Chapter 2 - THE FIRST WEEK WITHOUT ME
The internet was disconnected Tuesday.
Not permanently.
Just for thirteen hours.
Dad called during my planning period.
I declined.
He called the school office.
That crossed a line.
Our secretary, Mrs. Park, appeared at my classroom door.
“Your father says it’s urgent.”
My stomach dropped.
“Is someone hurt?”
“He said something about Wi-Fi.”
I closed my eyes.
“Tell him I’m teaching.”
Mrs. Park stared.
Then smiled.
“I like you.”
After school, Dad left a voicemail.
“You didn’t need to embarrass me.”
I almost laughed.
He had called my workplace over an internet account and somehow I had embarrassed him.
The problem was simple.
The household service had been in my name because years earlier Mom kept forgetting to update the credit card.
When I moved, I transferred my account to Jenna’s apartment.
My parents needed to open their own.
The world continued.
Then Dad’s phone stopped working.
Again, solvable.
Mom called Jenna.
That infuriated me.
“How did you get her number?”
“You gave it to me when you stayed late at school last year.”
“Do not call my roommate.”
“We didn’t know how else to reach you.”
“You have my number.”
“You weren’t answering.”
Exactly.
I established a rule.
Texts for actual emergencies.
Email for household questions.
No calls during school hours unless someone was in a hospital.
Mom said:
“You’re treating us like strangers.”
“No.”
I replied.
“I’m treating my job like a job.”
Meanwhile, Martha discovered car insurance was not free.
Eight months earlier she had lost coverage after missing two payments.
Mom cried.
Martha was pregnant.
Dad said the family had too much stress.
I quietly added her vehicle to my policy because bundling made it cheaper.
$138 each month.
Martha never asked where the insurance cards came from.
Apparently she believed adult paperwork reproduced naturally.
After I removed her, she received a quote nearly twice that amount due to a prior lapse and two speeding tickets.
She called me furious.
“You ruined my rate.”
“No.”
“You took me off!”
“Yes.”
“You should have warned me.”
“I did.”
“In a letter!”
“Yes.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Buy insurance.”
“With what money?”
That question contained the entire family system.
With what money?
Someone else’s.
Always.
Martha had no job.
Her last position ended five months before pregnancy.
According to her, the manager was toxic.
The position before that?
Bad scheduling.
Before that?
Unfair performance expectations.
Every job somehow became evidence the world was unreasonable.
Mom and Dad absorbed every landing.
I was expected to supply the cushion.
Then came childcare planning.
Martha’s baby was due in eight weeks.
Mom still worked three mornings a week at a dental office.
Dad drove for a local hardware distributor two days a week because retirement bored him.
Their original fantasy apparently assumed:
Monday through Friday after school: Abby.
Friday evenings: Abby if Martha needed a break.
Saturday mornings: “family rotation,” meaning probably Abby.
Emergency nights: Abby.
Once the baby came, they realized no Abby existed.
Mom called a daycare center.
Infant rate:
$1,460 per month.
She nearly fainted.
Martha called three others.
Cheapest:
$1,275.
Then she called me.
“I can’t afford that.”
“I know.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“You’re a teacher.”
“Yes.”
“You know kids.”
“Yes.”
“You’re done at three.”
“I’m not done at three.”
“What do you do?”
I stared.
“Work.”
“School ends at three.”
Teachers everywhere felt a disturbance in the universe.
“Meetings.”
“Lesson planning.”
“Grading.”
“Parent conferences.”
“Training.”
“Prep.”
“You can do some at home.”
“Yes.”
“In the same house as the baby.”
I laughed.
She became angry.
“This isn’t funny.”
“No.”
I stopped.
“It really isn’t.”
Then I asked:
“What was your plan if I had moved away for college?”
“Mom said you didn’t.”
“What was your plan if I took a job in another city?”
“You didn’t.”
“What was your plan if I got married?”
“Abby!”
Exactly.
No plan.
Only access.
I said:
“You need childcare that doesn’t depend on my life remaining available.”
She hung up.
Three days later, Mom sent:
Could you at least babysit Tuesdays and Thursdays?
I replied:
No.
Then sat in my car and cried.
That surprised me.
Saying no felt good intellectually.
My body still experienced it as betrayal.
I loved my family.
That was the problem.
Boundaries are easiest with people you do not care about.
Jenna found me in the parking lot.
“You okay?”
“I said no to babysitting.”
“Congratulations.”
“I feel terrible.”
“Both can happen.”
She handed me coffee.
Living with Jenna was strange.
She washed her own dishes.
Bought toilet paper without a family meeting.
If she used my milk, she replaced it.
One Sunday, she knocked on my door.
“Can you take out trash when you leave?”
I almost overreacted from relief.
“Yes.”
A request.
Not an obligation disguised as character test.
It was beautiful.
Then my bank balance did something surprising.
It increased.
I had assumed moving out would destroy my savings.
Instead, after one month, I spent less.
At my parents’ house, my official rent was $650.
But I also paid:
$89 internet.
$74 streaming.
$62 Dad’s phone.
$138 Martha’s insurance.
Approximately $180 monthly in household groceries beyond my own.
Random pet bills.
Home supplies.
Gas for family errands.
Average true monthly contribution:
About $1,300.
At Jenna’s?
Rent and utilities:
Approximately $770.
My own food.
My own phone.
No Martha.
No hidden household costs.
I was saving more after moving out.
That made Dad’s rent threat almost funny.
They had believed they held the cheap-housing card.
They never calculated how much of their lifestyle I subsidized.
Then Dad finally did.
He sent me his spreadsheet.
Not the old one.
A new one.
At the bottom:
MONTHLY SHORTFALL WITHOUT ABBY: $1,184.
Below it, he wrote:
We need to talk.
I stared at the number.
Then replied:
May you like
I think you need a budget.
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