Page 87 of Done with You

“Does a horse eat hay?” Mieka replied. All their phones buzzed. “I just sent you all the menu for the Indian restaurant. Text me what you want and I’ll place the order.

Within an hour they were all sitting around Pasha’s cozy, stylish living room with the gas fireplace going, soft music in the background and the coffee table covered in takeout boxes. Rayma was on her third glass of wine and they were all giggling. Triss kept dozing in her recliner, waking up when someone laughed, only to demand they fill her in on what was so funny.

“I needed this,” Rayma said, smiling like a cute little drunk. “So badly. Thank you.”

“Kiddo, what Mom and Dad did to you was so wrong, and we will never forgive them for it,” Triss said. “Sending you off to live with Pasha without even telling her, simply because you became too wild and out of control. No, they just refused to adapt their parenting. You needed love and structure, realistic boundaries, and support. Not their constant belittling and shaming.”

“And certainly not their abandonment,” Oona added.

Rayma sipped her wine and nodded gently.

“I’ll never forget the way they made me feel after I cut the sleeves off my prom dress. Because let’s all be honest here, a long-sleeved prom dress was stupid,” Mieka said. “Mom said I was showing way too much skin and dressed inappropriately. Wouldn’t let me leave the house until I put on a cardigan—which I tossed the moment I left with my date. Fuck that noise. It was way more conservative than all the other dresses there. Sadie Fitzwilliam wore a literal bra and a tutu as her prom dress.”

“Or the way they’d shame the neighbor girls for what they wore—jeans, ballet flats and tank tops. Judging their parents for letting them go to parties and have friends over.” Pasha sipped her wine. “Friends asked to come over, but I said no after a while. And it wasn’t because Mom and Dad said no, even though they did, it was because I was too embarrassed to introduce my friends to my weirdo parents.”

“Remember how we had to jump over the vacuum lines on the carpet in the living room?” Oona added. “And if we messed up the lines we got in trouble.”

“I wasn’t even allowed in the living room,” Rayma said. “At least not without an adult present and then I had to tippy toe over those vacuum lines, and I was only allowed to sit on the floor. Never the furniture. Do you know how hard it is to sit on a carpet but not mess up the vacuum lines? It’s impossible!”

“Let’s talk about the furniture for a moment,” Triss added. “Plastic on it, and we still weren’t allowed to sit down on it.” She made a face of disbelief. “You know they still have it on there, right? Like even now that there are no children around to make a mess, they still have the plastic.”

All the sisters shook their heads.

“I just never felt like I was good enough in their eyes, you know?” Rayma said. “I knew that I was an oopsie baby. And I felt like that everyday. Knew I wasn’t actually wanted, that I was an inconvenience and an extra mouth to feed. And I know that’s why I acted out. Because as our therapist sister can agree, even negative attention is better than no attention.”

Oona nodded solemnly. “I was an oopsie baby, too.”

“Yeah, but you were close enough in age to Mieka that it wasn’t as big of a deal. You’re only three years apart. You and I are five years. Like they were done having kids, then I came along.”

“Thank God Dad finally got snipped,” Pasha said shaking her head.

“People are stupid,” Rayma said. “And that includes our parents.” She sighed. “I don’t even know why they’re coming. I’ve never felt like they really loved me. And the fact that they’re spending money to come out here just boggles my mind. Royce and Yanna don’t spend money.”

No, they sure didn’t.

Their parents were penny-pinchers to an embarrassing degree. Their mother used to send letters to people on the back of receipts rather than paper, using a Sharpie to block out her purchases, but then utilizing the blank back of the receipt for full-on letters to family members. And it wasn’t that they couldn’t afford it, it was that their parents just didn’t want to spend the money. They weren’t rich, but they weren’t destitute, either.

Their mother Yanna’s family immigrated to the United States as refugees during the Kosovo war when she was just a child. In high school, Yanna met the girls’ dad, Royce, and they had been together ever since. Their mother’s family had always been pacifists. Trouble duckers to the nth degree. The last thing they wanted to do was draw any undo attention to themselves and risk deportation. And that ideology followed their mother into her adult life with their father and their family. They were reserved, quiet, and conservative. Shaming their daughters for any kind of bold personality traits they might have. The girls had to be quiet, perfect, and well-behaved at all times. Laughter and excitement were even scolded. Clothing needed to be neutral and boring, hair in a braid. Children should be seen and not heard.

So, the fact that all of them had left home as soon as they could was no surprise.

Pasha toed the line and was the perfect child. Triss was pretty similar. Mieka rebelled a little, but her life revolved around dance, so she also had to be disciplined and was gone a lot. But she snuck out a bit, lied about where she was, and to Oona’s knowledge never got caught.

Oona emulated Triss and Pasha since she idolized both of them and wanted to set a good example for Rayma.

But Rayma—the baby—was the wild one. She went against the grain of their upbringing with every fiber of her being and that just confused and devastated their parents. They couldn’t understand where they went wrong. So they gave up when she was seventeen, bought her a one-way ticket from Baltimore to see Pasha in Seattle and told Pasha to fix her. That they’d done everything they knew how to do and Rayma was Pasha’s problem now.

It was no wonder Rayma was as triggered as she was with the news of their parents coming. Oona figured in some way they were all probably experiencing some triggers.

A tear slid down Rayma’s cheek, but when Oona tried to comfort her, Rayma shook her head and smiled. “I’m okay. You know, I asked Heath to walk me down the aisle, not Dad.”

Mieka, Triss and Oona’s eyes all went wide. Pasha, of course, already knew.

“Dad hasn’t been there for me, hasn’t loved me or cared for me the way Heath has. Heath was—is—my benchmark for a good man. For the perfect partner and I think I came pretty close.”

“You definitely found a keeper,” Pasha said. “We all adore Jordan.”

“And Heath approves of him. Which is all I need.”

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