I Became The Pariah Of The Family

Since that incident, I gradually stopped answering her calls.

Deprived of her target, she went into a full-blown frenzy. She alternated between sobbing about how hard her life was and badmouthing me to anyone who would listen. But none of these soothed her bruised ego.

Finally, I could not stomach the harassment any longer, so I went home to check things out.

“Where did you buy this piece of junk? It’s a ticking time bomb. Give me my money back!”

The floor was thick with dust, looking like it had not been swept for a long time. I stepped forward, picked up the phone, and gently wiped it clean. My heart ached when I saw the spiderweb cracks across the screen.

I had bought this with my hard-earned money while I stuck to using the relic of a phone I got back in my college days.

“Mom, this cost over three hundred dollars. Even if you don’t like it, you shouldn’t throw it on the ground. I can’t return it as new anymore; I’ll have to sell it as used.”

She made less than two hundred a month, yet she felt entitled enough to sneer at a three-hundred-dollar phone.

I watched her in silence as she postured herself to look down at me with disdain.

“You’re just too stingy sometimes. A phone is something you use every day; you should buy a high-end one. Cheap things have no merit other than being cheap. You hated the one I picked out, so you tried to pawn off some second-rate garbage on me. You simply wasted money, and all it did was make me angry.”

She was the type who could argue a point even when she was dead in the wrong, but I had already realized her true objective.

Any functional device would be fine for a normal family. Why was she obsessed with the latest iPhone? Was it really because the expensive one was always better?

Ever since I started working, every payday was followed by a new “need” at home. Either something needed replacing, or my parents suddenly developed back pain, leg pain, or toothaches. They were at retirement age but had almost no pension. I paid for their private annual checkups entirely out of my own pocket.

There was a policy to buy into a pension plan with a lump sum, but I was just an average employee, and I did not have that kind of cash lying around. I thought the subject was closed, but ever since my cousin bought a premium insurance plan for my aunt, my mother had been dropping hints to me.

I truly did not understand the allure of this manipulation that had her so obsessed.

“Mom, if you like expensive things, buy them yourself. Better yet, buy one for me too. I’ve never used a thousand-dollar phone.”

“How much do you think I make? The economy is terrible. Nobody wants to hire part-time workers. I’m lucky if I earn enough just to eat, let alone buy phones!”

…

I waited through the silence, knowing exactly what was coming next.

“If only I had a pension. It wouldn’t even need to be much. A couple hundred dollars a month would be enough to live without worry.”

Her voice was a cocktail of envy, complaint, and entitlement.

“And yet you threw a three hundred dollars’ worth piece of device on the floor. That one tantrum just cost you months of the pension you’re dreaming of.”

I had always been the “good girl” who never talked back.

“I’m not as capable as you, the big-city professional. I can’t afford it, but surely you can? I bet you people in the city don’t even look twice at a few hundred dollars.”