Page 1 of I'm Not Done with You Yet

Part One

1

Twenty-six Years Ago

Aunt Claudette, she’s the best. So everyone says. By everyone, I mean my mother. My mother loves Aunt Claudette because she is always ready to help out with “the cutie pie” (i.e., me). “Cutie pie” is the first clue that should tell you that my mother doesn’t give a shit about me, because really, how fucking generic a pet name can someone get for their only child? She can’t even be bothered to come up with a more unique pet name, one that’s tailored to fit me. No, I remain known as “cutie pie” up until even my idiot mother can’t pretend that I’m cute anymore.

But anyway. Back to Aunt Claudette. Not technically my aunt. She’s just an elderly neighbor who Mom swears loves me like “her own.” Her own what? Aunt Claudette never had kids. And the thing about Aunt Claudette is, she doesn’t look after me out of love, no matter how much Mom would like to believe she does.

Sure, maybe she did it out of love at first, when I was littleenough not to have any personality. When I really was a generic little cutie pie. But now that I’m seven, I realize she’s not looking after me because she cares about me. She does so because she cares about what I would do if I wasn’t being watched.

This morning, Mom made me cocoa pancakes for breakfast before rushing out the door to get to work. Cocoa pancakes, not chocolate pancakes. She’d read that unsweetened cocoa powder is full of antioxidants, so today, my pancakes come out brown as shit and tasting no better. I hate the color brown. That’s what my hair is. Mom sometimes tries to call it “chestnut” or “chocolate,” but we both know it’s neither of those things. And here are my pancakes, the same disgusting mud-brown as my hair. I can drown the pancakes in syrup, but the only syrup allowed in the house is agave, which tastes like melted plastic. Clint Eastwood nudges my foot. The name’s a joke that stuck—Clint is a loyal rescue mutt of an indeterminate age, but he looks about as old as God. I look into his trusting face and tear a tiny bit of shit pancake off. His stumpy tail wags, and he stands on his hind legs and paws my knees with a desperate whine.

But before I can give him the piece of pancake, Aunt Claudette rushes in like a hurricane and grabs my wrist, almost painfully. “What are you doing, child?”

I gaze at her. I have huge hazel eyes. Whenever people describe their eyes as “hazel,” it’s always brown. But mine have that warm honey hue that makes people do a double take. They’re also stupidly big and round. Legit Bambi eyes. I widen them now, because I know that’s what people do when they’re taken by surprise. “Clint is hungwy,” I say.

Most people, including my own mother, would soften and say, “Aww,” at that. But Aunt Claudette’s mouth thins. I’vemiscalculated. She knows I’m too old for such mispronunciations. “Hung-ree,” she says. “You know how to pronounce it properly.”

I do.

“And you know Clint isn’t allowed chocolate. It’s bad for him.”

It’s not even a huge amount of cocoa. Not enough to do any permanent damage, only enough to give Clint the runs. I was going to really enjoy watching Mom clean up after Clint’s diarrhea.

“I’m sorry.” I cast my Bambi eyes down. All of my picture books show kids doing that when they’re sorry. “I forgot.” I look up at Aunt Claudette again, and this time, I’ve weaponized my Bambis—they’re shining with tears. “Please don’t be mad at me, Auntie.”

That’s something I’d learned from Jayden, Mom’s current “special friend.” Whenever they argue, Jayden looks at Mom a certain way and says, “Don’t be mad at me, babe,” and she sighs and her shoulders slump in defeat, and even at the age of seven, I know what a conniving asshole Jayden is, because telling someone not to be mad is putting all of the responsibility on them.Sure, I may have done something wrong, but YOU do the labor of getting over it.Jayden may be a grade A asshole, but he’s taught me some really great tactics. And women fall for that shit all the time.

Even Aunt Claudette is no match for it. She flushes, her eyebrows coming together, and she quickly says, “Of course I’m not mad at you, angel,” and I know for sure she’s mad because she knows I’m no angel. Then she taps a palm against her fat thigh and says, “Here, Clint,” and herds Clint away. Away fromme. I shrug, running a finger down the edge of my butter knife. I fleetingly entertain the thought of plunging the point of that knife someplace soft and warm, someplace with a steady pulse, so the blood would come out in a rhythmic spurt. But I could never hurt Aunt Claudette. She’s special. She’s the only one who can always see right through my bullshit, and she loves me anyway, which just goes to show how flawed humans are.

She may as well love a cockroach.

2

Present Day

South San Francisco, California

The thing about crazy bitches is there’s usually some man who’s pushed and prodded and gaslit her to that point.

I’ve never been a tidy person, but I like the idea of it; I enjoy the feeling of having tidied up, of sitting in an uncluttered room with a cup of tea and a good book. I like it enough to spend some time at the end of each day putting things away. I never get the room to “pristine,” because I’ve been raised with clutter and never quite got the hang of cleaning, but I put in enough effort to make sure the space is livable. Ted, on the other hand, is an all-or-nothing guy. When I ask him to help declutter, he’ll say, “Why bother? It’s all just going to get messy again.” If he can’t have perfection, then we may as well live in a hovel.

This evening is no different. After dinner (in front of the TV so we won’t actually have to make conversation with each other), Ted shuts himself away in his man cave for a round of Fortnite—apparently, it’s not just for twelve-year-old boys; it’s also forthirty-seven-year-old men—while I putter about the house putting away our daily bric-a-brac.

Normally, I wouldn’t mind it, but today, our neighbor Kimiko stopped by to “borrow” some flour (I say “borrow,” but Kimiko is always coming by to borrow cups of sugar or an egg or two, and not once has she returned anything), and while she waited in our foyer, Ted had said, laughingly, “Sorry about the state of the house. Jane’s just really messy like that.”

I’d come out of the kitchen then, carrying a Tupperware of flour, and said with more bite than I’d intended, “What? I’m not the messy one here.”

Ted had raised his arms in a theatrical way, eyes wide, and laughed. “Whoa, it’s okay, babe. I don’t care that you’re messy.”

“But I’m not—” I caught it then. The shrill tone of anger in my voice that sounded like cracking glass. I stopped myself, but I could tell that Kimiko and Ted had both caught it too.

Kimiko had left pretty quickly after that, not bothering to stay around for a chitchat like she usually does. Which was just as well, because it gave me a chance to nip down to the basement and be alone. Lock myself away so I could cool down before I did something I’d regret. Something irredeemable.

Now, as I pick up Ted’s half-drunk glasses of water and tea from the coffee table, my resentment mounts. Why is it always down to me to clear away all this shit? The random remnants of our daily lives—socks on the floor, pens and bits of paper everywhere, a half-eaten sandwich abandoned on, of all places, the TV cabinet. And I wouldn’t mind it so much if Ted weren’t such a fucking asshole about it all, if he’d at least acknowledge that I put in more effort than he does. I may be messy by nature, but I’m trying, and he’s not seeing it, or maybe he’s refusing to. Maybe he enjoys pushing my buttons, seeing how far he cantwist the dials before I crack and show anger, like this morning, so he can say, “Geez, why’re you getting so worked up over nothing?” He’d do his little incredulous snort and share a look with whoever he’s talking to, and in the end, I’m always the crazy bitch who shoveled molehills into my own Mount Everest.

I can feel the old anger rising up again. I don’t want to have to go down to the basement for the second time in a day, so I fling down the balled-up Fortnite T-shirt I’d picked up and stride out of the living room and into the dining room, where my laptop lives. Let Ted deal with his own mess.

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