Chapter 4

To get Vera into the new apartment as fast as possible, my father went over every day to air the place out.

My brother was busy hauling her things across town.

My mother spent her days buying household supplies while Vera sat home in the air conditioning.

A week before I flew out, I gave up my rental and moved back home.

I laid out a makeshift bed on the balcony again.

My mother was packing Vera's things, looking at her with a face full of tenderness.

"Your room here is always yours. Whenever you want to come back, the bed will be clean and waiting!"

My brother looked at my bedding on the floor.

"Clara, you can see us carrying things in and out. The floor bed's in the way. Can't you just clear it up?"

I looked at him, calm.

"So just because you're moving her, I don't even get to lay out a bed?"

My mother cut in.

"What is wrong with you? Nobody said you can't sleep on the floor here."

"It's just that Vera moving into a new place is a big deal. Would it kill you to lend a hand?"

"After all these years, how are you still holding on to so much resentment?"

She blamed me for holding on to resentment.

Blamed me for not helping, and not one of them asked how my preparations to go abroad were coming along.

Whether I'd hit any snags with the paperwork.

They only cared about one daughter, Vera. They didn't care in the slightest what became of my future.

I forced the words out.

"Vera is your daughter, and so am I."

"If there's no room for me in this house, then I'll just go!"

I gathered up my bedding in a few quick motions, and my mother choked up and started to sob.

My brother shoved me in a fury, and I went down hard, face-first.

"Clara, you won't be happy until you've driven Mom into an early grave, is that it?"

My brother threw me out of the house.

"Go out there and think hard about what you've done. Without your family sheltering you, let's see how tough your mouth stays!"

Three days before I was set to fly out, I was thrown out of the house.

I found a hotel to get through a couple of nights, but when I went to pay, the card kept coming back with insufficient funds.

The clerk at the front desk gave me a look that said plenty.

Understanding what had happened, I went back home on instinct.

But I knocked at the door for three hours, and it never opened.

My brother's voice reached me through it.

"Nobody open that door for her. Let her learn that once she walks out, no one's going to coddle her!"

Inside, there was laughter and warm chatter. Outside, I stood alone through the whole night.

The next morning my mother came out to take the trash down, opened the door, and saw me standing there.

"Mom, that sixty thousand on my card, did you spend it?"

My mother frowned and shot me an unhappy look.

"Clara, it's the crack of dawn. Do you really have to pick a fight?"

So that was it.

I braced my body, numb with cold, and grabbed my mother's arm in desperation.

"Mom, do you have any idea? That was four years of savings for studying abroad."

"You spent all of it. How am I supposed to live over there?"

My mother's face went cold in an instant.

"Don't you have a scholarship for that?"

"How can you be this selfish?"

"Vera is your sister. Fine, you didn't chip in anything for her new place, but what's sixty thousand going to buy for a car? We even had to add money on top of it just to get Vera one!"

They'd actually used my money to buy Vera a new car.

When she didn't even need one to commute.

My brother heard the noise and yanked me off to the side.

"Sixty thousand is worth turning the whole house upside down first thing in the morning?"

I saw the new car and rushed at it like I'd lost my mind.

Before I could even touch it, a hand caught me and flung me back.

I turned and saw my father's face, blazing with rage.

"What do you think you're doing!"

I broke down sobbing, more than twenty years of buried hurt pouring out of me.

"That was four years of savings, money for me to go study abroad. What gives you the right, any of you, to buy Vera a car without my say-so?"

The hurt left me crying so hard I couldn't speak.

Vera spoke up, timid.

"Sis, don't, don't cry. I don't want the car anymore."

My mother slapped me hard, and after standing all night I staggered and dropped to the floor, my whole mouth flooding with the taste of rust.

She stared at me, full of disappointment.

"I could raise a dog for twenty years and it would still wag its tail at me."

"I raised you for over twenty years, and you raise a hand against your own parents over a little money. Raising you is worse than raising a dog!"

My father settled it with a single sentence.

"Vera works hard at her job. The car is a necessity."

"This matter, nobody is to bring it up again!"

I looked at the four faces, all of them disgusted with me.

"Fine. I won't."

I climbed slowly to my feet, said nothing, turned, and left.

Behind me my mother cried that she'd raised an ungrateful wretch.

"Don't bother with her. She flies out the day after tomorrow. Let's see how long she can keep up the stubbornness."

That night, my brother kicked the bedding I'd left on the balcony clear across the floor.

"Old enough to know better and still can't clean up after herself!"

I didn't come back all night, and when my brother passed by, he stepped around the bedding.

The second night, I still didn't come back.

I glanced at the 99+ messages in the group chat.

They were discussing adding a robot vacuum to Vera's new place.

Vera tagged me: "Sis, you fly out tomorrow, why aren't you home yet? Stop sulking and come back."

My brother's tone was mocking.

"Leave her alone. She flies out tomorrow and she's still not home. Who does she think she's scaring?"

I quietly left the group.

Only, that night, my mother stood staring blankly at the messy bedding, and it took Vera calling to her several times, carrying the last of the things, before she came back to herself.

Tomorrow was the day I flew out, and through the night she got up several times to look toward the balcony.

The bedding was still lying there in a heap.

"Vera, today's the day your sister flies out too. Why don't you give her a call?"

The call went through, but my mother's face slowly drained of color.