Page 74 of Don't Hate the Player
“We bought this house to get you in a good school district. We put you in Monteronni so you would have the best foundation. Every Model UN conference, every class trip, the field hockey team—we’ve never denied you anything you need to succeed. You have the potential to go so far, and you’re up here playing video games? What do you have to say for yourself? No, spit that out first. I can understand you either way because I’m your mother, but it’s gross when you talk with toothpaste in your mouth.”
Ever obedient, I spit. My mouth feels great, which makes it the only part of my body that does. What do I have to say for myself? Nothing I want to tell my mom. Nothing she doesn’t already know. She has the story; I don’t get why she needs to hear it from me. I did what I did, and the universe is exacting its own revenge.
I don’t want to sit next to my mom on my bed. I’d rather stay in the bathroom and procrastinate by washing my face. That keeps my mouth free, and if I start crying for the first time this week, the suds will hide most of the tears.
“I only did it because I thought I could do both,” I begin. It’s true; as ridiculous as it sounds now, I really did think I could keep this charade up for the rest of my life. “I want to do what you . . . ?you know, what I’m supposed to do. Get good grades, go to college, make everyone proud. So I was doing that. I just also wanted to play. It was fun. I liked it. So I did both.”
Washing my face hasn’t taken nearly long enough to keep me from going back in my room. I rinse off and start working on my hair. I haven’t washed it all week, which is a smidge under fine considering my curly hair hates being washed more than once every four days, but I grab a spray bottle and start scraping it into a bun at the top of my head to hide the pillow frizz.
“You did both,” my mom repeats. From her deadpan tone, I’m guessing that explanation isn’t going to fly. “You lied, sneaked, and exposed your identity to online terrorists so you could play a game that has nothing to do with your future because it wasfunand you thought you could doboth.”
My grip tightens around my hairbrush. This is the part of the movie where the smarty-pants teen claps back at her mom for not understanding, and they yell at each other in a big fight that ends with someone slamming a door or taking a long walk to “cool off,” because kids can totally disappear for hours these days without their parents reporting them missing. My family doesn’t operate like that. I don’t yell at my parents; I can’t even imagine what my voice would sound like yelling at them. In return they rarely ever raise their voices to me, but the few times they do generates this feeling of total dread, like I’ve just spotted a tarantula crawling up my leg. Sometimes even hearing other people yell makes me feel that way. I maneuver around confrontation as often as possible.
I can’t do that today. Or tonight, hell if I know what time it is by now. I’m not going to yell because there’s no point, but my mom has to know how I ended up here. My hair is up and out of my face, and I can’t stay in the bathroom forever.
My mom watches me intensely as I walk over and take a seat on the bed a few safe feet away from her.
“It was more than that,” I admit. Damn it, my eyes hurt. No, no, I hate this. Don’t cry. Tears won’t get you anywhere, Emilia. Do not cry. “I was doing so much for you.” I sniff.Come on, not now. “And I wanted to have something for me. I’m really grateful for everything you and Dad do, but you don’t leave any room forme.”
I expect Mom to interrupt me, but she doesn’t. She just glances over at my bedroom door like she’s expecting someone to walk through. It’s not disorienting enough to stop the tumble of words that I somehow can’t stop from falling out of my mouth. They’ve been sitting at the tip of my tongue for so long, and they really, really want to come out now.
“I didn’t choose any of it,” I say through what suspiciously—Yup, no, those are tears. Despite my best efforts, I’m crying at my mom in my bedroom. I feel seven years old. “You and Dad pick everything. Field hockey, all those extracurriculars, my courses, and it’s fine! I’ll do it; I know I have to do it because I don’t want to waste your time. I chose to playGLO, though. I’m so good at it, Mom. I taught myself how to be good at it. I tried really hard to be safe so this wouldn’t happen, but it happened because those guys are scared ofme. Did you see the pot for that tournament I was in? I could have paid for UPenn after the contract was up. It wasn’t just a game I was wasting my time with; it was a real thing I could have been great at because Iwantedto be.”
I don’t have a tissue in grabbing distance. Instead, I have to wipe my nose on my shirt.
“I took a risk to follow what I wanted, and it backfired. As long as no one got hurt, I’d make it again, though, because it was my choice to try a new path. I’m so, so sorry for lying. You can ground me forever—”
“You are,” Mom interrupts kindly, “grounded forever, I mean. Your father and I decided.”
“Yeah, cool, that’s fine. I get it. I lied a lot, not just to you and Dad. I did it to protect you from . . . ?the exact thing that happened, but it was still lying.”
“Emilia.” My mom closes the gap between us on the bed and hugs me. “It’s our job to protect you. We’re going to do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”
I can’t say I expected that. This conversation goes almost too smoothly, and I’m not sure if my sense that Mom is holding something back is outweighing my relief that she’s not ripping into me. So much of our relationship is Parent Tell, Child Do that I’ve never considered softness as a potential reaction to a fuck-up of this scale.
“Once this blows over, there won’t be much to do, Mom. Someone else who isn’t a straight white guy will piss everyone off by existing next week, and they’ll forget about me, I think. They like it when they win, and I’m not going to play anymore, so they win.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” my mom says as she rubs my back. “Romeros don’t lose.”
I pull back from the hug in surprise and level my gaze at my mom. She has the same look in her eyes that she gets before a field hockey game. Someone has replaced Mom with Coach Romero when I wasn’t looking.
“That thing you said about this game being your choice,” she continues. “I wish you could have made it without keeping it a secret. I’m not saying we would have let you do it if we had known, but I understand that impulse.”
“You do?” I can’t think of a single reason my mom would understand where I’m coming from. She’s super-mom, always on the PTA, always making sure I’m top of the class, all-supporting, all-dazzling, always. What could she know about wanting to try something unexpected?
“My mother never left Vieques, you know. She sent me and your titi Bea to live in Philly when we were teenagers. We didn’t have a choice. We had to make money and get married. There were so many times when I told myself I should do something different, go to college, maybe get a degree, but I didn’t. You’re supposed to have more choices than I did. I see so much of me in you.”
For the first time, the idea that I might be like my mom doesn’t make me roll my eyes.
“There’s your father in there too; he’ll never admit it, but when he showed me that computer you built, I almost had to pull him down from the chandelier. He was so impressed. You’re both workaholics. And nerds.”
I knew it! Dad was proud of me. Horrible circumstances, but it still feels like a victory. When I smile, I feel the salty film of my dried-up tears cracking on my cheeks.
“I didn’t understand that in trying to give you more options with what to do with your life, we were restricting you from choosing what those options might look like. I didn’t put it together until that boy downstairs brought it up.”
The boy downstairs. There’s a boy downstairs. Istheboy downstairs?
My mom laughs out loud when I jump up from the bed. Totally involuntary movement, my legs just feel like someone shocked every muscle with a cattle prod. The charge carries up to my heart, setting it to a frantic, pounding beat that I’m sure Mom can see through my T-shirt. Jesus, my T-shirt. It’s gross! I’m gross! No, I washed up in the bathroom. Did I put on deodorant? No, why would I? I didn’t know there was a boy, potentiallymyboy, downstairs.
