Family · Words that stayed
Date: 29 September 2026
She didn’t say it to me. She said it about me.
I was nine when my mother came back from France. She had been gone two years. We were mourning her father. No one met her at the airport.
At night she called her brothers about their father’s estate. First she pleaded, then she threatened, then she raged. We eavesdropped, which was easy. One night she screamed into the phone:
“I’m going to chop these kids into little pieces and put them in trash bags. Then you’ll listen to me.”
My brother and I took her side anyway.
Not long after, they took her to the mental hospital.
I think I was her favorite. She hated all three of us anyway.
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What is the cruelest thing that one of your parents ever said to you?
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