“Clean them. If you’re going to live off my son, you should at least be good for something,” she snapped.
“I worked too,” I replied firmly.
“You used to work, but now you eat under my roof and you’re just a parasite,” she spat back.
That night I told Christopher about the painful interaction. He sighed deeply without taking his eyes off his phone screen.
“You know how my mom is, so please just be patient,” he murmured.
The same exact phrase was repeated for months on end.
Until one afternoon, I overheard Gertrude talking on the telephone with a neighbor.
“Sabrina is like a daughter to me, so I take care of her and she helps me a little around the house,” she claimed smoothly.
That blatant lie finally woke me up from my foolish trance. I understood that I would never win her affection and that Christopher would never choose to upset her to protect me.
That same night, I opened a brand new notebook and wrote four simple words: I have to leave.
I already knew how to make candles and aromatic oils, so I started studying in the early morning hours. I secretly rented a small warehouse in Tempe for three thousand five hundred dollars a month, using my last savings to buy wax, essences, and jars.
By day I kept cleaning the entire house, but by night I built my way out.
The first month I sold a single box for three hundred and eighty dollars. By the third month, I was receiving daily orders from happy customers.
Then Gertrude started preparing a herbal infusion for me every single night.
“Take the whole thing because it will help you sleep and get pregnant,” she commanded.
After drinking it, I would wake up feeling dizzy, with irritated skin and a foggy mind. One night I pretended to drink it and secretly stored the liquid inside a small glass jar.
The next morning, I caught my mother-in-law going through my personal bag.
In her hand, she held the first bottle that could prove that this was not a simple herbal infusion.
PART 2
“What are you hiding?” asked Gertrude, holding the jar right in front of my face.
I felt my heart pounding in my ribs, but I refused to back down.
“It’s a sample of the drink you’re giving me every night,” I said clearly.
“So now you don’t trust me at all?” she shrieked.
Before she could snatch it from me, Christopher walked into the kitchen, and his mother’s expression changed immediately.
“Your wife is acting like a complete madwoman, saying that I want to poison her,” Gertrude wailed.
Christopher looked at me with an exhausted expression.
“Sabrina, don’t exaggerate things,” he sighed.
See more on the next page
