by Becky Siame
“We carry only real leather footwear which we don’t want stretched. So maybe you should go somewhere else to buy your outfits, like Taking Shape or Big City Chick,” she sneers, naming the two popular plus size clothing retailers in town.
Jae says something else and the woman replies loudly for the entire store to hear, “Sometimes we do get bigger women who wander in, but what can you do since we don’t cater to that demographic?”
The skinny clerk continues. “And because part of my wages are based on commission, I can’t waste any more time with you because I’m not going to make any money, so please just leave the store. You’ve already made other customers uncomfortable.”
By now my face is burning with shame and anger. My only goal is to get out of there quickly and pray Jae doesn’t see me. I thrust my feet into my shoes and stand. The wooden chair sticks to me for a few seconds before falling off my hips. The clerk snorts. As I rush through the store, I almost stop dead in my tracks: Tiresa is standing near the door. The look on her face tells me she’s heard and seen it all.
And didn’t lift a finger to help or defend me.
I brush past the other supposedly uncomfortable customers and burst through the door.
“. . . hope she doesn’t come back,” I hear the woman with Jae say loudly. I know it is for my benefit.
“Don’t worry: I won’t,” I gasp - and run smack into Wesley.
“Not you again,” he sneers and starts to text.
•
Mika is waiting with the kids at my house when I pull into the driveway. Can this day get any worse? I moan inwardly.
“Mummy!” Abe and Fi shriek and run to give me a hug. After an afternoon of rejection, at least they are happy to see me.
Mika retrieves their luggage from the trunk of his BMW. I reach out to take it but he shakes his head. “No, I’ve got it,” he says in a surprisingly friendly tone and falls in step behind me as I walk to the front door.
As I fumble with the keys to unlock the door, Mika says, “Kids, I need to talk to your mum, so stay outside and play awhile, okay?”
“Aw, I want to play with my video game,” Abe complains.
Mika points his finger at him. “Stay in the yard.”
I don’t want to talk to Mika or let him see my messy house, but he waltzes through the door and straight to the kids’ room to deposit their luggage there. I set my purse on the kitchen counter and wait for him to return.
“How you been, Bella?” Mika says smoothly as he emerges from the hallway and looks around. “I’ve said it before, but I can pay you alimony so you can live somewhere nicer. The kids deserve better than a box to live in.”
“Mika,” I say, “I’m in no mood for a lecture on how badly I’m doing as a parent and provider, so just skip to what you want to say and get out.”
Mika held up his hands. “Whoa, whoa, easy there, I’m not here to lecture or argue.”
“Then what are you here for? I doubt there’s anything here which will catch or keep your interest,” I snap.
“Bella,” he croons in the tone he uses when he wants something but is trying to hide it. “Cut me some slack, please? I know you hate me and I don’t blame you. What I did was selfish. But for the sake of our children - our children - I do want to remain friends. Is that possible, because it means a lot to me.”
“Excuse me while I barf,” I turn away and grab the kettle and fill it with water. I want a cup of tea to help settle my nerves, though I’m not going to offer him one. “It meant a lot to me to keep you in my bed but that didn’t happen, so why should you get what you want? Oh, that’s right, because you always get what you want.”
Mika looks affronted but makes an effort to compose himself. “I understand.”
“Like hell you do,” I fight to keep from shouting. Here is his opportunity to apologise and he doesn’t. The nerve.
He folds his hands as if in supplication or trying to find the right words to say. But nothing he says will be right. “So what did you come here for?” I ask, wanting to get this ordeal over with. I plug in the kettle and turn it on.
Mika slowly approaches. “I came here because of all the fuss that’s being made about the engagement party. Bella,” he places a hand over his heart, “I am mortified that your family expects you to be there. When I learned of it, all I could think was how selfish they were being. I know you and that you wouldn’t want to come and I’ve tried to talk Tiresa and Mama Rose out of it, but they won’t listen. Then I overheard Tiresa when she said she’d buy you a dress for the engagement party.”
He stops one pace in front of me; I’m back up against the stove. I can smell his cologne - Obsession. He wore it back when we first dated. His unshaven scruff now boasts a few grey hairs, which only makes him sexier. Yes, Mika definitely gets better-looking with age. Then he smiles and I hope he can’t hear my heart beat faster. We haven’t been this close in years. He must realise that, too, because as I look up, something hot and sensual shimmers within the depths of his eyes. An unwelcome tingle spreads through my body.
“I knew you’d laugh at the offer.” He shakes his head. “Sometimes Tiresa can be so arrogant. She’s not like you.” He places a hand on my shoulder. “She doesn’t yet know where true beauty comes from.”
“Oh, please,” I scowl and bat his hand away. “I don’t need a sugar-coated reminder that I’m fat and ugly.”
Mika’s face fell. “Bella, that’s not what I meant and you know it.”
I laugh. “You meant it the day you said you were leaving me for my sister. Now are you going tell me the real reason you’re here?”
Mika put his hands together again. “I just - I miss you, Bella. When the kids are with me, I feel like half a parent. You’re missing from our lives. You’re missing from my life.”
“Whose fault is that?” I spit and turn my back on him, wishing the kettle would hurry up and boil.
He moves closer. I can feel his body heat. “You’re missing from my work. I haven’t given a decent speech in years. Everyone at the firm hates it when I stand up to give a speech at a dinner. They all pull out their iPhones and start texting and playing games.” He chuckles at the memory, but I know it bruises his ego.
It becomes harder to think with him standing this close. This is not supposed to happen. He should not be able to arouse this kind of sexual response in me anymore.
I shake my head. “So that’s what this is really all about? You need me to write a speech for you? Here’s a news flash, Mika: you fired me from that job. Ask Tiresa to put words in your mouth to make you look good. I’m sure she’s good for something, though I haven’t figured out what.”
Unbelievably, he begins to massage my shoulders. “I don’t need a speech. Forget the speeches. I came here to tell you to ignore Tiresa. She has no business telling you what to wear.” He bends down and speaks softly in my ear, raising the hairs on my neck. “And I do miss you.”
“Right,” I say dryly, but I also close my eyes, savoring the sensation, the remembrance of how it used to be. My mind takes a nosedive into oblivion. He continues massaging and kisses behind my ear, my neck, my shoulders. “Mmm, Bella. You’re such a woman.”
“Stop it, Mika,” I say without compulsion. I turn off the kettle and throw in a tea bag, trying to focus on something practical and unromantic.
Mika grabs my shoulders, turns me around and kisses my neck. “No,” I push him away but he clutches me. “Mika, I mean it. You’ve got some nerve.”
“You know you want this, Bella,” and he sucks my neck hard. It’s been so long since he - anyone - has touched me that I can’t make him stop. I don’t want him to stop.
“The kids . . .” I protest.
“They’ll stay outside. Come on, you want this, don’t you? When’s the last time?” His hand wanders down my body.
It flitters through my foggy mind that his words aren’t much different from Wesley’s, and yet instead of feeling angry and insulted, I’m yielding to him.
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“Come on, Bella, you know I can give you what you need,” Mika groans. He pulls up the hem of my dress and plunges his hand into my panties, rubbing gently. I gasp and yield to his touch, leaning toward him as strong sexual need overwhelms me. I can’t think, can’t remember why this is a bad idea. Then he grabs my hand and pulls me to my bedroom.
I wonder if this is how it started between him and Tiresa, the persistence, the questions. And suddenly I realise that now I am in Tiresa’s place. I’m the sister Mika’s cheating with and she’s the one being betrayed.
After a day of being insulted and laughed at by friend, acquaintance and stranger, and of being betrayed by Tiresa again by her inaction, an iron enters my soul. It’s my turn to come out on top. It’s my turn to be the winner. It’s time to take charge of my life.
I shut the bedroom door behind us.
Revenge is sweet.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Do you want to live life to its fullest with the people you love, doing the things you love to do, without the stigma of being a burden or anathema to society?”
FROM BELLA’S BLOG
http://www.thelightersideoflarge.com/ch8
Mama Rose fixes me with that omniscient glare of hers the minute we walk in the door. I look everywhere else to avoid her knowing gaze. It’s Fi’s birthday and Mama Rose insists on throwing her a birthday party at her house on Friday evening.
“Mama Rose, where’s my presents?” Fi squeals when she sees the pink streamers and balloons which decorate the dining room. In the center of the table sits a pink princess doll cake complete with piped ruffles and a jewel candy-studded skirt. Mama Rose went overboard again but catering for her family has always been a favorite
pastime of hers - next to eating. I like to think a voracious appetite runs in the family, but Tiresa’s slender physique nulls that particular defence of my fluffy thighs.
“No presents until after dinner and you blow out your candles,” Mama Rose replies. Fi and Abe race to the
backyard where their Samoan cousins are already playing. The adults sit on the patio, sipping drinks and talking.
Mama Rose shakes her head. “Isabella, what have you done?”
“What do you mean what have I done?” I feign innocence while blushing.
Mama Rose crosses her arms and tsk-tsks. “I always know when you do something wrong. You can’t hide it. Now come on, ‘fess up. Get it all out in the open and you’ll feel a lot better.”
I have no choice. It’s either tell her or she’ll never drop the subject. When I say never, I mean never. She’ll be on her deathbed demanding an explanation instead of saying her goodbyes. The longest anyone ever held out on telling her the truth was Aunt Flo. She lasted a month, during which time Mama Rose wouldn’t speak to her. Instead, she’d fix her with that look until Aunt Flo finally cracked and confessed to kissing the neighbor boy. Meanwhile, she couldn’t eat or sleep and lost weight and all colour in her complexion from the pressure. Mama Rose is persistent if nothing else.
We walk into the kitchen and I set down my purse on the table. I glance out the window to see that everyone is outside. Mama Rose pulls out a chair and sits, pointing at the one nearest her for me to sit in.
“Out with it,” she taps her index finger on the table. “Just say it and be done with it.” I hesitate. “Isabella, I’m your grandma. There’s nothing you can say that’s going to shock me.”
“I had sex with Mika.”
“Merciful Heavens! Aumai lou mo se mulielo Mum ai polo lou tina!”
“Mama Rose!” I exclaim, horrified to hear such vile language come out of my grandmother’s mouth.
She says a few other choice phrases. So much for being shock-proof. “Oute le malamalama,” she finishes.
“I don’t understand how it happened, either,” I pout.
“You were there when it happened. Don’t give me ‘I don’t understand’ for an excuse,” Mama Rose’s voice raises a few decibels.
“Hush! I don’t want them to hear,” I plead with her, glancing out the window again.
Mama Rose gets up and paces the room. “What am I going to do with you girls? Is Mika really worth all this fuss? I don’t think so. He’s never treated either of you with the respect you two deserve. Oh, he may provide for his children, I’ll grant him that. But cheating on you first, and now he’s cheating on Tiresa: when is it going to end? Is he going to try to seduce me next?”
“Mama Rose, stop, please stop,” I plead. “I was lonely, okay? He dropped off the kids and one thing led to another and…”
“And that’s all I need to know,” Mama Rose finishes. “What business does he have getting in your bed? He wants something, doesn’t he? Mika doesn’t do anything without an ulterior motive. What did he want from you?”
I shrug. “He said he misses me. He doesn’t feel like a complete parent when I’m not around. He criticised Tiresa. And obviously he still desires me.”
Even as I said the words, I knew they were a lie. Mika wanted sex, not me. He never kissed me on the mouth. He didn’t bother to undress or take off any of my clothes except my underwear. When I was on top of him, he complained that he couldn’t move. When he finished, he immediately got up and said he was late for a meeting. No more kissing, no thank you, no endearments to show it meant anything.
Mama Rose snorts. “That’s a load of ga’o.”
“Mama Rose, what’s gotten into you?”
“What’s gotten into me?” she hoots. “Isabella, have you taken leave of your senses? That man don’t care about you. Hell, I don’t think he really cares about Tiresa. He just uses people. But you girls are going to do what you want to do. So go right ahead, let yourselves get hurt by that susu poki. I’ll support whatever decisions you two make, but I don’t have to like them.”
And it hits me: I made the same decision as Tiresa had made and became the betrayer. I have become the very person I hate. I just wanted revenge and to be the winner in this insane competition for Mika’s affection, but deep down, I knew all along it was wrong to stab my sister in the back, even though she had stabbed me in the back.
The tears well up as I finally admit to myself how low I’ve sunk. Just as Sands prophesied, I opened up my legs for a hug. And Mama Rose is right; she’s always right. It is just hard to admit I’m wrong, especially about Mika, my first love, my only love thus far.
Mama Rose sighs and walks over to give me a hug from behind. I begin to sob. “Baby, it’s all right, it’s going to be all right,” Mama Rose says. “We all make dumb mistakes. The important thing is to get back up, dust yourself off and leave those mistakes behind. You can do it, Isabella.”
I cry for another minute before I calm down. Mama Rose hands me a tissue. “I blame myself,” she says, sitting down again.”For what?” I ask, dabbing my eyes.
Mama Rose folds her hands. “For separating you girls. I thought I was doing the right thing and it made me so mad that your father wouldn’t let you go. But I couldn’t see reason. I assumed it was better for Tiresa to be among her own people and not in the white world. It’s what your mother would have wanted, I told myself. Tiresa’s father is Samoan, too, so it only stood to reason that she be raised as a Samoan. Lordy, it used to make me so angry when you’d come to visit on holidays, all dressed like you were having tea with the queen instead of a feast with islanders and you couldn’t understand our language.”
She looked into the distance, lost in thought. “But tearing you girls apart was wrong. And now you’re still being torn apart. Maybe if I let her stay with your dad, things would be different.”
I placed my hand on hers. “We can’t know what might have been.”
Mama Rose breaks out of her reverie, looks at me and smiles. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. But I’m still sorry for what I’ve done, and I ask for your forgiveness.”
“Oh, Mama Rose, don’t say that. There’s nothing to forgive.”
Mama Rose shakes her head. “You’re a good girl
, Isabella, and I love you more than words can say.” Now it’s her turn to squeeze me hand. “Leave your mistakes behind you so you don’t have to apologise to anyone when you’re an old lady.”
I laugh, a full, belly-shaking laugh like I haven’t laughed since I met Jae. “Let’s hope I won’t have to apologise to anyone for cussing like a Samoan when I’m an old lady!”
Mama Rose keeps glancing out the window. “Perhaps you shouldn’t start practicing. There’s a young man I’d like you to meet. He’s one of us and he knows Samoan.”
I glance out the window. “Meet? Here? Now? Mama Rose, what have you done?”
Mama Rose moves into the kitchen and begins organising the paper plates and cups. “I haven’t ‘done’ anything. It’s just a neighbour friend who I invited to the party. He’s very nice. Works with computers or something. I told him about you and he expressed an interest in meeting you.”
Mama Rose’s idea of eligible young gentlemen was far removed from my idea. “What’s wrong with him?” I grimace.
“Wrong with him? Why must there be something wrong with him? Isabella, you assume the ridiculous.”
I open my mouth to reply when I hear the familiar sound of a car’s engine. “You didn’t invite them,” I moan, my stomach sinking.
Mama Rose shrugs. “They are her father and aunt.”
The front door opens and I cringe, reluctant to turn around and greet Mika and Tiresa.
Mama Rose looks over my shoulder. “Tiresa, dear! Where’s Mika?”
I keep my back to her. “Something came up at the last minute at the office,” Tiresa replies.
A guilty conscience, perhaps? I wonder.
Mama Rose smiles and glance at me with a silent say hello to your sister look. “Oh, that’s too bad.”
Not for me, it isn’t, I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Well, it can’t be helped. Everyone’s out back. We’ll start dinner soon. Help me get everything on the table, girls.”