I took my mom cherry picking, and out of nowhere, she blurted out: "You know, you're actually pretty cheap." I looked up, a bit stunned, staring at her in confusion. "Why would you say that?" "Even though you make good money, sometimes you really don't measure up to your sister." "To put it bluntly, you're just cheap." My mom emphasized the word, repeating it with lingering resentment. "Sure, sometimes when we see you, you give us cash, and you buy the household essentials, but you've never once treated us to a nice dinner out. Your sister isn't like that. She's always treating us." Suddenly, it all made sense. I finally understood. That dinner my sister paid for two weeks ago had become a knot in my mother's heart, one she simply couldn't get past. 1 Two weeks ago, my dad was unexpectedly in a car accident and broke his arm. I rushed him to the hospital, running up and down the floors to handle the billing, fill out the paperwork, and hire a private nurse. By the time my sister finally arrived, I had basically done all the heavy lifting. So, my sister took us out to the fast-food place right across the street from the hospital to grab a bite to eat. At that moment, my mom's face visibly soured. She hinted to me, hesitating before finally saying: "You are the older sister." I sighed, accepting my fate, and pulled out my phone to pay. The whole meal was maybe thirty or forty bucks, not even fifty. It wasn't that I was unwilling to pay; I just didn't want my mom to sit there with a long face, projecting her dissatisfaction onto me over a few dollars. But my sister was faster. She playfully waved her phone in the air. "I already paid!" My mom instantly looked horrified and asked my sister: "Where did you get the money? Your Uber here must have cost over a hundred dollars! I'm here, and your sister is here, why on earth would we let you pay?" My sister, clearly afraid I would get mad, shot me a quick, covert look and offered a helpless, bitter smile. Then, she linked arms with my mom, acting sweet and coaxing. "Mom, what does it matter who pays? Didn't my sister just pay the massive hospital deposit and cover the private nurse? There's no reason I shouldn't be the one to cover this tiny little expense." "Once they find the driver who hit Dad, all this money will be reimbursed by their insurance anyway. My sister is just fronting the money for now, it's not like she won't get it back." My mom muttered something under her breath, clearly still unconvinced. But in reality, when my mom finally received the insurance settlement, she didn't pay me back a single dime. That didn't really matter to me. My dad was hurt; it was my duty to step up and help cover the costs. I wasn't bitter about that part. What hurt me was this: My mom would repeatedly bring up the fact that my sister paid for that one specific meal. "We shouldn't have let your sister pay. Her income is so unstable. She works one month and is unemployed for two. It's a struggle for her just to support herself." "Your sister treated us to lunch today. You really got to ride her coattails, huh?" I had just spent thousands of dollars, and my sister had spent thirty, but somehow, I was the one riding her coattails? I had reached my limit and was just opening my mouth to snap back. But I saw my dad frantically shaking his head at me from the hospital bed. For the sake of my poor, injured dad, I swallowed my anger and didn't start a screaming match with my mom right there in the hospital room. But in just one short afternoon... Through phone calls, face-to-face chats with visitors, and FaceTime sessions, my mom managed to tell every single person she could get ahold of. My sister treated us to a fast-food meal, and now the whole world knew about it. And what about me? I stretched my neck to listen, only to hear my mom whispering sympathetically: "The youngest is always the most thoughtful, you know? She knew we hadn't eaten all day and had nowhere to go, so she immediately took us out for food." "The older one sat here with us all morning, didn't even notice I was starving, didn't even think to go to the vending machine and grab me a muffin or something." I couldn't listen to another word. I made a flimsy excuse, turned around, and walked out. The tears fell freely down my face. It wasn't that I hadn't thought about her being hungry; it was that I was so overwhelmed I literally didn't have a second to think. I was handling the admission paperwork, coordinating the X-rays, paying the massive bills, tracking down the police to ask if the hit-and-run driver had been caught, and vetting private nurses. When did I even have a moment to catch my breath? I had always known my mom played favorites. When we were in college, the agreement was that my sister and I would each get a thousand dollars a month for living expenses. But between buying school supplies, textbooks, groceries, and basic necessities, my thousand was never enough. Yet, my sister always seemed to have money left over. My mom would constantly scold me, saying I wasn't as sensible as my sister, that I didn't care how hard my parents worked, that I didn't know how to budget. Every time I had to ask for money, I had to endure a brutal lecture. Occasionally, there would be a month where I pinched every penny and miraculously didn't go over budget. But then, my mom wouldn't send my allowance on time. She would intentionally delay it by a few days, claiming she was "teaching me financial discipline." 2 I was always living in a state of anxiety. Every month, I prayed my mom wouldn't delay the transfer. But I never dared to actually ask her for it. Because my mom would always shut me down with the exact same sentence: "Why is your sister's allowance always enough? Why does she never have to hound me for money?" Yeah, I didn't understand it either. I was already being so incredibly frugal, literally calculating how many tampons I could afford to use. Why was it still never enough? It wasn't until a few years after graduation, during a casual chat with my sister, that I finally found out the truth. Her monthly cash allowance was indeed a thousand dollars. But every other expense? My mom bought it for her and shipped it directly to her dorm. Whether it was textbooks, makeup, or snacks. Even her campus dining card was topped up every single semester, and it was always loaded with a thousand dollars right off the bat. My sister's thousand-dollar cash allowance? She literally didn't even know what to spend it on. And me? I got nothing. Every single one of my expenses had to come out of that flat one thousand dollars. During the holidays, my mom would bring out the smoked salmon she had made from scratch to serve guests. Both my sister and I loved it. When we were getting ready to leave, my mom packed a massive shopping bag full of it for my sister. She didn't even offer me a single piece. My dad, watching from the side, felt the awkwardness and quickly chimed in: "Pack a bag of the salmon for Avery, too." My mom scoffed disdainfully. "What salmon?" "That's for guests." She spoke slowly, drawing out the words. Her eyes landed squarely on me. Then, with feigned hesitation, she asked: "Do you want some?" I fought back the tears threatening to spill and shook my head aggressively. "No. I don't really like it." She let out a massive sigh of relief, as if she had just dodged a bullet, and smiled at my dad. "See? I told you she didn't want any. She's so picky, she wouldn't even look twice at this simple food." It hurt so much. I quickly ran outside, started my car, and prepared to leave. But my mom chased after me. Her reluctance from a moment ago had completely vanished, replaced by a beaming smile as she shoved a bag of smoked fish through my car window. "Just take it, your dad insisted." "If you don't take it, he's going to start a fight with me again." I let out a low sigh and took the bag. When I got home and opened it, I realized it wasn't the batch she had made herself. Her recipe was slightly spicy, flavorful, and incredibly delicious. The batch she gave me was plain and bland. It was the batch my aunt had given her—the batch my mom had openly complained she hated. I remembered her taking it out of the fridge to heat up a few days ago, muttering: "This tastes awful. I really didn't want to take it. I'll just give it away to someone later." Oh. So the "someone" she deemed worthy of her garbage leftovers was me. And now, as my mom brought up that fast-food dinner my sister paid for yet again, I finally couldn't hold it in anymore. "Mom. The bedsheets in your house, the fruit and snacks in your fridge, the paper towels, even the AC unit and the TV—which one of those didn't I buy? Every holiday and birthday, I hand you cash envelopes with thousands of dollars. Have you ever bothered to calculate how much all of that adds up to? My sister pays for a thirty-dollar meal, and you obsess over it, repeating over and over that I took advantage of her. So how about this: from now on, she can pay for all the appliances and cash gifts, and I'll Venmo her a hundred bucks right now to cover that meal. Will that finally buy your silence?" "If this is how you calculate who is taking a loss and who is taking advantage, then fine! Let my sister take all the 'advantage,' and I'll gladly take the 'loss.' Is that what you want?!" I was so angry my throat was hoarse, choking on a sob. My mom was startled by my outburst, her eyes widening in shock. "Why are you so emotionally unstable? We're just having a casual chat, what are you throwing such a massive tantrum for?" "I'm uneducated, I didn't go to college. How am I supposed to know what I should and shouldn't say? Do you really need to nitpick every single word your own mother says? I never said you didn't spend money on me, did I? I said it right from the start: you give me money and buy me things. I'm just saying that when it comes to taking people out to eat, you aren't as thoughtful as your sister, you aren't as sophisticated. Was I wrong to point that out?" 3 "Honestly, you can't even say a word around you anymore." "Don't ever invite me out again. It's blazing hot outside, and apparently, letting me tag along is some kind of crime to you? You're like a landmine, exploding without warning. Do I owe you something?" "I was in such a good mood, and your yelling completely ruined it." She put on an expression of utter disgust and victimhood. She grabbed the baskets of cherries we had just picked and started walking out of the orchard. From a distance, I could hear her telling the fruit stand owner, "My daughter is paying," before she walked out to the side of the road and hailed an Uber. Leaving me standing there, my heart overflowing with frustration and humiliation. I deeply regretted ever inviting her out. Actually, it wasn't even my idea to invite her. She called me yesterday saying she was craving cherries. I offered to buy some from the grocery store and bring them over, but she insisted she wanted "freshly picked" ones. So, I specifically rescheduled my own plans, booked a spot at this U-Pick orchard, and drove her all the way out here before I even had time to eat breakfast. I never expected that after one minor disagreement, she would throw a fit and literally abandon me here. In the past, I would always rationalize it to myself. She's getting older, she's stuck in her ways, I shouldn't hold it against her. But this time, it was probably because this string of incidents had happened so close together, and she was being so incredibly unreasonable, that it left me absolutely zero room to lie to myself anymore. I decided to let my emotions run their course. I was never going to bow my head to her again. There was only one thing still weighing on my mind. About a month ago, my mom kept dropping hints that she wanted me to take her to buy a robot vacuum. She constantly complained that sweeping hurt her back and that she would eventually develop chronic back pain. But because it had been so hot lately, we kept pushing it off, saying we'd go when the weather cooled down in the fall. Even though she didn't explicitly say it, based on every past experience, if I was the one taking her to the store, I was the one paying for it. It's not like I hadn't had arguments with my mom before. But every single time, the person who initiated the thaw, or even swallowed their pride to beg for peace, was always me. But this time, I suddenly wanted to know. If I never contacted her again, and never mentioned taking her to buy that vacuum, what would she do? Even if I knew that her reaching out to me wouldn't prove she actually cared about me. I was still curious. Would she initiate contact, even if it was just for a piece of electronics? The answer arrived very quickly. Three months later, she proactively sent me a text. But the content was something I genuinely didn't expect. "You don't need to take me to buy that robot vacuum anymore." [What happened?] "I just asked around. That thing uses way too much electricity. It'll add sixty or seventy dollars a month to the electric bill. That's almost eight or nine hundred dollars a year. It's too expensive. I don't deserve to use something like that." My fingers hovered over the keyboard, frozen. I paused, then pretended I didn't see the guilt trip and replied: [Actually, they aren't that expensive to run. The newer models are very energy-efficient, it definitely won't cost that much.] "Whatever you say. But if you don't want to buy it anymore, then let's not waste a trip." Her chat status showed "Typing..." continuously. But two hours passed, and she hadn't sent another word. When I tried to send her another message, I discovered I had been blocked. I understood. She couldn't bring herself to just ask directly. What she really wanted was to wait for me to volunteer to pay her future electric bills too. If I did that, she would happily go with me to buy it. I understood perfectly, but I was feeling stubborn too. I absolutely refused to say it. Even though my heart was broken and disillusioned by my mom's blatant favoritism, a tiny part of me still hadn't completely given up hope. It wasn't that I never wanted to spend money on her again. It was that I could no longer allow her to play deaf and blind to my sacrifices. Every dollar I spent, every ounce of thought I put in—I needed her to acknowledge that she saw it, felt it, and received it. The day we originally planned to go look at the vacuum arrived. Early in the morning, my dad called me. He asked casually what time I was getting there and if he needed to make breakfast for me. I feigned surprise. "Dad, I'm at work today. What's going on?" 4 "Weren't we scheduled to go look at that robot vacuum with your mom today? Why are you at work?" "I was going to ask for PTO, but Mom said she didn't want to go anymore, so I didn't ask for the day off." "Well, just ask for it now. We'll wait for you at home." My dad sounded a bit exasperated. But I still refused. "I can't, Dad. PTO has to be requested a day in advance. It's too late for me to ask now. We'll have to do it another time." My mom must have been listening nearby, and she finally couldn't hold it back. "I told you not to call her, not to call her! She just talks a big game, making pretty promises. And you actually believed her? You thought she really wanted to take me? Unbelievable. I'm embarrassed for you. Just hang up. Stop bothering her while she's at work." She projected her voice, laying the sarcasm on thick. After the call ended, my dad texted me. His tone carried a distinct hint of accusation. "You really are something else. It's not like you don't know your mother's temper. When she said she didn't want to go, she was just throwing a tantrum. Why didn't you just come over and coax her? Why do you have to be so stubborn and take her words literally?" "Dad, Mom blocked me on iMessage. How am I supposed to coax her? Besides, she's a grown adult. She said she didn't want to go. Am I supposed to physically drag her to the store?" At the same time, my mom posted a TikTok video to our four-person family group chat. The title was: "When old people are unlikable and don't know how to speak properly, do they just deserve to die?" My sister hadn't realized the severity of the situation yet. She was the first to jump in, joking around: "Who has the guts to make Mom unhappy again? Tell me, I'll beat them up for you." "Was it Dad? Hurry up and apologize, Dad, or else your two favorite daughters are going to turn on you." "It wasn't your dad." "Thank God I still have you, Chloe. If I didn't, your mother would really die of a broken heart." The moment my mom sent those two messages, the target was painfully obvious. My dad immediately tagged me in the group: "Avery, regardless of whether you're right or wrong, you're the child. Bowing your head first won't kill you. Just apologize to your mom, okay?" He then tagged my mom: "And you too. Why are you holding a grudge against your own kid? Stop being so stubborn. We'll go tomorrow. Avery will take the day off, and she'll go with us." "Right, Avery?" My sister finally realized something was wrong and messaged me privately: "What's going on, Avery? Did you and Mom get into a fight?" "No. Just a misunderstanding." After replying to my sister, I explained in the group chat. "Mom, it's not that I'm breaking a promise. You explicitly said you weren't going, which is why I didn't ask for PTO today." "You blocked me for no reason a while ago, and I have no idea how I offended you. Now you're doing this again. I genuinely don't know what I did wrong. If it's because you still want to buy the vacuum, you could have just told me directly. I would have taken tomorrow off. But I really can't guess what's on your mind anymore, and I don't want to try." "Dad, can our family please change how we communicate? If you need something, or if us kids are doing something wrong, just say it directly. We are a family; there shouldn't be anything we can't say to each other, right? Relying on us to constantly guess... we aren't mind readers. Who can guess right every single time and keep you perfectly satisfied?" My dad replied instantly: "Yes, yes, yes, Avery is absolutely right. You come home tomorrow, and we'll sit your mother down and educate her together." "You just focus on getting the day off. I'll handle your mother on this end. Even if I have to tie her up, I'll get her there." Then, my dad sent me a private message, suddenly dropping this line. I felt a profound sense of exhaustion. But I forced myself to reply in the group chat: "Dad, it doesn't matter what you say. I need Mom to say it herself. Does she want me to come home tomorrow? I don't want to be blamed for doing the wrong thing again." 5 I brought up the incident where I took her to the cherry orchard, and how she ended up blaming me for dragging her out in the heat, right in the group chat. "It's my fault for oversimplifying things. Mom said she was craving cherries. I offered to buy them from the store, but she said no, she wanted to eat them fresh. So I took her to the orchard. But then she turned around and complained that I dragged her out in the blazing heat. I figured that was because I failed to guess her true intentions correctly. So from now on, I won't guess. I will only accept explicit, direct instructions." "If you want to go, I will request PTO tomorrow. So, do you want to go? Mom." I tagged my mom again in the group. I admit I was using this issue to make a larger point. My mom is an incredibly convoluted person. When she wants something, even if you place it directly into her hands, she will push it away three or four times. She forces you to come up with every excuse in the book to make her accept it. And after she finally accepts it, she still has to look at it with disgust, claiming how much she dislikes it, how she never wanted it, and how you forced it on her. So getting her to explicitly say "I want this"—how could that be possible? Almost exactly as I predicted, she refused. Except this refusal was fueled by rage, or rather, the humiliation of being exposed. "I already said I'm not buying it! Why would we go?" "Don't you dare take PTO tomorrow and try to blame it on me, saying I told you to. From start to finish, I never said I wanted to go. If you guys want to go, go by yourselves." I took screenshots of the entire chat history and saved them, securing my evidence. Just as I finished doing that, I noticed that my mom had removed me from the family group chat. My sister immediately slid into my DMs: "Avery, you should still take PTO and come home tomorrow. I think Mom is genuinely really angry this time." "I only said a couple of things defending you in the group, and she almost kicked me out too." "You know how Mom's personality is. Deep down, she just wants the vacuum." "If you don't go back and buy it for her, I'm afraid she'll make an even bigger scene." I knew my sister meant well. But right now, I simply refused to be accommodating. So I just replied to her: "Mom already said she doesn't want to go. I don't want to provoke her further. Let's just do what she says." The days after being kicked out of the group chat were incredibly peaceful. I was no longer suddenly tagged by my mom while working overtime, demanded to buy this or that. I was no longer scolded for buying things that were "poor quality," or interrogated if I was just being cheap and didn't want to buy the good stuff. My feed was no longer spammed every few days with those obnoxious, preachy "how to be a good daughter" TikToks. I also didn't have to act as the judge between my mom and her friends and relatives, listening to her endlessly vent her toxic emotional garbage. This life... I was actually starting to enjoy it. Until Thanksgiving rolled around. Instead of stuffing my trunk full of big and small boxes like I used to in the past. I simply brought a standard, polite holiday gift basket and went home. In the most conspicuous spot in the living room, right where everyone would see it, sat a brand-new robot vacuum. I was a bit surprised. But before I even crossed the threshold, I heard my mom loudly and sarcastically announcing that my sister had bought it for her. "At least one of my children actually loves me." "My poor baby, she doesn't even own her own home yet, but she still knows to buy a robot vacuum for her old mother. Tell me, how could you not love a child like that?" I wasn't angry in the slightest; I just played along. "You're right, Mom. You should definitely dote on her more. It's not easy for her to make money, working so hard out there all by herself." Seeing her punch land on cotton, she felt completely deflated and turned to walk away. But within an hour, she had called over a whole flock of relatives. My sister also arrived a bit later. The topic of conversation never strayed from the robot vacuum my sister had bought. My mom rambled on and on, detailing every little thing about the day they bought it, using me as a stepping stone to praise my sister. "Actually, at first, Avery said she was going to buy it for me. I never expected that in the end, the one who actually pulled out her wallet would be Chloe." 6 "That's why I say Avery is sneaky. The second she saw she might actually have to pay, she ran for the hills. Thank God I never really counted on her, otherwise I would have died of a broken heart." My mom seemed to be just joking around. As she reached the climax of her story, she threw her head back and let out a booming, exaggerated laugh. My sister looked at me with deep unease. She opened her mouth, wanting to explain something, but she was afraid of dragging her mother—who loved her so much and was currently showing her off—into the mud. She could only silently keep her mouth shut. The looks the relatives were giving me had already changed. They were filled with suspicion, incomprehension, and even condemnation. My aunt, who was always outspoken and fiercely protective of her older sister, blurted out: "Avery, I'm not trying to criticize you, but sometimes... people shouldn't value money so heavily. Family is more important than money, don't you agree?" "You're absolutely right, Auntie. You hit the nail on the head." I replied with a beaming smile. But my hands didn't stop moving on my phone. My mom was furious that my attention wasn't entirely focused on her public shaming. She immediately lunged over and snatched my phone out of my hands. "What are you so busy doing? The room is full of your elders trying to talk to you, and you're just staring at your phone? How can you be so disrespectful?" "Can't you just listen for one minute?" "Mom, just leave her alone. Avery is busy with work, it's totally understandable." My sister couldn't help but interrupt. I smiled. I took my phone back from my mom's hand. "I'm actually not busy with work." "I'm busy restoring the truth." That was when everyone realized I had just forwarded all the screenshots of our previous group chats into the extended family group chat. Someone gasped: "Oh wow, is this real?" "Wait, Avery didn't refuse to buy it for you, you told her not to! Then why are you blaming her?" My mom's face went from red to white, cycling through colors like a traffic light. It was spectacular. "She never genuinely wanted to buy it for me! If she was sincere, she would have just bought it. Why would she keep asking over and over? Why didn't Chloe have to ask over and over? She was just waiting for me to say yes so she could force me to owe her a favor and be grateful! She's full of malicious intentions! Was I wrong not to fall for her trap?" My mom looked completely self-righteous, convinced of her own logic. And I continued to ignore her bait. I just took a few steps forward, stopping in front of the TV. "This TV. Back then, my mom also said she didn't want it, over and over again. I didn't listen to her, and I bought it anyway. Then she constantly complained to me that I bought one that was too small, saying it strained her eyes. I told her I would take her to exchange it, but she refused to go." I took a few more steps and stopped under the air conditioning unit. "Last summer, Mom said it was too hot and she wanted an AC unit. When I actually bought it for her, she said the cold air made her back and knees ache, that she couldn't handle the breeze. From that day on, she never turned it on again." "The bedsheets, the toilet paper, almost everything you see in this house—I bought them. Aunts, uncles, elders... have any of you ever heard my mom say a single word of praise or appreciation about me?" Everyone was stunned. The atmosphere descended into a bizarre, oppressive silence. An intense awkwardness seemed to spread from person to person. My sister rushed forward and grabbed my arm. "Avery, please, just stop talking. Leave Mom some dignity. No matter how flawed she is, she's still our mother." My mom glared at me, her eyes wide and bulging. Her red-rimmed eyes were filled with absolute fury. Her nostrils flared with agitation. She suddenly pointed a finger right at my face: "So what if you spent some money on me? Don't think just because you threw a few stinking dollars around that you're better than everyone else! Do you think I care about the money? I care about the thought! The attitude!" "You're standing here demonizing me in front of everyone, maliciously dragging my name through the mud! Even if you spent a million dollars on me, I wouldn't appreciate it!" "I never expected you to appreciate it, Mom. I just wanted everyone to know what an incredibly convoluted, impossible person you are. I've spent my entire life trying to please you, but you can never be pleased." "And Chloe doesn't have to do a single thing, and she will always be your precious darling."
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