No Such Thing as Perfect by Daltry Sarah

Author:Daltry, Sarah [Daltry, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: relationships, Literary, social issues, poetry, literary fiction, college, new adult, rape culture, drama, feminism, Women's Fiction
Publisher: October Leaves Publishing
Published: 2014-12-11T08:00:00+00:00

26.

My parents didn’t really fight. Everyone else’s did, but mine got along. All the time. The only “discussions” they ever had involved me, because my dad felt my mom was too hard on me. But she wanted me to be better. She meant well and I needed it. I needed to be better. To be perfect.

When you’re young, you don’t think of your parents as people and it wasn’t until I was in high school that I understood what it was like to feel betrayed by someone you trusted. Like I said, they didn’t fight, but they did have passive aggressive conversations that I didn’t pick up on until I understood nuance. So even when I witnessed it in middle school, it didn’t register as an argument. It was just who they were.

It was the summer after freshman year. One of those stupid days that was too hot to do anything and no one was going anywhere. Except my dad, because he had to work. Since my mom was a guidance counselor, she had more time off in the summer. Everyone thought she was always off, but that wasn’t true. Still, she was home more, so Jon, my mom, and I were trying to clean because at least there was central air. Dad had said he might be late for a meeting or something and Jon was already complaining that he was hungry.

“I don’t want to wait until he gets home. Why can’t I just eat something now?” he asked my mother. She’d just come upstairs from the laundry room and was carrying a basket of clothes. It was a casual afternoon and there was nothing extraordinary about my mom doing laundry. When Jon asked about dinner, though, she lost it. She threw the laundry basket across the kitchen, socks and underwear freefalling around the appliances, and then she slammed the basement door.

“Do what you want. Who cares? You’ll do it anyway, won’t you?”

Jon didn’t know what he’d said, but he stopped asking about food and grabbed a granola bar before disappearing into his room. He muttered something about women being crazy as he went and my mom threw a plate after him, which shattered against the wall.

My mother never broke. She was perfect. She smiled and she said the right things and did the right things and everyone listened to her, but I was trapped behind the island in the kitchen, where I’d been filling a glass of water, and I had no idea what to do. I didn’t think she even saw me standing there when she collapsed onto the floor, crying. My brain was telling me to get out, but my heart broke watching her cry. I didn’t want anyone throwing a plate at me, but then again, I couldn’t walk away. I hated her for so many reasons, but I couldn’t watch her cry and not hurt.

“Are you okay?” I asked, which was stupid but there aren’t a lot of ways to address your crying mother.

“You need to work harder, Lily.

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