Your Mother, Your Turn

My motherinlaw enjoyed every minute of my care and still called me just an outsider fishing for credit. At the time, I was bent over her, changing her adult brief.

She counted off the things I did every day and decided that cooking and laundry were just what a daughterinlaw was supposed to do. Nothing worth mentioning.

Then, finally, she said it, certain of herself. "No matter how devoted you are, you'll never measure up to Patty." I nodded, took out my phone, and called her daughter Patty right there. "Patricia, Mom says she's coming to live with you!" Chapter 1 My motherinlaw saw me making the call, and she shrieked and made to lunge at me. "Adeline Whitaker, you're insane!

Hang up. Hang up right now!" "When did I ever say I wanted to live at Patty's!" I took two steps back. She had no feeling from the waist down. She couldn't move at all.

All she could do was glare at me with those deadfish eyes. On the other end of the line, my sisterinlaw sounded confused. "Addie, you've been taking such good care of Mom.

Why would she suddenly want to come live with me?" "You know how small my place is. All three bedrooms are full.

There's no room for her." I let out a big, theatrical groan. "Patricia, listen to yourself.

Your place is thirteen hundred square feet!" "If that's small, what does that make mine?" When Bryce and I got married, we didn't have much money.

All we could afford was this place, listed at a thousand square feet.

Take out the walls and those couple of storage closets and what you can actually live in is about eight hundred.

To take care of my paralyzed motherinlaw, Bryce and I had gone two years of marriage without having a child. There was nowhere to put one.

Patricia went quiet for a few seconds, then found another excuse. "Adeline, I just—I don't have time to take care of Mom either." "I've got the little one to look after every day.

There's no way I can get to Mom." "And you've taken care of her for years now. Mom's used to the way you take care of her.

You should just keep doing it." "Oh, no, Patricia," I said quickly. "You have no idea.

The second you left last time, she started crying." "She said the daughter she wore herself out raising just drops in for one look and runs off, every single time." "She said she's living in my house day after day with her son gone, at the mercy of her daughterinlaw's moods." "She said it's a miserable way to live!" "Patricia, come get her.

Come get Mom." Patricia went straight to flattery. "Adeline, listen to you." "Everybody knows you're the most devoted daughterinlaw there is." "You quit your job to take care of her!" "If it were my motherinlaw who was paralyzed, hand on my heart, I couldn't do what you've done." "So don't be modest.

With Mom in your hands, I don't worry for a second." "Oh, I couldn't. I really couldn't," I said. "She was in tears.

She said I can't take care of her properly." "Tell you what, I'll bring her over in a little while." I hung up before Patricia could answer.

My motherinlaw looked at me, her whole face fury. "Adeline Whitaker, have you lost your mind?" "How could you send me to Patty's?" "She's worn out taking care of her child already.

How could you make her take care of a deadweight like me!" Oh. So she knew she was a deadweight.

After the stroke left my motherinlaw paralyzed, my husband brought her home to be taken care of. Taken care of, he called it. In practice, every bit of it was mine to do.

And her model son used work as an excuse and took a project that kept him out of state for six months.

Chapter 2 For those six months I was the one taking care of her day and night, everything she ate, everything she wore.

The daughter she was always holding over me, the one I could never measure up to, came to see her once a month. Every time, emptyhanded.

She'd hold her nose, sit by the bed and talk to her for ten minutes, then make an excuse about picking up her kid and leave. I packed up her things, quick and efficient about it.

Then I hauled her out to the car and drove her straight over to my sisterinlaw's that night.

The whole drive, she never stopped cursing me. "Adeline Whitaker, you undutiful little wretch, I'm calling Bryce and having him throw you out on the street!" "Take me back right now!

Waiting on your motherinlaw is what a wife is supposed to do!" "How can you dump me on Patty!" I ignored every word of it and kept driving.

At Patricia's door I started pounding, and I shouted while I pounded. "Patricia!

I brought Mom over!" My motherinlaw sat in the wheelchair, still cursing me. "Adeline Whitaker, you take me back this instant!" "I've got shit all over my backside.

You change me right now!" "Wiping shit and piss off a person. How would Patty ever do that!" I turned and smiled at her, sweet as anything. "Mom, you're the one who said it.

No matter what I do, I'll never measure up to your devoted daughter." "And since you've said it, nothing I do means anything." "You should be thanking me.

I'm taking you to your daughter's so you can really experience a daughter's devotion." Patricia was hiding inside, playing dead. I wasn't giving her the chance.

I went and knocked on the neighbor's door. The door opened. A woman in her fifties. She looked at me, puzzled, and asked what was going on.

I pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. "Ma'am, this is my motherinlaw.

Patricia's mother." "See, she doesn't think I take care of her well enough, so she's been carrying on about coming to her daughter's." "I couldn't talk her out of it.

She wouldn't even let me change her brief." "There was nothing else I could do, so I drove her over tonight." "Oh, when I called Patricia a little while ago she was home.

Where'd she go? Did she step out?" The neighbor's face lit up. Free drama.

She came right over to pound on the door with me. "That's not right," she said between knocks. "I just heard their kid's TV going." "Try calling her." I took out my phone and called Patricia.

She didn't pick up, of course. The neighbor had a much bigger voice than mine. Two shouts out of her and the whole building heard.

When Patricia still didn't open up, the neighbor pulled up the building's Facebook group. "Want me to just ask in the group?" I nodded right away. "Yes.

Please." Patricia must have heard us through the door. She came and opened it fast.

The smile was on her face before the door had finished swinging. "Adeline, I can't believe you actually brought her." "I was—I was cooking.

I didn't hear you." She looked at her mother in the wheelchair through gritted teeth. "Mom, honestly." "Adeline's taken care of you for a year.

Why do you have to throw a fit?" "I've got a child to look after. Where am I supposed to find the time for you?" The neighbor had heard enough. "Patricia, your mother is paralyzed.

You're her daughter.

Isn't taking care of her exactly what you should be doing?" "Why do you act like you can't stand her?" Chapter 3 Patricia rushed to explain. "No, no, it's just that I've got the little one and I can't get away." At the mention of her child, my eyes went red. "Patricia, at least you have a child." "Your brother and I are in our midthirties and we still don't have one, all because we've been taking care of Mom!" That made the neighbor feel even sorrier for me. "Patricia, she's got a point." "Your son is in preschool already.

You're home lying around all day with plenty of time on your hands.

Perfect time to take care of your mother." "Besides, a daughter and her mother are going to understand each other better than a daughterinlaw and a motherinlaw, aren't they?" I nodded like my head was on a spring.

I pushed the wheelchair into Patricia's hands. And I left without looking back. Back in the car, my heart was still hammering away in my chest.

It would be a lie to say it didn't hurt. I had, after all, quit a job I'd held for two years to take care of my motherinlaw.

Bryce got down on his knees in front of me and begged me to quit. He said a home health aide was too expensive. He was her son. His own mother was paralyzed.

He should be the one taking responsibility. I didn't want to do it. But then I thought about my father's heart attack, when he went into the hospital.

Bryce was the one running back and forth taking care of him. He put in the money and he put in the work. Even my father's funeral, Bryce arranged every piece of it himself.

He saw my father off, and I was left with nothing to regret. So with his mother paralyzed now, I was the daughterinlaw, and it was only right that I do my part.

What I didn't expect was that my part would run a full year. At first Bryce would at least make a show of asking after her. But they were mother and son, after all.

Sponge baths, changing briefs. A son couldn't bring himself to do that. Before long he had handed all of it over to me like it went without saying.

And when his company offered him the sixmonth posting, he took it on the spot. I thought about what those six months of caring for her had taken out of me, and my nose stung.

I drove home, pushed the door open, and the house smelled like shit. No matter how clean I scrubbed it, ever since she moved in, the house always smelled like shit.

I grabbed a few changes of clothes and went and got a room. I couldn't live in that house anymore. I showered, and the delivery I'd ordered came.

I ate it in front of a show and had the best day I'd had all year.

That night I lay in a bed that didn't smell like anything, with nobody waking me in the middle of the night to change her.

I didn't have to think about what to get up and make for breakfast. My whole body felt light. I slept hard, all the way until my phone woke me the next day.

It was Bryce, and it was an interrogation the second I picked up. "Adeline Whitaker, you took my mother to my sister's?" "What kind of daughterinlaw does that?" "Go get her.

Now." "Waiting on my mother is what a wife is supposed to do!" "Do you know my sister was crying when she called me?" "Waiting on a person like that.

How would my sister ever do it?" It was the most Bryce had said to me on the phone in six months. And of all things, it was to accuse me of dumping his mother on his sister.

I kept my temper. "Bryce, you've been gone six months." "You said the posting was six months. It's been seven and you're still not back.

Is this a work trip, or are you ducking your responsibility?" Chapter 4 That stopped him for a second, and then his neck stiffened. "How is it not a work trip?

Doesn't my paycheck hit your account on time every month?" "Addie, stop this. Go get Mom back." "You've taken care of her for a year. Mom's used to the way you take care of her.

My sister can't do this kind of thing." I laughed, cold. "Bryce, your sister can't do it, but I can?" "I wasn't born to wait on people either." I still remember the first time Bryce brought her home.

Back then I had no idea how to take care of a paralyzed old woman. I let her go in the bed, and then I cried while I fought down the nausea and threw the sheets away.

After that happened a couple of times, I learned that adult briefs existed. She refused to wear them, no matter what I said. She thought it was humiliating.

Until the day I lost my temper and told her that if she wouldn't wear them, I wouldn't be changing her sheets. She cried to Bryce about it. It was the one time Bryce took my side.

He said it wasn't easy for me either, and asked his mother to have some understanding. That was when she finally agreed to wear the briefs.

Bryce softened his voice. "Addie, she's my mother.

She wore herself out her whole life for me, her son." "She's sick now, she can't move, and as her son, I should take on the responsibility of caring for her!" "I know she says things sometimes that aren't easy to hear.

Just let it go in one ear and out the other." "When I get home I'll buy you that bracelet you've been eyeing.

How about that?" Any other time, with Bryce coaxing me in that voice and promising a present, I'd have gritted my teeth and nodded.

Today I dug in. "Bryce," I said, "you talk a good game about taking care of your mother, about looking after her in her old age and burying her when the time comes." "Hand on your heart, have you taken care of her for a single day?" "Outsourcing your devotion.

You've got that down to a science." "If you're going to make me bring your mother back and take care of her, then we're getting divorced!" The line went dead, and there was still something stuck in my chest