Vidalia
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My sister-in-law isn’t a bad person, but I want to slap her whenever I’m forced to bum a ride off someone or take the bus.
With my lack of credit, I need a co-signer to buy a used car. Reg was willing to do it, but Champagne decided it was too risky. Apparently, her uncle’s friend’s daughter’s college roommate ruined someone’s credit after they co-signed for her car. My brother shrugged and said he was sorry. While he might be the breadwinner, she wears the pants in their marriage.
I’ve lived with Reg and Champagne since I was fifteen. Mom felt a teenage girl sharing a house with an unrelated man was inappropriate. This was her solution to finding out that her boyfriend was a perv.
Mom made her choice, and I wasn’t particularly surprised to get the short straw. Like she told me when I was a kid, she needed a man. Kids were simply a by-product of her relationship with my father.
Now my dad lives in an assisted living facility where Nigerian caretakers wipe away his drool and change his diapers. No way was Mom sticking around for that trouble. Once he had his accident, she filed for divorce and found a man with a working brain and dick.
Standing at the bus stop, I think of the hulking biker from earlier. He’s the kind of man my mother would appreciate –– good looking men willing to take charge.
At least, Mom knows her limitations. Champagne thinks she’ll travel the world one day or become a doctor or some other random out of reach goal. I feel bad for Reg, who just wants to watch sports and sit out back with the kids. Meanwhile, his wife has big stupid dreams he’s forced to pretend are possible.
Like our mom, Reg understands life’s restraints. None of us are special. As he often tells his son and daughter, “You’re lucky you don’t live in a mud hut and eat dirt for dinner. Now quit your bitching.”
Reg isn’t home when I arrive, and I hear Champagne talking to her mom who lives with us. They babble day and night. I wake up to the sound of their yapping and go to bed with the same voices doing very bad versions of whispering. These women never shut up.
The moment I enter the bedroom I share with my niece and nephew, Neo asks to play.
“I need to shower and get something to eat.”
“Then you’ll play?” my six-year-old niece whines.
“Did you do your schoolwork?” I ask the kindergartner and first grader.
They nod in unison, causing their strawberry blond hair to fall into their eyes. Reg said a few days ago if Champagne didn’t cut the kids’ hair, he’d do it himself. Based on how their wild hair isn’t butchered, I assume my brother hasn’t gotten around to making good on his threat. It’s only a matter of time, though.
“Vi, are you home?” Champagne yells down the hall.
“Yes.”
“Can you watch the kids while I run to the store?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks, babe.”
A shower later, I sit in the backyard, under the table umbrella, and watch my niece and nephew run in circles with their friends. Watching Neo and Princess turns into watching half of the neighborhood.
My best friend, Fern, keeps telling me to find a man and get married, so I can move out of this house and stop sleeping in a bunk bed.
“You’re an adult with an Angry Birds comforter,” she points out nearly every time I talk to her. “Stop being your brother’s maid and nanny and start making a family of your own.”
Fern was the thinnest girl in our junior class at school and the fattest pregnant girl the following year. She jumped into motherhood and marriage with both feet and never looked back. Her husband, Taylor, smells like oil grease and cigarettes, and he refuses to change diapers. Even so, Fern is happy.
Why couldn’t I find a man to pay the bills while I raise the kids and gossip about celebrities? My life would be a helluva lot easier with a husband. I’d have a car, and a grownup bed and I could quit my job and read during the day while the baby sleeps. It sounds so damn easy, but I refuse even to consider it.
I don’t want to lie, and I’d have to if I claimed to love someone like Taylor. Or even a man like my brother who lives in his head to avoid the dull life he’s saddled with.
Deep inside, I know I’ll eventually settle one day. Likely when I’m nearing thirty, and my prospects dwindle of finding a husband who won’t slap me around or brazenly cheat. Or possibly sooner if I suffer from the same baby craving that’s afflicted so many girls I knew from school.
Until then, I ignore the cramped living conditions and simply grumble about my lack of a car. For now anyway, I can convince myself I’m not Champagne, dreaming of an exciting life out of reach for someone like me.