MOMMY ISSUES | Tamber

26

Tara's living room was a chaotic mess, a testament to the upheaval in her life. Half-unpacked boxes littered the floor, their contents spilling out haphazardly. Amidst the disorder, Christina swept with a scowl of disdain, her broom swishing through the debris with a vengeance.

The clanging from the kitchen announced Tara's arrival as she shouldered through the doorway, an overloaded laundry basket balanced against her hip. She froze mid-stride, nostrils flaring at the sight of her mother's unauthorized meddling.

"What the hell, Ma? I thought we agreed - no 'helpfully' rearranging my place while I'm out," Tara snapped, her voice strained with barely contained frustration.

Christina pinned her daughter with a withering look over one bony shoulder. "If by 'agreed' you mean I ignored your feeble protests as per usual... then yes, we're in complete alignment."

She punctuated her barb with a contemptuous sniff, returning her attention to whisking dust bunnies into oblivion.

"Right, silly me for briefly entertaining the notion you might actually respect my boundaries for once," Tara muttered bitterly. Her derision dripped with familiar venom, but her shoulders slumped infinitesimally, a sign of her defeated resignation. She wore the weary countenance of someone who had weathered this very storm countless times before.

"Well, it's hardly my fault you seem constitutionally incapable of maintaining even basic standards of—" Christina began, her tone icy.

Tara whirled to face her, fury igniting her eyes. "Did I not make it explicitly clear two years ago when I said I don't want anything to do with you?"

Her voice pitched higher, scalding the words as they tore from her throat in a primal scream of anguish. Christina merely paused, eying her daughter with hooded disdain.

"And as I explained at the time... I simply don't accept that from my own daughter," Christina said thickly, her voice undergirded with something like grief. It was a cold, petulant denial of the horrible circumstances she had brought into being with her own crushed ego.

"You are my flesh and blood. We're bound together by the sanctity of that covenant whether you've chosen to acknowledge or reject it," Christina continued, stalking toward Tara with a predatory fierceness. Her face hardened to hammered granite, her eyes sharp as razors.

"And until you wise the hell up and come to terms with that reality, the very least I can do is stay on and prevent you martyring yourself into one of your catastrophic downward spirals," she said acidly. "Over my disemboweled remains, Tara Grace."

Their eyes burned into one another for a brittle moment, smoldering with the irreconcilable damage etched between them—a chasm spanning generations of unspeakable sins and betrayals.

A tiny flurry of giggles and thudding footsteps heralded Avana's entrance, toddling into their tableau with open arms outstretched for her mother's sheltering embrace. The air crackled with an altogether different friction as both Tara and Christina turned their attention to the chubby cherub careening into view.

Tara's rictus fractured instantly, dissolving into a watery facsimile of welcome that did little to hide the keening anguish knotting her throat. Christina's expression was even less guarded—open longing and naked devotion softening her dagger-edged regard as she drank in her only grandchild. Avana was the bright, precious exception to both their ugliness.

"Mama! Nana!" Avana squealed happily, her stubby arms windmilling through the air in futile attempts to achieve maximum velocity. But before she could collide with either frozen woman, the doorbell sounded with stentorian force, startling them all from their tableau of motionless detente.