Secretly, Mae had hoped that Grandma’s visit would be temporary, that her presence would only last for a week or two and then vanish from her life once again.

Unfortunately, that was not so.

While Mother had agonized over her bills and how to pay for them, Grandma had pulled out her checkbook and offered her enough money to cover them all. Mother had tried to resist, and the argument that ensued lasted long after Mae’s quick outdoor excursion, but by the time evening arrived her willpower gave out. Without a second income, it would be harder for her to stay on top of the bills and expenses. Though it pained her to admit it, she needed that check from Grandma.

The next morning, Mother drove Mae to school. On their way there, Mother told her, “Grandma’s gonna be staying with us for awhile.”

“How long is awhile?” Mae asked.

“We haven’t really decided yet.”

Mae took this revelation in with a slight sense of fear. The past few days had already been rough. Would these conditions persist for weeks, months, years even? The thought sent a shiver down her back.

As it turned out, Mae’s fears were not unfounded. In the days that followed, Mae would come home from school to find Grandma and Mother in the midst of another argument, Mother’s voice soft and placating while Grandma threatened to escalate the disagreement into a shouting match. Always, Mae would rush past them without saying hello, lock herself in her bedroom, try to block out her surroundings with her books and her PS2. Still, the tension in the apartment seeped in, the muffled voices breaking through the walls and creeping under Mae’s skin. Neither a Keyblade nor a portal to Narnia could fully keep it away.

Grandma no longer kept herself locked in Mother’s bedroom during the day. She kept it to herself at night, and still forced Mother onto the couch, but during the day she would take the couch, sitting with a box of crackers and a cup of tea, watching talk shows and Lifetime movies. As far as Mae could tell she rarely left that spot, and didn’t have a job that required her attention.

Mother, on the other hand, seemed to take on two jobs: handling products and customers at the pet store, and handling Grandma at home. From her space on the couch, Grandma would bark out demands at Mother, wanting her to refill her snacks, clean up her mess, change the channel or volume. Sometimes as soon as Mother would walk through the door Grandma would yell for her to go back out and get her something.

If they weren’t demands that Grandma was barking out, they were criticisms. Always, in Grandma’s eyes, Mother’s hair was too long, there was too much makeup on her face or nail polish on her fingers, her clothes were too tight. In Mae’s eyes these criticisms were outright lies—as time passed, Mother looked more and more disheveled, often forgetting any makeup and staying in the same loose work outfit no matter how wrinkled it got—but she never voiced her concerns. On rare occasions, Mother would try to speak up, rejecting Grandma’s demands or countering her criticisms, but always she was met with a furious glare and a raised voice. “I’m helping you pay your bills. I’ve offered you financial assistance in a time of need. And even if I hadn’t done that, I am still your mother,” she said, “so don’t you dare treat me with such disrespect!”

Whenever things reached this point, Mother would lower her head and mutter softly, “Sorry, Mom.” Sometimes Grandma would continue yelling and berating her. Other times, she would just smirk and turn her attention back to the TV.

All this stress and tension and anger, Mae noticed, took a toll on Mother’s attitude. They rarely spent any time together anymore; Mother was took busy dealing with Grandma and staying on top of her own issues, and Mae spent so much time hiding in her room that Mother didn’t see much of her anymore. But the rare moments that they spent together were brief and silent affairs, often only made up of a few sentences before they went their separate ways. The main topic of discussion: “How are you doing?” The typical response: “All right.” Mae knew they both were lying.