Free My Mans Best Friend (9781622860241) by Tresser Henderson Page A

them?” she asked sincerely.
    â€œI don’t know. Maybe I fell into something,” I replied, looking at her like she didn’t know.
    â€œSounds like you making excuses for that man of yours.”
    â€œHe didn’t do this,” I protested.
    â€œI don’t believe you, but there’s nothing I can do about it since you’re denying it. But I tell you one thing. If that man is putting his hands on you, you need to leave him.”
    â€œDid you not hear what I just said or are you just playing stupid?”
    Here she was trying to be this caring sister that she never was to me. I was trying to figure out when we lost that sister bond, and then it occurred to me. Childhood. We were siblings, but only by blood and not by emotions. We loved each other, but it was this unspoken pain between us that neither of us ever wanted to discuss. Especially Emory. Ms. Goody Two-shoes knew exactly where these bruises came from, but she must have blocked remembering all the abuse. Yes, she was above my level in intelligence, beauty, importance, and I can name a few more, but that was because Mother put her there.
    Emory was the favorite one, and she knew this. Sometimes it bothered her, but sometimes she acted just like our mother with that better-than attitude. I never knew which sister would show up when I got with her. It used to be she would at least try to salvage the closeness Mother tried so hard to separate between us, but lately, each day that passed revealed Emory following in Mother’s footsteps more and more. Everything had to be in place with her and her home. Everything had to be expensive. Everything had to represent money. Those were the qualities of Mother. I just prayed she wouldn’t pick up some of Mother’s other demeaning ways.
    If we wanted to talk about looking rich, my dear mother’s picture would pop up if you googled her. She always looked exquisite on the outside. But her spirit was that of the devil. She was pure evil, and I was the demon-child she never wanted, and she never hid the fact that she hated me. Sometimes I wished she’d aborted me. Every time she spoke to me, something negative spewed from her mouth.
    You have to get good grades, Kea.
    Don’t have sex before marriage, Kea.
    Sit up straight, Kea.
    Smile like you mean it, Kea.
    Why can’t you be more like your sister, Kea?
    I wish you were never born, Kea.
    You are never going to be anything, Kea.
    Every word out of that woman’s mouth seemed like a critique to be this vision of perfection that she never would see me as anyway. Why else would every word that came out of her mouth be used to destroy me? The only thing missing to make us abide by her rules were the wire hangers, and even then, she found other objects to get results.
    Every time I saw Mother, she would brush my clothes, removing invisible lint from them. She would brush my hair away from my face, push her open hand into my back to straighten it up, and put her finger under my chin to lift my head higher.
    â€œYou need to be more like your sister,” she would say. “Do you see how fabulous she is? She’s getting married to a wonderful man and has a rewarding career. All you have to show for yourself is a degree, a thug, and an inkling of your sister’s beauty.”
    Talk about uplifting the spirits of a daughter. She might as well have been screaming ugly, stupid, fat, and worthless to me. I knew I was none of these things, but having to deal with my mother’s unattainable standards was too much for me to deal with. After the last time visiting her, I told myself I would never make an effort to see her again. That was the last time she thought I needed lashes across my body like a slave from the past as she tried to make me into this person I knew I could never be in her eyes because she hated me. I think she enjoyed humiliating me. And every time she demeaned me, I swore I could see a smirk on her face,