The Wife Who Turned Off The Stove

I Said Fine

So when Troy told me to pay for my own food, in front of a witness, with a smile on, I decided to take him at his word. Not to punish him. I want to be honest about that, because it would be a better story if I’d plotted revenge over that sweet tea, and I did not. I was simply, finally, too tired to argue, and a woman who is too tired to argue will sometimes do something far more effective than arguing.

I bought my own groceries and I kept them separate. I taped my name to the lids, the way you do in a break room full of thieves. SHEILA, on a container of squash casserole. SHEILA, on a gallon of sweet tea. I cooked for myself, portioned things out, and when Troy came looking through the refrigerator for something that wasn’t his, I said the same six words every time.

“That’s mine. You made the rule.”

At first it was almost funny. He’d stand there with the refrigerator door open, letting the cold air out the way he’s told the kids a hundred times not to, looking at three days of nothing that belonged to him.

I kept cooking for the house in one sense. I still made supper for our son Dewey on the nights he was home from community college, because Dewey did not make any rule about anybody’s food and does not deserve to eat like an orphan on account of his father’s mouth. I did not stop being a mother. I stopped being a free kitchen for a man who had just told me, with his brother as a witness, that my labor came from nowhere and cost nothing.