Sin (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} _sin_) wrote,@ 2020-11-09 00:10:00 |
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WHO: Sin
WHEN August 25 2011
WHERE: Sin’s bedroom
WHAT A narrative, phone conversation with the egg donor
WARNINGS: Language, talk of child neglect, mother/daughter conflict, mention of alcoholism
Sin watched as the cellphone lying on the bed in front of her lit up and rang for the fifth time in a row. She was not going to answer this call, was not, was not, was not. She wasn’t going to hit the ignore button either and give the person on the other end the satisfaction of even knowing she was paying any attention to her phone and should be answering it. Five calls in the span of ten minutes. Whatever the hell they were selling, she wasn’t buying it. The phone fell silent and Sin let out the breath she had been holding, a tiny sigh of relief at the cease of the music playing. She had just gotten in from putting in nine hours at Angel; she didn’t need this shit stacked on top of it. Silence for a few minutes, maybe they had given up. No sooner had she had that thought then the phone started going off again. Choices, choices. Suffocate herself with a pillow or answer the call. Apparently, the sixth time was the charm.
“Sandra.” She said tersely, obviously annoyed and at the end of her short line of patience. Sin had a very short fuse and her mother always seemed to ignite it. “I suppose this is an emergency, given the number of times you have incessantly called my phone in a row.”
“Where are you? Why are you not here?” Came the slurred reply. Drunk again, how surprising.
“In case you missed the memo, Dom and I moved out years ago. That would be why I’m not there.” Obvious, yes. “But it’s Thanksgiving! Everyone should see their family on Thanksgiving.” Thanks…what the hell?
“Sandra, it is the end of August. That holiday doesn’t fall for another three months.” Oh this woman was batshit. No doubt where her and Dom’s own version of insanity came from.
“No, Thanksgiving is tomorrow. If you rush to the airport in the morning you’ll be just in time for turkey.” Was this woman even able to prepare a turkey while sober, not even given her current state? Sin didn’t clearly remember anything of the sort ever being made for her when she was little.
“Even if I were to board a plane right this second, I still would not be there in time for turkey.” Given that it was slightly after nine in the evening and the length of a flight home from Australia, she’d never make it. “Nor do I have a wish to come home and run into your arms and tell you what an awesome mother you are, for that matter. I don’t even eat turkey.” So it was a lie, her mother would never know the difference. Sin doubted she could manage to tell them what color their eyes were let alone their food preferences.
“Don’t take that tone with me young lady!” Came the spat reply. “I raised you and I won’t take that disrespect.” Oh, how dare she? How fucking dare she! That was it, no more nicety was happening during this conversation. Had Sin not been enraged to the point of being ready to strangle her to death she would have hung up the phone.
“That’s a fucking joke in itself.” Sin exclaimed, laughter bubbling up from the pit of her stomach and spilling out of her mouth. “Raised me, my ass. After I reached walking age, had it not been for Dom I would have died from starvation if I didn’t fail to exist from lack of attention alone.” As it was, she hadn’t even walked until she was two weeks shy of her second birthday; the fact she had learned at all was a miracle in itself. “By the time I was three, dinner turned into whatever Dom and I could manage to find in the cabinets and open. You have cookies, chips, and microwaveable noodles for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a week straight, convince me it’s a proper diet, and then maybe we’ll talk about you raising me.” Sad as it was, it was the fucking truth. Had it not been for Dom figuring out how to steal money out of the bitch’s purse here and there and walk Sin to the grocery store every so often for actual food like bologna and bread and milks, they’d have both died of malnutrition. Of course, they were never caught; she was never sober enough to know how much money she really had on her at any given time. “You weren’t a parent. We were those annoying things in the way when you brought home this guy and that guy every night from the bar.” It was no wonder Sin strayed as far as she could from affection; she’d never been shown any! There were no hugs and kisses, no bedtime stories, hell half the time the woman could barely walk herself to the couch before passing out.
There was silence and then she heard the loud sobs coming from the other end of the line. “Why would you say th-those horrible things? I l-loved you kids and y-you were my ev-ever-everything!” There was another pause as her mom became so overcome with grief she was unable to speak. Sin let out an exasperated sigh. How dare this woman cry and try to pull a guilt trip on her? She had no right in the fucking world, no stone left to stand on. “I did my best w-with you both.”
“Well your best just wasn’t fucking good enough, was it?” She wasn’t even close to anything resembling a parent and Sin couldn’t remember calling her anything other than by her first name from the age of twelve. “You didn’t raise me. If anyone gets any type of credit for that, it’s Dom. Dom raised me, you were just the drunk haze in the background, only sober enough to drive us to your sister’s on holidays just to drink again once we got there.” And even those trips stopped eventually. Sin never lied when she said her brother really was the only family, the only person, she’d ever had in her life. He was the only one who ever gave a shit and the only one she herself had ever given a shit about.
“Let me t-talk to your br-brother!” she wailed into the phone. “Put Dominic on the line!” As if somehow everything would turn into sunshine and rainbows the moment she heard his voice. Yeah, that was a pipe dream that would never come true.
“I have no idea where he is, can’t help you.” Another lie, she knew exactly where Dom was. He was in his room and when she had peeked in once she had gotten home from work he was napping. She wasn’t going to wake him for this bullshit. Not when he’d just be put through the same hell she was right now, past memories that needed to stay as dead as she tried to make them, wounds that were reopened and had salt poured into them. He could stay in his dream world and miss it all. “For the record, I think that Dom may very well hate you more than I do, as impossible as it sounds.”
Sniffles. Those were a much better noise than the gut wrenching sobs she had been forced to sit through momentarily. The sound of a glass hitting the top of a counter a bit too hard. Oh, my daughter hates me for being a worthless drunk, let’s drink to that. Sin closed her eyes, biting down on her lip ring, fighting her own angry tears back. She knew she shouldn’t let this woman get to her, but she managed to bring her to a level of pissed that Sin always forgot she had. She was past seeing red, past the point of numb. She was in that state of mind that violence couldn’t even cure. Sin opened her mouth to say something else and heard a doorbell in the background. She didn’t have to wait long to find out who was on the other end of the door. “Hey Sandra, are you ready to go?” A man’s voice, unfamiliar but weren’t they all? None of them had stuck around long enough for voices to ever be recognized. “Sin, honey, I have a date.” Voice instantly changed as if the entire conversation had never happened. She could picture her mother’s last minute rush of cleaning up running eyeliner before throwing open the door with a smile. She’d seen the routine enough times to know how it went. “I’ll have to call you back.”
“How about this one, you don’t call me back, I don’t come to Thanksgiving, and you can go back to pretending Dom and I aren’t real for another month? How’s that sound?” Her words dripped pure venom and she could care less if this ‘date’ heard any of it. He’d be gone by morning, never seen again, and there would be no repercussions. No more accidents to be neglected either; Sin had convinced her mom to get her tubes tied when she was in the ninth grade. She figured she probably saved a few others from being born into this hell, figured it was her one good deed she’d done with her life. “Make sure to be extra plastered before you two climb behind the wheel on the way home from the bar tonight.”
And with that, she hung up her cellphone. If her mother died, there would be no more phone calls, no more reminders of the childhood she’d never really had. Sin wouldn’t cry, she wouldn’t miss her, she wouldn’t feel a thing. It would be the same as reading a stranger’s obituary in the newspaper. No feelings at all. Sin dropped the phone and hugged her knees to her chest, burying her face in them. Why did she always seem to put them through this? As soon as things seemed to be going along as best they could, their mother always had to ruin it for them. At least Dom was spared this time. “Fuck you.” She whispered into her skin. Her hands slid down her legs, a hand landing on the remote to the television. Sin looked up, still not in complete control. “FUCK YOU!” She screamed at the top of her lungs hurling the remote blindly, the sound of glass shattering onto the top of her dresser from her mirror barely registering in her mind.
She rose from the bed, a tear escaping her eyes and rolling slowly down one cheek. How much more of this she could take before she killed her mother herself to save her the waiting period, she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything at that moment. Sin grabbed the corner of her blanket off of the bed and began to walk; dragging it behind her like a small child would and padded barefoot into Dom’s room. Quietly, she slipped into the bed beside him, curling up against him and burying her face under his chin into his neck. Sleep was not an option, but he’d wake up sometime. She pulled her blanket over the both of them and just lay there, concentrating on emptying her mind, letting her thoughts go. Breathe in, breathe out.