CHAPTER THREE

Parents Suck

 

Doubt raced through Elsea’s mind. She stood in front of the mirror as she held the long white dress up to her body. Had she picked the wrong dress? The thoughts were superficial and she knew it. She knew that her doubt ran much deeper than whether she had picked the right dress. The whole relationship had happened so fast she wasn’t sure if she had picked the right man.

Peter was successful and handsome and charismatic. Everything she always thought she could never have. A man like him would never want a woman like her. Not in reality. When did someone ever get everything they wanted without there being a catch? She hoped, deep down inside, that he really did see something in her that was amazing. The beautiful woman that she always hoped to be, the one always there, somewhere in there, somewhere but buried deep inside. But negative thoughts consumed her.

It’s not the dress. The thought kept repeating over and over like a broken record. Whatever it was, she couldn’t pinpoint it, but she couldn’t escape the feeling that she was about to sell her soul to the Devil.

She fidgeted with the dress. The emotion was disappointment. She didn’t look like the other brides. The ones she saw all over magazines or even the girls she went to high school with on Facebook. They looked perfect. Perfectly slim, dress perfectly fitted, hair perfectly coiffed, and groom perfectly in love. It was expected for the husband to look upon his bride with loving eyes, but Elsea knew that Peter had never looked at her that way. The wedding was tomorrow, and all she could do was question Peter’s love.

The thought didn’t linger when she realized that she was about to be moving out of her parents’ house, getting away from them once and for all. Her heart felt like it skipped a beat in its excitement. The abuse was wearing her thin, and she tired of hearing the same thing over and over about how she never did things the right way. How she could have been anything in life but settled on being a checkout girl. She enjoyed her work there, but everyone else wanted to shame her for it.

A husband. It was the best Christmas present she could have gotten. It was a way out of that house. She looked forward to her honeymoon, but unfortunately for her and Peter, they wouldn’t be able to leave for it until after Hannah’s graduation party. That was the last request that she was going to grant her parents. She dreaded the whispers.

You know that could have been you. That should have been you. Those were the words that her parents had whispered in her ear almost a week ago at the graduation ceremony while she watched her perfect little sister Hannah walked across the stage to receive her B.A., with her law school boyfriend cheering her on like she was a rock star. Oh, Hannah is so mature, they would say. Hannah is so beautiful. Hannah is so smart. Hannah, Hannah, Hannah. She was her little sister, but she outshined her in everything from smarts to beauty. She was confident with her perfect teeth, pouty lips, and natural blonde hair. All Elsea had was a tarnished smile with teeth that didn’t look like they fit in her mouth, adult acne, and mousy brown hair. She was plain. A nothing in everyone else’s eyes except Peter’s, and tomorrow would be her day, and no one could take that from her. She had found a man, and she wanted her due credit for accomplishing such a task. But as she thought about it, the doubt returned.

“Don’t play with that dress!” her mother said, peeping into Elsea’s room. “I just had it pressed this morning. Don’t come crying to me when it’s all wrinkled again.”

Elsea stopped looking at herself, walked over to the closet, and placed the dress back into the bag. Her head dropped in shame.

“Do you have your shoes?” her mother asked.

Elsea felt her heart stop.

Her mother stepped toward her, waved her hand in her face, and snapped her fingers. “Hello, is there anyone home? Get it together!” she barked. “Where are your shoes?” She walked over to the pile of fake flowers that sat in the corner on the floor and began organizing them.

“I left them at Peter’s.”

Her mother placed her hands on her hips, annoyed. “And why are they at Peter’s? I told you to bring everything here, did I not?”

“I know, I just—”

“Elsea, you disappoint me. I know that it is your big day, but Christmas is in a week. Your last-minute wedding is tomorrow, and I have Hannah’s graduation party to think about. I need you to be on your A game.”

Elsea could feel fire in her belly. Her mother’s voice was worse than nails on a chalkboard, and she only wanted her to be silenced. Her mind flashed back to when she was eleven and Hannah was nine. Hannah had become bored while their parents were out doing yard work one morning, so she decided that she was going to paint the bathroom with bubbles. She filled the upstairs tub and bathroom sinks up with laundry detergent and every type of soap that she could find in the house, then turned on the water. It overflowed from the tub and seeped into the halls, making a mess of the entire upstairs.

All Elsea could remember was them rushing into her room. Her mother yanking her headphones out of her ears and her father throwing the magazine she was reading across the room. They yelled and screamed at her for not keeping an eye on Hannah, and she cried as her father’s hand fell on her backside, heavy and full of sting. Over and over.

I told you to keep an eye on your sister, did I not? Her mother’s voice echoed through the room. And through her tears and cries and pain she could make out Hannah’s face, peering through the doorway of her room, smiling, trying to hold in her giggles. Even now, Elsea didn’t understand why it was her that they chose to punish and not Hannah. She was old enough to know better. All Elsea wanted to do was listen to the radio and dream about one day being as pretty as the girls in the magazine she was reading.

She remembered going to bed that night shaken, praying that they would die. That they would all die. She remembered all of the other times, too, but her silence after that beating was perpetual. In passing, the old neighbors would mention her awkward, unrelenting silence to her parents, but they always played it off as shyness and mental deficiency. If they only knew the truth. The memory only made Elsea angrier, and she could feel the fire in her stomach rising up through her throat until it spit from her mouth.

“I heard you, Mom! I heard you for the millionth time! I will be out of your hair after tomorrow. You can count on it. Then I will never have to darken your and dad’s doorstep again!”

Her mother turned around. Shock was painted across her face.

Elsea had never raised her voice toward her mother, but years of pent-up frustration oozed out of her. She had always been silenced in that house, never understood, never encouraged, and never loved. It had always been Hannah. She had taken everything.

“What’s going on in here?” Her father walked into her room with a book in his hand and his glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose. “What is going on here? I can’t even prepare to officiate without you two bickering.” He stood in the doorway, unfazed by the rare display of anger.

They stood silent.

“Hannah and her boyfriend will be back soon with her stuff, so you two need to remember that we have a guest, and I don’t want him thinking the worst of us. The wedding is tomorrow. This is supposed to be a happy and joyous occasion.” His words echoed in the hallway as he distanced himself from them.

“I’m sorry, dear,” her mother said. “The stress of everything is starting to take its toll. I should have canceled the Christmas party this year with both the wedding and the graduation.”

Elsea turned her back to her mother and rolled her eyes. The moments were rare when her mother offered apologies. It was even rarer to be called dear. She must have been imagining she was talking to Hannah.

“I’ll go get my shoes from Peter’s,” she said before leaving the room.

Her mother didn’t look at her, and Elsea didn’t look back.

Elsea sat outside in her car, looking at the house. She could see her breath in the air and hear the sound of the wind blowing past the window. The house was covered in Christmas lights, and the whole block was aglow from them. Her parents always had the nicest Christmas decorations on the street. It was the perfect house with the seemingly perfect family, but it was never real.

The house was a house of horrors for Elsea, and she couldn’t bear it anymore. This wasn’t even her wedding—it was her mother’s. Just another thing that she could take credit for, that she could orchestrate and run the way that she wanted to, but this would be the last. Elsea was going to have a husband now, and there was no way that her mother could manage Peter.

Elsea felt an overwhelming aura of protection come over her. I am going to have a husband. The thought made her smile, and to smile made her uncomfortable because she hadn’t smiled in what felt like days. Her fears appeared to be lifting, but something kept nagging at her.

Something wasn’t right.