My eighteen-year-old son walked into my living room with a girl behind him and told me that because he paid $200 a month, he could bring whoever he wanted into my house.
I was sitting on the couch in my gray housecoat, still tired from work, while the grocery receipt under the TV remote showed more than his whole “rent” had cost me before dinner was even cooked.
That was when I realized this argument was not really about money.
It was about whether my own child thought I had become easy to overrule.
My name is Lorraine Parker. I am fifty-nine years old, and I live in a small rowhouse on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio.It is not fancy.
The carpet is old.
The hallway light flickers when it rains.
The front door sticks unless you lift the handle just right.
The basement gets damp every March, and the kitchen window has to be pushed closed with both hands when the Lake Erie wind starts acting personal.
But I paid for that house with double shifts, winter mornings at the bus stop, and years of saying “I’m fine” when I was anything but fine.
My son, Malik, had just turned eighteen.
And lately, he had started saying that number like it came with a crown.
