I let her stand between me and my own sorrow, until I stopped feeling entitled to the sorrow at all.
That is how these houses work.
They don’t just take your money and your labor.
They quietly convince you that your own pain is a burden you’re imposing on everyone else, until you learn to apologize for bleeding.
Eventually the explaining wore out of me, and I learned instead to just serve the soup, set out the pills, and wipe down the blood pressure cuff without a word.
In the living room, Shane’s sister, Tiffany, was on the sofa while her toddler pulled fistfuls of leaves off the little jade plant I’d spent three years coaxing back to health, dumping the soil into my house slippers.
When I crouched to gather the torn greenery and gently asked the boy to leave the plant be, Tiffany snorted around a potato chip.
“It’s just a plant, Lorna.
Why do you always make everything a production?
No wonder you and Mom can’t stand each other.”