“He is just a little boy who made a mistake,” she cried. I pointed out that he was a boy who was repeating the things he had heard his mother say when he thought I wasn’t listening.
“You are going to let my children lose their home because of a joke at dinner?” she asked in a voice that was full of disbelief. I told her that I was simply ending a gift that had never been appreciated in the first place.
“I am not the one who put your house at risk, Sienna,” I said. “You did that the moment you decided that your lifestyle was more important than your sister’s dignity.”
She called me a heartless bitch and told me that I would die alone in my expensive apartment with nobody to love me. I closed the door and locked it while she continued to scream insults at me from the hallway.
My mother called me later that afternoon and used her softest voice to try and convince me to change my mind. “We are family, Joanna, and family members do not do things like this to one another,” she whispered into the phone.