Chapter 1 - Four Hundred Dollars and a Question
The four hundred dollars landed in my mother's palm with a dry slap.
"There's the rent," I said.
Mom counted the twenties without looking at me. Twenty bills. Four hundred dollars. Nearly a third of what I'd brought home from the auto shop that week.
She tucked the money into the pocket of her housecoat.
"Good. At least you're learning some responsibility."
I was twenty-one years old, working full-time at a repair shop in Atlanta, and taking evening classes toward my automotive certification. I paid my phone bill, bought my own clothes, contributed to groceries, and had started paying rent after Mom told me that adulthood meant carrying my share.
I hadn't complained.
Not until that afternoon.
Behind my mother, her boyfriend, Curtis Bell, wandered across our living room in a white tank top and basketball shorts. He carried a bowl of cereal in one hand and my television remote in the other.
He'd been living with us for eight months.
As far as I knew, he hadn't paid a single household bill.
"Mom," I said, watching him settle onto the couch. "How much rent does Curtis pay?"
Her fingers stopped moving inside her pocket.
"What?"
"How much does he contribute?"
She gave me the look she'd used when I was fourteen and asked questions she didn't want to answer.
"That's none of your business, Darius."
I glanced at Curtis.
He had turned up the television.
"So let me understand this. I have to pay rent, but this grown man gets to live here for free?"
Curtis lowered the volume.
"Watch how you talk, young man."
I turned toward him.
"You're telling me to watch my mouth when you don't even pay enough bills to earn an opinion about how I talk?"
He stood.
Curtis was forty-six, broad-shouldered, and taller than me by a couple of inches. He had a habit of making his presence seem bigger by stepping into other people's space.
"You need to show some respect."
"Respect for what?"
"Darius!" Mom shouted.
She moved between us, facing me.
"I'm trying to teach you responsibility. You're a grown man. You can't expect to live here forever without contributing."
"Then teach him, too."
Her face hardened.
"That's my man."
For a moment, the room went strangely quiet.
Curtis crossed his arms.
Mom waited, apparently expecting me to apologize.
I looked at the woman who had raised me alone, worked double shifts at a nursing home, and once sold her wedding ring to replace my school laptop.
"And I'm your son."
Her expression changed.
Not much.
Just enough for me to notice.
Then she looked away.
"Don't make this about choosing sides."
"I'm not asking you to choose. I'm asking why the rules are different."
Curtis laughed.
"Boy, you don't know what goes on between grown folks."
I stared at him.
"Then maybe grown folks should stop spending my money."
Mom pointed toward the hallway.
"Go to your room before you say something you'll regret."
I almost laughed again.
My room.
The same bedroom I'd slept in since I was nine.
The room I now paid four hundred dollars a month to occupy.
Instead of arguing, I walked down the hallway.
Behind me, Curtis said something too low to hear.
Mom answered him in a soothing voice.
I stopped outside my bedroom door.
She hadn't used that voice with me in months.
That evening, I came out to refill my water bottle and heard Curtis speaking in the kitchen.
"Four hundred isn't enough," he told her. "At his age, he ought to be paying at least six."
Mom answered quietly.
"He's already working hard."
Curtis snorted.
"Then he can work harder."
I remained beside the hallway wall, my empty bottle in my hand.
Mom didn't agree with him.
But she didn't say no, either.
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And suddenly, I understood that the argument in our living room hadn't really ended.
It had only moved somewhere I wasn't supposed to hear.
