Makenna wiped a glob of yams off her collarbone with the back of her hand, her face twisting into an ugly, mask-like snarl. “You selfish, narcissistic bitch! You think you can live like a queen in a three-thousand-square-foot palace while we cram into a one-bedroom dump? Demetrius is your only son! Everything you have belongs to him! Which means it belongs to us!”
Before I could answer, Mrs. Fontenot stepped forward from the edge of the room. The tiny, eighty-year-old neighbor looked at Makenna with the kind of pity usually reserved for stray dogs with mange.
“Young lady,” Mrs. Fontenot said, her voice trembling slightly with age but carrying the steel of a woman who had survived the Great Flood of ’27. “In my day, a girl who flipped a table in her elder’s house wouldn’t have just gotten cake on her face. She would have walked home to her mama in her stocking feet. And as for you, Demetrius Babineaux—I knew your daddy, and he’d be turning over in his grave right now if he saw you standing there letting this bleached-blonde hussy talk to your mother like a stray alley cat.”
“Mrs. Fontenot, please, stay out of this,” Demetrius groaned, rubbing his temples.
“Out of this?” Brenda Landry shouted, stepping into the middle of the room with her arms crossed over her floral blouse. “We are staying out of nothing! Araminta, you get those bags out of your bedroom right this second, or help me carry them to the curb. I’ve got four nurses in my car who can have this girl’s boxes on the front lawn in under three minutes!”
“Don’t you touch my things!” Makenna shrieked, lunging toward the stairs as if she could defend her territory single-handedly. “Demetrius! Do something! Call the cops! She hit me! She punched me right in front of all these witnesses! That’s assault! She belongs in jail!”
“Go ahead,” I said, walking toward the stairs ahead of her, my back straight, my head held high. “Call the police, Makenna. Tell them an old retired nurse gave you what you were asking for after you destroyed four hundred dollars’ worth of crystal and ruined a custom rug. Let’s see how the parish sheriff handles a trespassing, malicious mischief complaint from a girl whose name isn’t on the tax rolls.”
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Makenna froze on the bottom step, her mouth working silently like a fish out of water. She looked at Demetrius for support, but my son was staring down at his ruined shoes, paralyzed by the realization that his mother had neither broken down nor surrendered.
—Vamos —dije, mirando a los diez invitados que seguían observando desde el salón—. Subamos. Os enseñaré la suite principal que Makenna tanto deseaba. Podréis ver cómo se materializan veintidós años de planificación para Instagram.
La procesión por la escalera recién alfombrada parecía menos una visita de inauguración y más una inspección de desalojo encabezada por un general de cuatro estrellas.
Yo iba delante, mi vestido de noche negro rozando suavemente las gradas, con la postura tan recta como la vara de un agrimensor. Detrás venían Brenda Landry y la señora Fontenot, seguidas por el resto del grupo de la iglesia, que murmuraban entre sí como una bandada de estorninos nerviosos. Demetrio iba al final, arrastrando los pies como si caminara hacia la horca, mientras Makenna lo adelantaba a toda prisa, dando dos pasos a la vez con su vestido rosa manchado, decidida a llegar a la puerta del dormitorio antes que nosotras.
Llegó antes que nosotros al rellano, arrojándose contra las puertas dobles de caoba de la suite principal como si estuviera custodiando las joyas de la corona de Inglaterra.
—¡No puedes entrar ahí! —jadeó, con el pelo pegado a las mejillas por el glaseado de praliné seco—. ¡Es propiedad privada! ¡Eso es una violación de la Cuarta Enmienda! ¡No puedes entrar sin una orden judicial!
—¿La Cuarta Enmienda, niña? —Brenda resopló, ajustándose las gafas—. Esto no es una comisaría, es la hipoteca de Araminta. Apártate antes de que te dé una demostración clínica de lo rápido que una enfermera mayor puede deshacerse de una molestia.
Makenna no se movió, pero no tenía por qué hacerlo. Pasé la mano por encima de ella, agarré la manija de níquel cepillado, la giré con un clic seco y abrí la puerta de par en par.
La habitación olía a un perfume de vainilla caro mezclado con el sudor rancio de alguien que había pasado tres días empaquetando cajas a toda prisa.
El colchón de espuma viscoelástica tamaño king del que Makenna tanto había presumido descansaba, en efecto, sobre el armazón de madera de cerezo que había comprado con mi pensión del hospital. Pero eso no era lo peor. El vestidor —el amplio armario hecho a medida con estantes de cedro que había pedido específicamente para mis abrigos de invierno y trajes de iglesia— rebosaba de una cantidad exagerada de ropa de moda rápida, zapateros de plástico y minivestidos de lentejuelas que colgaban desordenadamente de mis barras de latón.
Mi ropa, que había desempacado cuidadosamente el día anterior, estaba amontonada en una triste pila arrugada sobre el banco de cuero junto a la ventana.
Gritos de pura indignación resonaron a mis espaldas en el pasillo.
“Well, I never,” Mrs. Fontenot breathed, pressing her withered hand to her collarbone. “She took your dresses off the hangers and threw them on a bench? Araminta, honey, this girl didn’t just move in. She staged a hostile takeover.”
Makenna puffed out her chest, recovering a sliver of her defiant arrogance now that she was standing among her belongings. “We needed the hanging space! My capsule wardrobe requires double rods! Besides, you’re an old lady—you mostly wear church dresses and housecoats anyway! You don’t need forty linear feet of closet space!”
I didn’t yell. I didn’t raise my voice. I walked slowly into the center of the bedroom, my eyes scanning the vanity table where my mother’s silver-backed hairbrush had been tossed aside to make room for a ring light, a dozen tubes of matte liquid lipstick, and an open container of translucent setting powder that had spilled all over my marble countertop.
“Demetrius,” I called out softly, not turning around. “Get in here.”
My son shuffled through the double doors, looking like he wished the hardwood floor would open up and swallow him whole. He stopped near the foot of the bed, refusing to look at Brenda Landry, who was glaring at him with the fierce, protective intensity of a mother lion.
“Look at this room, Demetrius,” I said, pointing an emerald-ringed finger toward the vanity. “Look at my dressing table. Look at where my clothes are piled up like laundry waiting for the Goodwill bin.”
“Mom… look, Makenna went overboard, I know she did,” Demetrius stammered, his hands wringing together in a nervous knot. “She’s young. She gets excited about interior design. We can re-hang your dresses. We can buy a second wardrobe rack for the guest room—”
“There is no ‘we’ in this house, Demetrius,” I interrupted, my voice dropping an octave into that heavy, river-bottom register. “There is me. And there is you. And as for this young lady here… she is currently a guest who has overstayed her welcome by approximately fifteen minutes.”
Makenna shrieked, marching up to me with her finger shaking just inches from my nose. “You can’t throw me out! I live here! My mail is being forwarded to this address! I signed up for internet service in my name yesterday! If you lock me out, it’s illegal eviction! I’ll sue you for wrongful ouster and harassment!”
“Illegal eviction?” I turned to face her fully, looking down at her through my reading glasses. “Child, to be evicted, you have to be a tenant. To be a tenant, you have to pay rent, or at the very least, have a lease signed by the property owner. Did I sign a lease with you, Makenna?”
She hesitated, her mouth snapping shut. “Well… Demetrius said—”
“Demetrius doesn’t own a single shingle, a single nail, or a single square inch of drywall on this property,” I said crisply. “The deed is in my name. The mortgage was paid with my cashier’s check from Capital One. And as of right now, your luggage is about to take a very fast trip down those stairs.”
I walked over to the open closet, reached inside, and grabbed the nearest armful of clothes—a pile of pink and white polyester crop tops that smelled faintly of coconut tanning oil. I carried them across the room and dumped them unceremoniously onto the hallway landing.
“Brenda,” I called out over my shoulder. “Give me a hand with these shoe racks.”
