“You can’t even spell ‘attention,’” Rhonda shot back. “All my life you’ve made me feel like I was more of a burden than a daughter. Everything I do is wrong! I can remember a time when I was twelve and I told you that your boyfriend had been touching me. Do you remember what happened?” Rhonda asked, staring at her mother, who wouldn’t meet her gaze.

“Rhonda, that’s enough.” Kelvin tried to place a reassuring hand on Rhonda’s shoulder, but she knocked it away.

“Nah, Kel, let’s lay it all on the table.” She turned back to her mother. “You slapped me in the face and called me a lying little whore. You even had the nerve to accuse me of trying to come on to that dirty old son of a bitch. Bet you felt like shit when they locked him up for raping that little girl on Eighth Avenue.”

Rita covered her ears. “I don’t have to listen to these lies.”

“The truth is always a hard pill to swallow.” Rhonda chuckled. “The saddest part about all this is that no matter what you did to me, or turned a blind to what other people did, I could never bring myself to hate you. Too bad you couldn’t feel the same way about me.”

Rita, too, was now crying and shaking her head. “You’re a liar and a thorn in my side. Get out of my house!”

“With pleasure,” Rhonda said, storming through the kitchen doorway. As an afterthought, she turned to Kelly and added, “When you bring your fake white ass outside, it’s on and popping.” Holding her head up triumphantly, Rhonda went outside to gather her children.

Rhonda shoved the door to her mother’s apartment open so hard that it chipped the paint when it bounced off. She frantically pressed for the elevator that seemed like it was taking forever to come. When she finally made it on, she broke down into a fit of crying.

Growing up in her mother’s house was like a living hell to her. Rita had never been the greatest mother to any of her kids, but she seemed to go out of her way to be mean to Rhonda. Maybe it was her rebellious spirit, or the fact that her father didn’t stick around for very long after her birth. Whatever the reason, Rhonda was always the object of spite. Nothing Rhonda did was ever good enough for Rita. The day she moved out on her own was the happiest of her life. She thought that it would finally free her from the tyranny of her mother’s judgments and the ridicule of her sister, but there was still pain by association.