Page 3 of My Forbidden Boss
“THAT’S IT!”
I was tired, my body was sore from head to foot, I hadn’t spoken to anyone closer than a cashier in a fortnight – and my parents thought that I would just let it slide when they threw a little homesickness into the mix.
“Nope. That’s it, you two! September twentieth. Gone. Phone? Silent. In fact, I am going to be busy that day… busy with my appointment at the Social Security office. You want to know why? I’m going to be there getting you two straight-up erased from all of those legal guardianship records you’re so proud of. Apparently, you care about them more than me!”
“TISHA!”
The gasps of shock and despair were a good start, but I wasn’t done.
“Oh, hush! Keep at it, and I won’t wait until the sacred day, the anniversary of when you two got yourselves a little girl to parade around. When you’re too pigheaded to realize that she’s having a shit time being buried alive by boxes, surrounded by fucking hillbillies, barely keeping it together, and it is not the time to be piling on… Well, I just hope you kept your receipt.”
“Tisha, come on, honey. Don’t say that! We’re sorry. Really! We took it too far, okay? For real this time, we’ll stop.”
“You’re a real witch, Tisha Marie, you know that?”
I gasped, but the phone became so garbled with high pitched static that I couldn’t have joined the ensuing squabble between them even if I did know what to say.
“He didn’t mean that, Tish. Rich, tell her you didn’t mean it. Do it, you son of a bitch… Tisha, don’t listen to him. You should see him… moping around all the time. Of course, he denies it when I call him out on it, but I know it’s only because he’s missing you. He’s just too friggin’ macho to admit his feelings to anyone. He’s worried it’ll cramp his image… which is just a big farce! God, Richard, it’s always the same stupid shit with you. Why can’t you just care enough… Why can’t you see… Ugh! It isn’t being tough, you know! Somebody who really is tough and big and brave wouldn’t be scared to tell his beautiful, young daughter that she’s important to him once in a while!”
She huffed into the phone, catching her breath. She wasn’t finished, however. A few sighs rolled over one another, then Mom exploded through the phone, her voice crystal clear.
I’m so sorry, Tisha… Rich, you are such a… Don’t listen to him, honey, your dad is just a big… pompous… PUSSY PANCAKE! And he…”
She stopped abruptly, clearly caught off guard as her mind processed her words. It took all of us together, a good ten, twenty seconds before anyone could even articulate a single word in response.
“Whoa,” from Dad
“Yeah. Um… Wow.”
It was the venom behind the phrase, combined with its unorthodox pairing, that struck my dad and me so intensely. It was too contrary to take seriously. Even the woman who spoke the words couldn’t escape their distraction. The intensity of Sally’s tirade was immediately snuffed out as her whole argument was rendered inert.
“I… That isn’t what I meant… Oh, shoot. I really need to write something down once in a while. I come up with the best insults all the time when I’m driving. I swear, I’ve had some really good ones. Of course, it usually takes me another dozen blocks or so after somebody cuts me off that I finally find one worth using. The rest are just…”
“Pussy pancakes?”
Dad and I finished the sentence perfectly, echoing each other in tandem. Shrouding our delight and hiding any hint of humor, our voices together shared a tone that was cloaked in a calm monotone. It was a solemn, unenthused answer to what could have been the most boring of questions. Our simultaneous, matter-of-fact echo of her words only further seemed to bury my mom in her self-inflicted fall from validity.
“Uh… right. Pussy panc-… I don’t even want to say it again.”
Again, our responses were nearly identical:
“You have to.”
“No choice.”
She almost whimpered through the phone, trying to spare herself the inevitable humiliation that none of us would soon forget.
I spoke in a flat and unsympathetic voice. “If you don’t do it, you know we won’t let it go.”
Dad followed instantly. “Get it over with, Sal. Don’t make me be the one that has to say it at home until you do. Tish won’t be there to back me up. It’ll get weird for both of us, especially if we have guests over.”
I jumped in, happy to provide some iconic samples from our past.
“Pass the broccoli, please. ‘Hey, Maggot Fucker!’”
“Um, you are going to want to turn left at the next light, so you should go ahead and get over. ‘You stupid shit!’”
I collapsed forward, bent at the waist from the severity of my laughing convulsions as I remembered the first time Mom had uttered each one of those sentences. I did my best to imitate her trademark awkwardness. I stuttered, shouting as I recited each one, but my ability to continue with a third phrase ultimately failed. The laughter raging from my chest, through my belly, and down to my hips barely allowed me to breathe, let alone speak.