Heartbreak Hotel: This Place Hotel

Chapter 57: Giving Up

A/N: This a very long chapter.

Liana

I knew at a young age that my family was broken. Most of my friends had a mom and a dad at home. Aunts and uncles and cousins. Grandparents and great-great grandparents. And they would all come together on holidays for big feasts.

I didn't come up that way.

When I was three, my father left us and ran off somewhere where we never heard from him again. So, I never really knew him. My grandmother passed away before I was born and so did my grandfather. My mother didn't have any siblings, she was an only child. So, having aunts and uncles was not a thing for me. And whether or not my grandmother has any siblings is unknown. Which means distant cousins is not a thing in the Haughton family, either.

Growing up it was just me, my mother and my sisters. Every holiday, every birthday, every day. They were my family. It was small, but it was enough, I suppose. Even though I often wondered what it would be like to have a huge family. I knew Katy and her family while growing up--she had a family that seemed to keep growing and growing. Starting with their eldest daughter Rebbie, who was my friend up until the moment I moved from Gary and to New York with Sasha when I was seventeen. I was very curious about her family while we were coming up. I always wondered how all those kids could fit into that little house, and she always said they just made it work. To this day, I don't think I can understand how. And we're practically family--through marriage that is.

For me, my family was rather small. It was only me, my mother and my sisters. My mom was a single mother who cleaned houses and worked in a department store to make ends meet. Which meant that she was hardly ever at home. Sasha took care of Danielle and me most of the time while she juggled school and dance on the side. Danielle was sort of the black sheep of our small nest. She was the rebel. She was five years older than me and basically did what she wanted. She never had any interest in school or what it had to offer her. And she when she got older, she constantly ran with the wrong crowds. No one ever knew why she was the way that she was, and somewhere down the line, my mother blamed Sasha for Danielle inconsistencies. Because of that, the three of them were always at war with one another. It was like I was on the outside looking in, basically. Just sitting quietly on the side, watching and observing everything that happened every day.

Being the oldest was almost like a curse for Sasha. My mother put a lot of pressure on her to be perfect in a way. She had to look perfect, act perfect, have perfect grades, be the perfect daughter, and an example for Danielle and I. Which in reality, she was. She was a good sister, she was a straight-A student, and whatever my mother asked of her--she did. But even then, that was enough for my mother. The more and more Danielle spun out of control, the harder my mother was on Sasha. As if it was Sasha who was provoking Danielle to go out and do the godforsaken things that she did. Because of that,--and the fact that no matter what she did, she couldn't please my mother. Sasha resented my mother deeply.

I think that's what lead her to leave home after our niece, Aleena was born.

Danielle had gotten pregnant at thirteen and had Aleena in 1960 when she was fourteen. Sasha was twenty-three years old and was in college at the time. She was hardly home when this event happened, but once again, my mother pointed the blame at her. After a big argument between the two of them, Sasha switched schools. She was going to the University of Indianapolis and suddenly decided to go to change colleges. I later found that she had enrolled in Wayne University and was taking a weekend dance class at another college. I didn't understand why she would go out of state when things were going well at the college she was at. Her excuse was that the college she was looking into had a better nursing program. That was a lie. I looked into the college and found that their most popular field was Law. I was angry with her for lying to our faces and I didn't understand why she had to that. I was only eleven and in my young mind, I just took that as her leaving me. Now, looking back on it, I understand why she had to lie. Our mother was smothering her to death, and she felt that the only way to get from under her thumbs were to move where she was out of reach. She knew that if she told our mother how she truly felt, my mother would devalue her feelings and make it seem that Sasha was wrong for what she felt. That was something my mother was notorious for doing. So, what did she do? She lied. And she left before any of us could have a proper goodbye.