I Earn Mom's Love, It's Free for My Brother

“You think your son and daughter-in-law have done anything for you! You don’t even know how to be a mother, so who are you to scold me, your daughter?”

She cut me off with a slap, then said something that hit me straight in the chest.

“If I’d known you’d turn out like this, I’d have strangled you to death! You’re completely inconsiderate! You don’t know how to care about your maternal family!”

She raged in the office for what felt like forever, keening and wailing as she accused me of being an ungrateful daughter.

She made me the talk of the whole company, shaming me in front of everyone.

Only when security physically escorted her out did her shrill voice finally subside.

That night when I came home, I found something else waiting for me: all my gold jewelry—the pieces worth twenty-one thousand dollars—were gone!

Panicked, I was about to call the police when my mother sent me text messages.

[Remember that twenty thousand I told you to return to your sister-in-law? You’ve stubbornly refused, so I gave your gold jewelry to her.]

[Listen to me. Go back and apologize. If you can reconcile with Lucius, do it!]

[Don’t make me lose face in front of our relatives. Don’t let your sister-in-law lose her job, or don’t bother coming home again!]

I stared at the messages, a suffocating mix of anger and cold despair rising in me.

My hands shook as I typed one line.

[Return my jewelry now, or I’ll call the cops!]

Then, I deleted it, deciding words were pointless. Instead, I directly dialed the cops.

They brought my mother to the station. When I went to reclaim my jewelry, Ethel pointed at my nose and cursed.

“Gosh, Beulah, you really outdid yourself this time! You actually called the cops on your own mother?! What a daughter you are! Watch out—your father might crawl out of his grave in the middle of the night to look for you!”

Buck was so mad that he wanted to hit me, but an officer held him back.

I stood my ground and asked my mother calmly, “You took all my gold while I wasn’t home. If that isn’t theft, what is? You stole a daughter’s things and gave them to your daughter-in-law. No matter how you spin it, I didn’t do anything wrong!”

Her face flushed with rage; she bared her teeth and handed the chat logs to the police to prove she hadn’t stolen them—that she’d asked for permission. After she spoke, she fainted.

It was critical.

The officers immediately rushed her to the hospital.

I wouldn’t have gone if not for them; they insisted I come along.

Under the doctors’ care, my mother came to; the medical bill, after insurance, was only less than a hundred bucks.

When the nurse came to collect payment, Mom wore a scowl and ordered me, “Go pay now! Do you want to die out of anger here?”

Her precious son just stood by with no intention of paying.

I didn’t soften. “If you want me to split this hundred bucks with you, then pay back the twenty thousand you owe me from your last medical bill. I’m your daughter, sure. But your son isn’t dead! It’s not right that I always pay while he sits back and enjoys himself!”

The officers saw what was going on and made Buck hand over the money.

Ethel wasn’t satisfied. She planted herself in the hospital corridor and loudly proclaimed, “My god, I’ve never seen anything like this. You made your own mother sick, called the cops on her, and you don’t even pay a cent for her medical bill. If you were my daughter, I’d beat you to death! I’d rather have been childless than have a daughter like you!”

I turned to an officer and asked, “Is publicly insulting someone a crime?”

That question shut Ethel up finally.

In the end, I got all my gold jewelry back and left the hospital.