Turbulence

“I can’t believe you still go around telling me your father and I fight every alternative day,” Marie rolls her eyes sitting in the breakfast table, eyeing her twenty-three years old daughter May, who expresses an emotion of guilt and indifference mixed into one. Marie fails to catch so. She is annoyed enough.

May doesn’t reply, simply sits while having her cereal.

“Are you not going to say anything?” Marie gulps another bite on her bread.

“What’s the point of saying anything?” May shoves another spoonful in her mouth, now rage bubbling in her mind, “No matter what I say, you’re going to be spiteful about it anyway.”

“I will,” Marie’s gaze turns sterner, “You don’t go around saying that to people, especially outsiders.”

“My friends aren’t outsiders,” May voices through gritted teeth, “They have been enough patient with me while I talk about what affects me and what doesn’t.”

“And your father and I affect you?” Marie’s voice nearly booms, “Is that what you are trying to say?”

“You two being on the edge all the time affects me,” May murmurs, but enough for Marie to hear.

Marie huffs in more annoyance, “Your father is insufferable, that’s why.”

“I agree with it,” May swirls her food, “and you’re becoming that too,” looking at her, “It’s making the house a wrestling ring more than a house.”

“Beatrice raises enough hell for three of us, I don’t need you two to add to it and make my depression even worse,” May’s voice breaks a bit, perceiving the brunt of a volatile environment in her home mostly, tears threatening to come out.

“Your sister is a mentally challenged child,” Marie voices, “Are you going to blame her too?”

“If all she does is throw me off balance because of how she lashes out of nowhere, then yes, I will blame her,” The young girl stands up with the bowl, eyeing down her mother.

“I don’t know what has gotten into you-“ Marie tries to finish the sentence before May stops.

“I don’t know what has gotten into you more than me!” May nearly screams, eyes slowly turning red from all the back and forth, putting the bowl on the table, the need to do the dishes dying down.

“Keep your voice down! I didn’t raise you to scream at me, you ungrateful prick!” Marie screams back, breakfast yet to be finished.

Marie stands up to meet May’s eye, at level with each other for not having much a difference in their heights.

May snorts on her face before she grasps the bowl and leaves for the kitchen to do the dishes. She places the dish on the basin with a thud before eyeing the pile of cutlery, heaving a deep sigh as she grabs the scrubber.

Marie doesn’t follow her not too much later, viewing as May swipes on the dishes, enraged and tired of trying to prove her point.

Beatrice is unable to talk, and besides that their age gap won’t suffice May’s need of wanting to talk to someone her age, with ease.

“So, are you going to stop telling people about what goes on?” Marie asks, annoyance still laced in her voice as May doesn’t reply.

“I don’t know,’ May stows a clean dish into the dryer before staring to scrub another one.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Marie pleats her eyebrows, disliking the answer.

May heaves a sigh before viewing Marie, tiredness evident in her eyes, “What I mean is, no. I won’t stop.”

“Do you even know how all these are going to be used against you in the future?” Marie tones down her voice, seeing as May places the dish under the water and swiping on it.

“It won’t,” May says, “My friends aren’t like that. Besides, they don’t have time to judge me for that.”

“I heard a commotion. What’s going on?” Ben, the only man of the house enters the kitchen, looking between mom and daughter.

“Nothing, just the usual bantering of how she doesn’t want to talk out my pain with my friends,” May coughs before grabbing the next dish to clean.

“May’s dad, you need to tell her,” Marie sounds vexed.

“I really don’t care what he has to say, because he’s been adding to the whole ordeal, isn’t it?” May rolls her eyes, “I don’t want to cause a ruckus now.”

“May, this is not how you talk to your dad,” Marie grits her teeth.

“Children learn from elders,” May is unbothered, “Take it how it is.”

Ben doesn’t voice a word before he leaves the place, indifference is his mind. Marie gives one good look to May before she retracts herself.