“Hey, Eleanor. I’m going out today with some colleagues from work. We’re going shopping. I’ll be back tonight. Leave some dinner for Dan.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t let him go hungry.”
She didn’t ask if I had plans. She didn’t ask if I needed anything. She just gave me orders in my own house.
“Okay,” I said.
Khloe finished her coffee, got up, and left. She didn’t even put the cup in the sink. She left it there on the table with a coffee ring staining the wood.
I washed the cup.
Like always.
Dan got home from work at seven. He looked tired. He took off his shoes at the entrance and collapsed on the sofa.
“What’s for dinner, Mom?” he asked.
“Chicken mole,” I said. “Your favorite.”
“Perfect. I’m starving.”
I served him. He ate two plates. He didn’t ask about Khloe. He didn’t ask how my day had been. He just ate, watched television, and went to sleep.
I stayed in the kitchen washing dishes, cleaning the stove, putting away the leftovers.
When I finished, it was almost ten at night.
I went to my room—the small room, the one that used to be a storage closet. The walls still had marks from where the shelves used to be. The window was tiny. Hardly any light came in.
I sat on the bed and looked around.
All my things were crammed into that space. My clothes in a tiny closet. My photos in a box because there was nowhere to hang them. My rocking chair in the garage. My kitchen renovated without asking me. My living room full of furniture I hadn’t chosen.
What was left of my house for me?
I lay down. I closed my eyes.
But I couldn’t sleep.
The months kept passing, and with every month I became smaller.
Khloe started inviting more people over—her friends, her coworkers, distant cousins. People I didn’t know walked in and out of my house like it was a hotel.
One Saturday, her brother arrived with his wife and their two kids. Little kids who ran all over the house screaming, throwing things.
They broke a vase that had belonged to my mother—one of those antique hand-painted ceramic vases.
“They’re just kids,” Khloe told me when I showed her the pieces. “They didn’t do it on purpose. Don’t be so dramatic.”
I gathered the pieces. I put them in a bag. I threw them in the trash.
And I said nothing more.
Every time I complained, Dan told me the same thing.
“Mom, don’t exaggerate.”
“Khloe is just trying to make the house look better.”
“Mom, understand. She lives here too.”
“She has a right to change things.”
“Mom, don’t be so sensitive. It’s just furniture.”
Just furniture. Just walls. Just things.
But to me, they weren’t just things. They were my life. They were thirty years of memories. It was the home I had built with my own hands when everyone told me I wouldn’t be able to do it alone.
And now they were taking it away from me, piece by piece.
One afternoon, Khloe was talking on the phone with someone. I was in the kitchen washing vegetables. She was in the living room, but she was talking so loud I could hear every word.
“Yeah, it’s a pain,” she was saying. “But it’s free. We don’t pay rent. We don’t pay utilities. We don’t pay for anything. I just have to put up with the old woman.”
She laughed.
“I know, I know. But Dan says we still don’t have enough saved up, so I have to act like everything is fine.”
The knife fell from my hands and made a sharp noise against the sink.
Khloe didn’t notice. She kept talking. She kept laughing.
I stood there, hands wet, watching the water run.
Is that how she saw me? As something to be put up with? As the price she had to pay for not paying rent?
That night when Dan got home, I tried to talk to him.
“Son, I need to tell you something.”
“What’s wrong, Mom?”
“I think it’s time for you to find your own place. It’s been over a year. You said it would only be a few months.”
Dan frowned.
“Mom, we’ve talked about this. It’s hard out there.”
“But—”
I stopped. I didn’t know how to say it without sounding selfish. Without sounding like the bitter mother-in-law everyone describes.
“It’s just that… this is my house, Dan. And I feel like I don’t have any space left.”
“You don’t have space?” Dan raised his voice. “Mom, this house is huge. You have your room. What more do you want?”
“My room is the storage closet, Dan.”
“But it’s a room. And besides, we help with the expenses. I pay the water, the electricity, the gas. Without us, how would you pay for all that?”
I fell silent.
He was right. Since they had arrived, I no longer paid the utilities. Dan did. And with my pension, I barely had enough for my personal expenses.
“Forget it,” I said. “It’s nothing.”
“Mom, don’t be like that. I understand it’s complicated to live together sometimes, but we’re family, and family supports each other.”
Yes. Family supports each other.
But who was supporting me?
The weeks kept passing, and I kept getting smaller, more invisible. I no longer cooked what I wanted. I cooked what Khloe asked for. I no longer watched my shows on television. I watched what they put on. I no longer invited my friends over because Khloe always had people at the house and there was no room for mine.
Sharon, my neighbor, came to visit me from time to time. She was a woman my age—a widow too—who lived alone in the house next door. We had been friends for years.
One day, she came over for coffee. She sat in the kitchen with me.
She looked around.
“You changed the kitchen?” she asked.
“Khloe changed it.”
“Ah.” Sharon took a sip of coffee. “And what do you think?”
I shrugged. “It’s fine. More modern.”
Sharon looked at me with those eyes that knew me too well.
“Eleanor… are you okay?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I don’t know. You seem different. Quieter. Sadder.”
“I’m just tired, that’s all.”
“Tired of what? You don’t work like you used to.”
It was true. Since Dan and Khloe arrived, I no longer did laundry for others. I no longer cooked for events. They had told me it wasn’t necessary anymore—that they supported me—that I could finally rest.
But it wasn’t rest I felt. It was uselessness.
“Sharon… have you ever felt like you don’t matter anymore?” I asked her suddenly.
She put her cup down on the table.
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