walks through the door. The scoffs. The teeth-sucking. The way she only speaks in Spanish when she’s around her family and I’m in the room. The steam heat coming from her when she sees us agree on anything. She comes after me and all you do is side with her.”

“That’s not true at all! You don’t know how much I defend you.”

“Defend me?

“Yes. You don’t know how much I have to damage control. I’ll come home from work and she’s running to me, crying about something evil you’ve said to her! And you’re right. You stay upstairs all day long. You don’t come down for dinner. You don’t come see what we’re watching on the TV as a family. You don’t spend time with your siblings. Just staying up there all day brooding. But, I don’t know what you have to be so upset about. You’ve got it made here, girl.”

“How? Because you both provide basic needs for the kids you decided to have? Because I’m pressured to stay in a house where I’m miserable?!”

“Alright now, Ruth. Let’s not get dramatic. You don’t know what misery is.”

“I-I don’t? Are you serious? I’ve been stuck here under this censorship, putting up with your crap and hopping between odd jobs just to please you! You always told me how you didn’t want to split up the family. You wanted us to have a new start, with a new house and a new mom. You guilt me into thinking I would be hurting you by leaving...You don’t think I had dreams? You don’t think I wanted to be light years away from this place the moment I turned eighteen?”

“Ah, okay. I see now. This act has been to make me feel bad. Because I’m not a perfect dad, right? I can’t make mistakes? You don’t think I had other things I wanted to do too?”

“Oh my god. There you go again making it about yourself! Can’t you just hear me out?”

“Well, what I’m hearing-”

“No! Stop!...Dad, please. Just stop. I’m tired. I’m tired of yelling, Dad...I just want you to listen to me. For once, let me get what I have to say out. Please and I will listen and let you talk.”

“Go ahead.”

“Fine...For years now, Dad. I’ve been telling you how bad I wanted to move out west. How much I wanted to road trip through the mountains and the deserts. Seeing everything that’s out there. I’m not saying I hate it in this small town but, its just never really felt like home. I’ve always felt more pulled towards somewhere else. Like...it’s were my soul belongs. ‘Cause...well...that’s where mom-”

“Okay. If this is gonna become another conversation about your mother, then we can just forget it. I’m not in the mood today for your wild tales about her living in a tiny home out in the dry climate waiting for you to ‘come and find her’. It’s getting silly at this point.”

“You always do this. You never wanna talk about her. You know you’re not the only man in the world who’s wife up and left them, right?”

“Excuse me? You wanna run that by me again?”

“Dad, you just need to face it. She left you, okay? I remember you treated her like dirt and she got sick of you and left. And, you know you wouldn’t let her get away with taking me too, so you kept me away. She’s probably been too afraid to even come near you again! She knew one day I would figure it all out and I’d find her. I know she’s been waiting for me! She’s sent me letters and postcards. She wants me with her and you just won’t let it happen.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. When she left you couldn’t take it. You couldn’t get over the fact that the woman you had complete control over got away. So, you went out and found another woman you knew couldn’t run. She needed you to stay here and she knew you already had a kid. But, she hated it. She hated me. She wouldn’t even speak to me. So, you guys had two more kids. And, you pushed me out. I went from my own bedroom to a spare room in the attic. I went from getting allowance to ‘get a job if you want money’. You put everything into your new family. Except, your anger. You took all that hate you had for my mom and you threw it out on me! Everyday, Dad!”

“I don’t think that’s really-”

“It is! You'd come home, throw your work boots down and scream at me until I scurried away to clean something.”

“I mean...you had chores. It shows you responsibility.”

“But was I really supposed to be responsible for all the cleaning? Dad, you made me wash your clothes. And you were aggressive about it. If I didn’t finish all that cleaning or if it wasn’t right you-”

“Ruth, I’m not hearing this.”

“Stop! You wanted to talk, well that’s what’s gonna happen! You’re gonna face it too! You beat me! You beat me for not being her!”

“Ruth, I said shut up!”

“I was a child, Dad. I was just a kid and you punished me for what she did. She wasn’t around anymore for you to brutalize, so I took her place. Why? Why would you do that?”

“Oh, don’t you start crying. You wanna go? Go. I’m not stopping you.”

“No, it’s too late now. You wanted this! I was just a little girl and I lost her too. Don’t you see? My mom was gone and I needed you! And you gave me her job! The only reason Blanca came along is ‘cause you needed someone to sleep with without it being a crime!”

“You know what? You little ungrateful bitch, who the hell taught you to talk like that? How dare you talk to me like that?”

“’Cause, ‘Darron’ I don’t feel like being nice anymore. I don’t give a shit about this makeshift family unit you’re trying to sell everybody on. You and your wife’s marriage is a con! And the only reason she hasn’t left you is because she’s too much of a dumb bitch to see the monster you are.”

“If you don’t get out this house RIGHT NOW, I’m gonna wear you the hell out.”

“Oh, what? What’re you gonna do, Dad? You gonna hit me some more? I’ve been screaming this whole time. You hit me, I’ll keep it up and the cops will definitely be called. You wanna go back to jail?”

“I-I can’t believe you. This is the thanks I get?! I raised you the best way I knew how. I made mistakes. I went off the handle sometimes, yes. I had a stressful job and a moody kid at home that never wanted to do anything constructive. I worked like a dog to get us here. Right here, in this house that’s so damn miserable to you. And, you’re gonna speak to me this way? You wanna risk getting me arrested? This how you wanna do it?”

“If I have to. I’m done being quiet. I don’t care about your feelings. I don’t care about anything! I just want my mom and I’m going to find her!”

“Your silly ass still thinks she’s looking for you? She’s GONE! Your mother was a drunk that didn’t know how to keep a job! She’d sit here for days, drinking, while you played with the pots and pans in the cupboard. I’d come home to you screaming with a soaked diaper. And she’d be spread wide on the Lay-Z-Boy. Passed out. That’s the mother you want so bad? You ask: how could I? Well, I did you a favor. I dropped her ass at the bus station and sent divorce papers in the mail. She didn’t even mention coming back for you.”

“You’re just a liar.”

“I am? No, silly girl. That woman was the biggest liar you could find. You say she sent you letters in the mail. What do they say, huh? That she thinks of you all the time? That she wishes she never left? How she wants to be a family again and you should head out west and look for her light blue trailer covered in bumper stickers? Did she tell you how much you’d love the weather and how she’ll always love you more than light?...Yeah. I got those too. I got all of them. And, you know what? She stopped sending them. She stopped caring; she stopped loving us. She found something new to focus on. She moved on! And so did I. I tried to show you what a real mother is in Blanca, but you rejected her from the start. All because she wasn’t your beloved mother.”

“Real? Sorry, don’t mean to laugh. But she’s the most performative person I’ve ever met. She pretended to be okay with me until she secured her life with the marriage. From that day on, she treated me as if I was some addition to your household. I was the extra kid no one wanted. You guys had your own and treated them like princes.”

“It’s always been jealousy with you, hasn’t it? You want to blame everyone else for your problems. Well, the only common thing here in all this drama is you. You hate it here, right? You think its okay to disrespect me in my house that I pay for? Well guess what? It was your mother who didn’t want you.”

“Get out of my face! You do nothing, but lie. I’m out.”

“Oh, no. You wanted answers? You wanna be the bigger person? Let me tell you who has the right to be angry. I have done everything I could for you from the day you were born. And then, your mother, the one whom can do no wrong in your eyes? Well, in her drunken rage she confessed to me that I wasn’t even your father and she tried to get rid of you.”

“W-What?...Stop, just stop it. You’ll say anything to-”

“No, you wanted to be disrespectful, right? Let’s continue. She tried to drink you right out of her body so that I would never find out about what a whore she was. And, you know what? I didn’t want to believe that either.”

“Dad, please stop.”

“No! After I kicked her out, I went and had you tested. They swabbed your little mouth and I agonized over it. Your mother lied all the time. I thought there was no way my wife could be so cruel to hand me another man’s child and call it mine. Well, she didn’t lie this time. I’m not your father. I’m not your Dad, and your mother left you...She left you and I stepped up. Like the man I am. Had I known you would be so ungrateful I would’ve dropped you right at that bus stop too.”

“You...You’re such a liar.”

“No. I’m not, girl. And, don’t you dare cry now. Here you are. You’ve been stuck? You feel miserable?”

“...You’re such a liar…”

“So...if there was anything I actually did wrong...it was not listening when Blanca said to put you out years ago. You never should’ve been my problem.”

“No...no I shouldn’t have. But I didn’t ask for any of this. I...I should’ve left a long time ago.”

“After all those dramatics, you gonna go now?”

“Just...just tell me one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I guess I just wanna know when Blanca was gonna tell you her kids aren’t yours either?”

“Excuse me?”

“The boys. The stars. The proteges. When was she gonna tell you they’re her boss’ kids?”

“You must be insane. Making up stories. I swear you’re just like your whore mother.”

“And it seems your new wife is too. All these years of them talking shit about me in another language, you think I’m stupid enough not to start learning it on my own? She confessed to her sister three Christmases ago.”

“Like I’ll believe you. Get out!”

“Fine, don’t. When they’re all relaxing on an island in two years when he retires and you’re alone picking up the pieces, don’t say I didn’t look out for you, ‘Dad’.”

“Get your ass out of my house! Now!”

“I’m going. And I’ll never come back for you.”