Becoming

BiggestDissapointmentEver

A week and a two hour drive later, I'm pulling into my parents house. It's a giant red brick house, with a 4 car garage, beautiful brick pillars marking the archway of the front porch with lots of beautiful plants and flowers in all the different flower beds. Mom has really started to get the gardens together this year. I think as I park at the third garage door so I don't block anyone in. I grab my bag out of the backseat and lock my car. Opening the garage door with the keypad and walking into the beautiful home. It never really felt like home, I only lived here for about 8 months before I went off to college. They say home is where family is, but my relationship with my parents has been weird for years, so I call home my grandmas house. My mom's parents practically raised me when my parents were busy with work, they did their best, but me and my siblings spent most of our free time at our grandparents house. I know my dad is home and when I round the hall corner from the garage I see him sitting in his recliner on the other side of the room.

"Hey!" my dad shouts, "Look who decided to grace us with her presence!" He laughs and gets up to walk over to me.

"Hey dad." I say while he comes around to hug me.

"How you been? Missed you kid." He looks at me and I can tell how much he really misses me. My dad is not the parent that gave birth to me, but he took me in when he married my mom after I turned 2 and he's been taking care of me and loving me like a dad should ever since. He's an asshole and messed up a lot, but he really did the best he could and I will always love him.

"I've been good, just been busy working and everything." I replied looking around the house. "Where's Melody?"

"She's in her room like usual, can't get that damn kid to interact with anyone to save my f*****g life." He snorts, dad always hates when we are in our room too long, and he has good reason for it, just doesn't make it any less annoying. I look up at my dad knowing he is exhausted with trying to protect us from the world. How am I going to tell him that no matter what he did he couldn't protect me from what happened and with all the knowledge he gave me I still fell victim to a dumbass who couldn't keep it in his pants while I was asleep? Dad looks the same as always, tall 5'11 to be exact. His black hair has speckles of gray and his brown eyes still show me that he'd always protect me no matter how old I get. his beer belly is still there, but I can tell he's been working out again. His jeans and t-shirt tell me he changed when he got home from work, but doesn't plan to do anything crazy tonight. Just then I hear the garage and know my mom is home. I hold my breath, I know my dad will love me no matter what, but I'm terrified to tell my mom. She got pregnant and married to my biological and he abused her so bad. She almost died a couple times before and even after she left him. She always protected me, her and my dad have always told me to learn from their mistakes. Well, guess what mom? I f****d up and didn't learn. She walks in wearing jeans and a cute floral top. My mom is 4'10 and chubby for her height. She's always been so self conscious about her weight and I hate that for her. She's beautiful in my opinion and her dark brown hair that falls just to her shoulders always has a slight curl from how she curls it in the mornings, she has a slender button nose like mine, but mine is more petite on my face, her blue eyes and short eyelashes always hold love even when they hold anger or dissapointment.

"Oh! Aleesha, you're home!" She says rushing over to me and wrapping me in a hug. "Go put your bags in your room and come up, I'd love your help with dinner tonight. You can trim the chicken!" she says with laughter in her voice because that has always been my job and I've grown to despise trimming chicken breasts. I groan and roll my eyes at her as I turn to go down the stairs next to the garage door, yelling at her as I go.

"How about you trim the chicken and I'll sit at the counter and keep you company!"

"Or you can peel potatoes!" she shouts back. Ya, mom's got me there.

"Potatoes it is!" I yell as I turn the corner on the landing to go down the last flight of stairs. I turn down the hallway to my old room and open the door. It looks the same, my bed and blue hanging mirror by the door, small nightstand and my dresser in the corner. It's all exactly how I left it. Walking over I drop my bag by the foot of my bed and look around. I really didn't call this place home, I never hung pictures or band posters, I didn't decorate at all when we moved in. Oh well! I have a nice room that I rent in the townhouse I share with my friends, and I will have to talk to them about putting a crib in my room so I can keep my baby with me and not have to find an apartment or something by myself. I don't make enough to be able to do that. I walk back upstairs and past the family room to the dining room and stop when I look at the built in desk in the dining room corner. There's a little blue baby photo book. I immediately pick it up and look at it wondering how the f**k my mom already knows. She's in the kitchen trimming the chicken when she notices I walked in and am clutching the book and just staring at it.

"Do you want to go with me tomorrow?" She asks.

"What?" I look up from the book at her, "Go where?"

"To the baby shower for one of the ladies from church. That's what the baby book is for, I also made her some burp clothes and stuff." She says like it's obvious that she isn't pregnant. I know that, but it didn't stop the panic that started in my stomach and up through my chest causing me a slight headache and the nausea that doesn't want to go away creep back up full force. I run to the bathroom and dry heave in the toilet wanting anything to come up, but like every other time nothing does. My stomach clenches and unclenches as I try to get my stomach to behave. "Are you okay?" mom yells from the kitchen sounding concerned.

"Ya, I just had a stomach bug and I have some leftover nausea." I really hope she buys that till I can sit them all down after dinner. I rinse my mouth and wash my hands, heading back to the kitchen. I open a drawer and get the potato peeler and head to the sink where the trashcan waits to have potato peels flung into it. Taking a potato out of the sink I start peeling and getting into a rhythm with mom as we make grilled chicken and mashed potatoes with green beans for dinner.

After dinner Melody cleans up, cause she didn't help make dinner, and the rest of us go sit in the family room to watch tv. Dad puts on golf because even though he's young for a dad, he acts like he's 80 not 38. I look around and wonder if I should just rip the bandaid off tonight. Melody finished in the kitchen and went back to her room, mom was on the couch and dad in his recliner while I sat on the other couch contemplating when to break the news of how much of a fuckup their oldest daughter is.

"Hey, mom, dad?" they both look at me waiting for me to say something as my mom gets up to make herself a gin and tonic. "I wanna talk to you guys about something, mom will you ask Melody to come out here?" She looks at me and nods while walking into the kitchen.

"Melody!" she shouts to my sister, "Come here, Aleesha wants to talk to us about something!" She continues her way to the kitchen to make her drink as Melody comes out looking irritated. She is 16 so I guess it makes sense.

"What do you wanna talk to us about?" she looks at me like she wants to go back to hiding in her room. She's shorter than mom only 4'9 with hair as long as mine, just a dirty blonde instead of my light brown, her nose is long and crooked just like my grandma's nose. She has the same blue eyes and thinner lips than I have, mine are full and her bottom lip is full, where her top lip is thin. We are half sisters so we don't look exactly the same.

"What if I just wanna hang out with my sister?" I ask in that annoying voice that only bothers your siblings.

"Well you can come in my room if you wanna hang out with me." she retorts, looking annoyed again.

"I just have to talk to you guys and it's important, please just come sit down." She makes her way over and sits next to me. She looks in my eyes a silent question in them. Are you okay? I nod a little, but she's my sister and my best friend so she knows I'm lying.

"What do you wanna talk to us about, Aleesha?" dad asks starting to look suspicious.

"I wanna wait for mom to get back in here..." He looks at me again and I know he is starting to piece it together.

*FLASHBACK*

It's Christmas and I just finished my third semester of Culinary school, I'm excited to go home. I love giving everyone Christmas presents and I hand made all the presents for my family this year. George will be home for Christmas so it'll be a good family Christmas, we know he won't be home for a few years after this. Waking up Christmas morning I head up the stairs with my siblings, we always sleep in one room on Christmas Eve and go in together to wake our parents up. Melody and George drag me up the stairs, I am not a morning person...

After opening presents it's dads turn to open mine to him. I snicker a little knowing what I did. My dad and I like to pull pranks on each other, so I watch so closely as he opens the wrapping paper and sees the empty diaper box. He looks at me confused and opens the box to read out loud, "Congratulations dad, I'm pregnant. You're gonna be a grandpa." he looks up at me and laughs. "You're funny, where's my real present." I laugh knowing it's hard to fool him and I am the worst liar on this planet. I go to the tree and pull out the box behind it with the canvas I painted for him and my mom with the police wife's prayer on it. They love it like they do every gift I make them and Christmas continues on as always with laughter and jokes and Christmas movies and a million snacks.

*END FLASHBACK*