Chapter 5 - The Ambush at the Loft
By Friday evening, the temporary restraining order had been officially served on Vanessa by a Cook County Sheriff's deputy at her luxury rented apartment in Lincoln Park.
I returned to my own apartment on the West Loop around 8:00 p.m., exhausted beyond measure, looking forward to ice packs, quiet, and sleep.
But as I reached the third-floor landing of my apartment building, a shadow stepped out from the dimly lit alcove near my door.
It was my mother.
She looked disheveled, her coat unbuttoned, her eyes red and rimmed with dark circles. She was holding a plastic grocery bag filled with tupperware containers.
"Maya," she whimpered, stepping into my path.
I stopped ten feet away, my hand instinctively dropping to my purse where my phone lay ready. "Mom, what are you doing here? How did you get into my building?"
"One of your neighbors let me in," she said, her voice shaking. "Maya, you have to stop this. You have to call your lawyer and withdraw that restraining order and the lawsuit."
"I am not withdrawing anything, Mom."
"She was served at her apartment!" Mom cried, coming closer, holding up her hands in desperate supplication. "The sheriff handed her court papers in front of her landlord! Do you know how humiliating that was for her?! She’s locked in her bedroom crying! She hasn't eaten all day!"
I stared at my mother, feeling a profound, hollow sense of pity, not for Vanessa, but for the broken woman standing in front of me who had traded her own morality to appease a tyrant daughter.
"She hit me hard enough to fracture my bone, Mom," I said, my voice cold and absolute. "She tried to ruin my life's work. And your primary concern is that she felt embarrassed in front of her landlord?"
"She’s your sister!" Mom shrieked, dropping the tupperware bag onto the floor. "She made a mistake! Why are you so heartless?!"
"I am not heartless, Mom," I said, pulling out my keys and stepping past her to unlock my door. "I am finally protected. And if you don't leave my hallway in sixty seconds, I am calling the police to have you removed for criminal trespass."
My mother froze as if I had struck her across the face. She looked at me as if I were a complete stranger—someone she could no longer control, manipulate, or guilt into submission.
"You're dead to me, Maya," she whispered, her voice venomous with hatred. "If you do this to your sister, you no longer have a mother."
I stopped with my hand on the doorknob. I turned back, looked at her pale, bitter face, and felt no fear, no guilt, and no regret.
May you like
"I haven't had a mother for thirty-four years, Diane," I said softly. "I just took thirty-four years to realize it."
I stepped inside my apartment and shut the door firmly in her face.
