1: 1
The second summer break started, my brother's wife called me.
"June, come spend the break over at our place. It works out perfectly, you can tutor your niece. She just failed all three of her core subjects on her finals."
My mother chimed in too. "That's right. Your brother and his wife aren't educated, they can't teach the girl properly. Help out where you can."
I thought about it, turned down the parents offering me a fat fee for tutoring, and agreed.
But the moment I landed at their door, before I'd even taken a sip of water, Tabitha started in. "June, you know your brother and I are still paying off the mortgage, and our salaries aren't high."
I assumed she was telling me she couldn't afford my tutoring fee. I was about to say that family didn't talk about money, when her next sentence stunned me.
"You can't just eat and stay here for free either. Rent's three thousand a month, food's another three thousand, so for two months you give me twelve thousand and we're square."
I thought I'd misheard, and looked over at my mother. A flicker of guilt crossed her face.
"June, honey, your brother and sister-in-law have it hard too. You'd be paying for room and board out there anyway. There's no reason it should be free just because it's family, is there?"
"That's right. No sense in paying strangers but treating family for free."
The moment I said it, I tightened my grip on the suitcase handle. I wasn't tutoring anyone.
..........
"What is that supposed to mean?"
Faced with Tabitha Fleming's demand, I ran the numbers for her.
"When I tutor kids out there, it's five hundred dollars an hour. Three hours a day is fifteen hundred. Twenty working days a month comes to thirty thousand."
"Now I'm back to tutor Vicky. So tell me, how many hours a day do you plan to have me tutor, and how many days a month?"
Tabitha panicked instantly. "So you're planning to charge us too? We're family. Vicky is your own niece. How can you be so cold, bringing up money?"
My mother hurried over and grabbed my arm. "That's right, June, we're all family. How can you ask your brother and his wife for money? If all you see is money, where's the flesh-and-blood love?"
Really funny. Charging me rent and food money, that's not about flesh-and-blood love. But the second I mention a tutoring fee, suddenly it's all about flesh-and-blood love.
I shot right back. "Weren't you two the ones who brought up rent and food first? How come only you get to tally things up, but I can't?"
"I come back to tutor Vicky for free, I stay in my own family's home, and I still have to pay rent and food money. Mom, Tabitha, is that how you two count flesh-and-blood love?"
A flicker of guilt crossed both their faces.
"Aren't your brother and his wife struggling? Do you, as the younger sister, really have to count things out this precisely?"
Struggling. I looked at the gold bracelet on her wrist, a good thirty grams of it, and let out a cold laugh. "That bracelet on your wrist, you just bought it a few days ago, didn't you? I saw the post you put up. You said my brother got a hundred thousand as his first-quarter bonus and gave it to you as a reward."
Tabitha clapped a flustered hand over the bracelet. "So I'm not even allowed to wear a gold bracelet now? You're going to nitpick that too?"
I shook my head. "You've got it wrong, Tabitha. I never said you don't deserve it, and I'm not nitpicking your bracelet. My point is that your lives aren't hard at all."
My mother smiled then and pulled me down to sit, calculation in her eyes. "We're all family. Make a scene and the neighbors will have a good laugh at us."
"June, your brother may look like he earns a decent amount, but supporting a family on his own is a lot of pressure. Your sister-in-law doesn't work, there's Vicky, the mortgage and the car loan. That salary of his just isn't enough."
"Not like you. One mouth to feed and the whole family's fine."
I pulled my hand back out of hers and looked her straight in the eye. "Mom, if I remember right, the mortgage on this place has always been paid with your pension. And half a month ago you just called me saying you'd run through this month's pension, and had me transfer you the money for this month's mortgage payment."
My mother's face went rigid.
That was when a shoe came flying and hit me in the face. "June Pruitt, that's enough."
