“After everything I’ve spent on you…”
If I tentatively asked for a new pair of track shoes, if I begged for a ride home in the rain rather than walking, if I dared to bring home a B-minus in Chemistry, Renata’s jaw would tighten, her eyes would ice over, and she would hiss, “After everything I’ve spent on you, Jana.”
Every time she said it, a heavy, invisible stone was added to a backpack I carried everywhere. I believed my grief and my presence were bankrupting her.
The spring I turned sixteen, my AP History class organized a three-day excursion to Washington D.C. It included a chartered luxury bus, two nights in a hotel with an indoor pool, and VIP access to the Smithsonian museums. The total cost was $340.
I brought the crumpled permission slip home and left it tentatively on the granite kitchen island, right beside Renata’s designer purse. She stared at the paper for what felt like an hour. Finally, she sighed, a long, theatrical exhalation of martyrdom.
“Jana, do you have any earthly idea how tight things are around here? After everything I spent on you this fiscal year alone? Your orthodontist bill isn’t even fully amortized yet.”
“Okay,” I whispered, shrinking into myself. “I understand.”
I didn’t argue. Instead, I pleaded with my manager at the custard stand for double shifts. For five grueling weeks, my forearms were coated in a perpetual, sticky glaze of vanilla and grease. I paid for that Washington trip myself, handing my history teacher a white envelope stuffed with crinkled ten and twenty-dollar bills. From that day forward, I never asked my mother to fund a school activity again.
That exact same April, Kirsten jetted off to Rome, Florence, and Venice. Renata personally drove her to the airport at four in the morning, weeping with pride at the departure curb. Upon Kirsten’s return, a framed eight-by-ten photograph of her tossing a coin into the Trevi Fountain was erected on the living room mantle. It remained there, an altar to her privilege, for years.
I never once asked who financed the Italian excursion. It never occurred to my conditioned mind to question it.
