Nothing's Free

Wednesday

“You? You’re going to run a marathon?”

“Half.”

“What?”

“Half-Marathon.”

“Still, you’re going to run a half-marathon? What is that? Like, 8 miles?”

“Thirteen.”

“Oh, okay,” she says, kind of laughing.

“I have 4 months to prepare.”

“No, I know, I know. I wasn’t saying you couldn’t, it’s just surprising-” Leelee sank back in her chair, one arm folded over her stomach. She knew she didn’t really run that much, that she didn’t look like a runner, and that she didn’t even like running that much, but it still hurt that her own mother didn’t even believe in her enough to pretend. Her mother was still talking, but she had moved on from talking about Haylee to talking about herself. Their conversations usually ended up that way.

“Hey, I actually have to go,” Haylee said, managing to get her words in a gap in her mother’s dialogue. “I’ve got a lot of homework-”

“What? But we barely talked. Why are you in such a rush?”

“I have a lot of homework,” she repeated.

“Oh, Okay. Well, goodnight, sweetie.”

Please don’t call me that.

“Love you,” her mother added.

“Goodnight, love you too,” Leelee added, not even pretending to sound happy or loving.

Only seconds after hanging up the phone, her bedroom door swings open, and her roommate walks in.

Oh, thank you for knocking, she thought sarcastically, watching as her roommate flopped onto the bed. And you’re still in your sweaty workout clothes on my clean bed. Thank you.

“How’s your mom?” Wendy asked, having heard Haylee talking to her mom.

“She’s, uh, good. She’s having Parmesan chicken for dinner tonight.”

“Mhm, that sounds good.”

Haylee begins to work on some homework. Wendy lies on the bed, scrolling on her phone. Ten or so minutes pass, neither of them speaking within that time. Another Two minutes later, Wendy speaks.

“You’re working on homework?” She asks, looking at Haylee’s screen over her shoulder.

“Yeah. It’s for my 204 Jewish Cla-”

“Lame.” Wendy flops back onto Haylee’s bed. Sucking in a breath, Haylee closes her laptop and gets up. She’s hungry; she wants food. She opens the fridge, grabs the bread, opens it, and pops two pieces into the toaster. As she waits for the toast, Wendy wanders down the hall and into the kitchen.

“You left me,” she says in a whiny/ fake baby-like voice.

“I was hungry,” she says back, in the same tone. Not in a mocking way, though.

“Ugh, whatever,” Wendy grumbles, going over and flopping onto the couch. The toast pops up. Haylee grabs her butter and a butter knife and begins to spread it on her toast.

“How was yoga?”

“Oh, it was fine. We had to do this really weird stretch where- wait, I’ll show you!” Wendy gets up and begins to act out some of the stretches the teacher had them do in her yoga class. She posed on the ground, posed on one foot, and even posed with her hands in the air while hissing. After talking about her yoga class, she asks Haylee about her classes.

“I actually wanted to tell you about this; something super weird happened in class today,” she said, bringing her toast over to the table. “So, I get in class, and there’s only like 2 people there. This is a class of 30, by the way. I sit down, and then one more person comes in and sits right next to me, and I’m like, bro, there’s literally so many other seats to-”

“Oh! That literally happened to me yesterday. Well, except there were more than 2 people, but there were literally like 10 other seats open, and they sat right next to me. And they smelled bad, too.”

“Oh, ew,” Haylee comments. If you were there in person, you would have heard how her voice went from excited to monotone. Wendy did not notice. Wendy continued talking about herself: her classes, her “for you page”, her homework. Haylee ate her toast, chiming in with the occasional “Uh-huh”, “yeah”, and “cool”. She finishes her buttered toast, and Wendy finishes talking. Never once did she ask Haylee another question or let her continue what she was saying, but Haylee was used to this; their conversations usually ended up that way.

Saturday

Having gone home for the weekend, Haylee and her mother spent the day together in town. They got coffee, then breakfast, then they went to two stores to look at clothes. In total, they spent over 4 hours in town. Mruno Bars played over the speakers as they drove back home.

Back at home, Haylee begins to work on homework. Her mom asks Haylee if she would rub her shoulders. Haylee told her that she had to finish this assignment first.

“It’s due tonight and I’ve barely started it.”

The day went on. Her father went into town, her mom watched TV, and Haylee did schoolwork (with bathroom breaks). Hours pass; It’s now 9 pm. Footsteps thud down the hall and down the stairs. Her mom. She comes downstairs and goes to her room. Minutes later, Haylee gets an ominous message from her mom.

“Thanks a lot”

“What the-” Haylee trails off. Pushing her laptop aside, she stands. She shuffles back towards her mom’s room, her back stiff from sitting all day. She pokes her head into the bedroom; the door had been open. Upon doing so, her mother made a pouty face, hugged her pillow, and said:

“Oh, it's you.”

“Yeah… Are you going to bed?”

“I guess, so perfect timing,” she said shortly. Haylee walked, hugged her goodnight, and then went to leave the room. Her mother let out a weird sound: like a mix between a sigh and a cry. Haylee turned around to see what was wrong. She was met with her mother’s upset face.

“So that’s it? I knew it, I knew you didn’t care about me.”

“What? Yes I do.”

“No, because if you did, you would’ve come up and rubbed my back.”

Oh, shit. That completely slipped my mind!

“Right?” her mother asked angrily, waiting for confirmation from Haylee that she hated her.

“Sorry, I forgot. I was doing homework-”

“The whole time?” Haylee nodded. Her mother scoffed. “I find that hard to believe.”

“I was!” Haylee said, defensively. A little too defensively.

“Do not yell at me. I took you shopping, bought you coffee and food, and this is how you treat me?”

“Sorry,” she said, though she didn’t know what she was apologizing for. Just for her mother being upset, or for forgetting to rub her shoulders. She didn’t know.

“I took you out because I thought maybe, for once, you would be nice to me.”

“I thought we went out because we haven’t seen each other lately and we were hanging out?”

“Yeah, and that’s something I did for you. You’ve done nothing but take from me all day.”

I didn’t realize I owed you anything for this.

“I work all week, and then I have to come home and cook, and I thought that I could at least relax on the weekend, and that maybe my child loved me enough to do something nice for me. But no. And all I asked of you was to rub my shoulders.”

“I had to do homework. You said I could rub you after.”

“Yeah, sometime before I went to bed.”

“Not my fault you go to bed early,” Haylee snapped back, and immediately regretted it.

“I go to bed early because I have to! I have to get up and take care of you and your father!”

I don’t even live here anymore.

“You try getting up early, and cleaning, and cooking for hours, and grading papers, and then try staying up late after all of that. I take care of the pets, the food, the laundry-”

Why did I talk back?

“Whatever. I don’t know why I was expecting anything from you. Maybe, I thought that because you’re an adult now, and I can trust you to do things when I ask and actually be nice to me, but I guess not.”

“I guess not.” You did this when I was a kid, too.

“Fine, go finish your homework. I’ll just be in here crying myself to sleep because my family treats me like shit.”

Oh, boo hoo.

Haylee left her mother’s room and went back to her laptop. She sat down and began to type, but she found her mind lost. She couldn’t collect her thoughts; she couldn’t focus.

Sunday

She left before noon. She couldn’t stay at home any longer. Upon packing her bag and grabbing her car keys, her mother had called her a bitch. Or more precisely, she had told her to stop with the bitchy attitude and to “knock that disgusting look off your face before I do”, which is funny because she had never hit Haylee before. She’d pointed a knife at her one time, but she hadn’t been in any danger.

She would never hurt me. Not physically. Maybe she’s right, though. She took me out for breakfast, drove me into town, and I couldn’t even take a break to rub her shoulders?

She supposed that she could have taken a break to do so, but also knew that she had needed the time to do her homework. She also thought her mother’s reason for being angry was stupid.

You offered to take me into town. You said you would pay. You can’t do that and then ask me to owe you something later.

Haylee thought about how unfair it was that she had to owe her mother for something her mother had done without asking. About how just her existence gave her reason to owe her mother.

So what if she feeds me and gave me clothes. She’s my mom. That’s her job. I didn't ask to be born; she asked for a child. But I guess nothing’s free, not even being born apparently.

After almost 2 hours of driving, she arrives back at her apartment. Dirty dishes line the counters and fill the sink. The trash can sits in the middle of the kitchen, overflowing. Crumbs litter the carpet of the living room and the kitchen table.

Great. Just what I wanted to do when I got back. Go home, and get yelled at for not doing chores, come back up, and have to do all the chores. Go to school, go to work, clean, repeat. The difference between me and her though is that I don’t yell at my room mates.

Tuesday

Her mom had called her last night. She wasn’t mad at Haylee anymore, but she didn’t apologize either. And why would she? She clearly wasn’t in the wrong here. Haylee hadn’t apologized either, because she didn’t think she was necessarily in the wrong either. Haylee had thought it was water under the bridge, or whatever the saying was. Most of their arguments went like this: Mom yells at her (sometimes prompted, sometimes unprompted), mom cries, Haylee goes to her room, every one goes to sleep, everyone wakes up the next morning fine and it’s not spoken about again. Most of their arguments, that is, and apparently this wasn’t one of them.

“You know, I am so disappointed in you,” her mother says to Haylee as soon as she answers the phone. “Your father and I work so hard to support you, and this is how you treat us?”

“What do you mean?” Haylee asks, playing dumb.

“What do you mean, what do I mean? I mean how rude you’ve been to us lately. Like our call last night.”

“What?” Haylee asks, this time actually surprised. “What was wrong with our call last night.”

“Apparently nothing.”

“Did I say anything wrong?”

“No. Not unless you think you did.”

“No?”

“Then I guess I’ve been stressing all day about nothing.”

“What? No. Give me a reason. Did I say anything wrong on the phone last night?”

“No.”

“Did I give you any attitude last night?”

“No, but—”

“No. I didn’t do anything wrong. I had a long day too, and I didn’t do anything to deserve getting blamed for right now. All we said last night was goodnight and how our days went.”

“You just felt rude though.”

“That’s a stupid reason,” Haylee said, done with her mother’s “bs”. Her mother changed the subject, asking how Haylee’s day was. Haylee told her, and then asked how her mother’s day was. The conversation was fine. It was normal. Then Wendy opened Haylee’s bedroom door.

“Hey, wanna watch bea-” she stopped. “Who are you talking to?”

“Mom.”

“Oh, okay,” Wendy said, leaving the room.

“Hello? Are you listening to me?” Haylee’s mother’s voice said from the phone.

“Yeah, I’m listening.”

“No you’re not. I heard you talking. It’s really rude to talk while someone else is talking.”

“Wendy came in and I just told her I was on the phone with you.”

“It couldn't've waited till after we were done?”

“She came into my room without knocking and asked. What was I supposed to do, ignore her?”

“No, but you could’ve—”

“What? It was either ignore her, which is rude, or quickly answer her, which I did.

“Do not talk back to me. I have had a horrible day. Horrible. And I just wanted to all you goodnight and talk to my daughter, and instead I get yelled at,” she said angrily, her voice changing into a whiny cry at the end.

“Sorry.”

“No. If you were actually sorry you wouldn’t have said it in the first place.”

Haylee said nothing.

“You treat me like shit all weekend and now I can’t even talk to you? You are so fucking selfish. You know that?”

Yeah.

“Answer me!”

“Sorry.”

“You know what? I- I don’t even want to talk to you anymore if your just gonna be ungrateful and selfish.”

“Mom?”

Silence.

Haylee looks down at her phone. The home screen stared back at her. The call had ended. Rubbing her head and sighing, Haylee puts the phone down. Why did their conversations have to end this way?

That night was a long night for Haylee, because try as she might, sleep did not find her until way until the late hours of the night. She tossed and turned in bed.

“Ungrateful and selfish.” Her mother’s last words stuck in her mind.

Maybe I am. Haylee thought to herself. Am I ungrateful? Maybe. Ungrateful for my birth, did I ruin my mother? Ungrateful that I had clothes to wear, and healthy food to eat, and a warm house, and loving parents. Am I a horrible person?

She gave up her whole life for mine. Isn’t that worth something? I was never hit, never hungry, never without an education or home. So what if I used to cry myself to sleep to the sound of her screaming thinking about how I’d ruined her life.

There I go again, making things about me.

No wonder she hates me. I would, too.

But she says she loves me.

But she also says she hates me.

That’s just because she’s mad.

She’s always mad.

I’d be mad too if I had to give up my dream job and dream career to raise a child who won’t even rub my back for a few minutes.

But would I get so mad that I kicked down my own child's door because I didn’t like the mother’s day gift they got me?

I should have gotten her a better gift. No wonder she hates me. I do, too.

Would I get so mad that I call my child naughty words and slurs?

Maybe if they’re true. And she doesn’t remember doing that.

Would I get so mad as to point a knife at my child and then have the nerve to call them psychotic, as if I’m not the one pointing a knife at them?

She doesn’t remember it, so it didn’t happen.

Haylee laid in bed awake for hours, every horrible memory running through her mind. She replayed the scene from earlier, the phone call ending not with a farewell but with a click and silence. What could she have done differently? The mattress felt too soft, the air too thick to breathe. She felt a sting of guilt—an echoing voice in her head telling her that she was selfish, ungrateful, and a disappointment. It was a loop she couldn't escape. The weight of her mother's unhappiness was a blanket she couldn't throw off. It had been this way forever, the price of love always feeling like a debt she couldn't repay.

I guess nothing’s free, not even being born apparently.