Chapter  

Oakdale, Georgia – The Parents’ House

Zoie

7 months pregnant

I

’m stuck in suburban hell until all of this mess that’s going on outside of this little space in time gets rectified. I have to remain in Oakdale, GA with the parentals until all of this boils over or Trevor and friends contain it.

I’m not hating on the city. I’m hating on my mother and the fact that she chose this area because she refused to live in the “melting pot of hell” called Atlanta.” Stephanie Nichols now Watson has always been too good for everything. Not one part of that statement is a compliment. My mother is snobby, bougie, small-minded, and downright rude when she believes the individual speaking to her is well beneath her.  I love her to pieces, but she and I see the world in very different ways.

She sees everything that is wrong and wonders why people can’t live to her impossible standards. I see it for its possibilities and see the potential in everything and situation. I look around the house she finally settled on after dragging us all over the surrounding areas of Atlanta and see nothing but my mother. My father has a few pieces in a few of the rooms and in the space he claimed for himself. I roll my eyes now as I did then. I was seven years old and I knew, even then, that I wasn’t going to be anything like my mother. I’d seen several perfectly suitable houses for our family. My mother had not. The house she finally decided on is large enough to house two families within.

My mother refused to live in a city called Buckhead because it sounded too country and “Podunk, hick town written all over it.” The house had everything she and my father had wanted but refused the purchase because of the city name. she then turned down a house that was practically given to her for little of nothing because the city sounded like an “old folks home.” Morningside is gorgeous and where I have a three-bedroom home of my own. It’s considered my “weekend getaway.” My parents hoped getting me my own house would steer me towards marrying and having children.

I laugh then grab my dishes, so I can take them to the dishwasher. Jokes on them because I’m getting ready to start a family in my little one-bedroom condo in Marietta. If we have more children, Trevor and I have discussed moving to the Buckhead house. My mother is still irritated as hell that the house I used their money to purchase is in one of the places she determined unsuitable for her family unit. That makes me chuckle.

A pain shoots through my system and I double over at the same time the front door of my parents’ house is kicked in. I scream but it has nothing to do with the fear most would have in this particular situation.  I’m afraid for my babies.