The metallic snap of scissors echoed down the quiet hallway of our Savannah home, sharp and final, like a judge’s gavel striking wood.
“This will be more fitting for someone like you,” my mother, Denise Pratt, declared. She snapped the blades shut again, a crisp click marking the destruction she had just wrought.
She stood amidst a sea of fabric—silk, chiffon, cotton, lace. These were my clothes.
My dresses. The wardrobe I had carefully built over the past three years with money scraped together from double shifts and skipped lunches. Each piece was a small victory, a moment where I chose myself over the life my family had planned for me.
And in less than ten minutes, she had reduced all of that independence to mere scraps.
The pile grew with every snip.
Sleeves were severed from bodices, hems unevenly cropped, buttons scattered across the hardwood floor like confetti.
“It matches what you truly are,” she added, nudging a ruined floral blouse with the toe of her designer pump.
It was the night before my brother Troy’s wedding. Troy, the golden boy. The quarterback turned lackluster real estate agent who could do no wrong.
The pride of the Pratt family. And here I was, Selena Pratt, slipping back into my familiar role for the weekend: the mistake. The scapegoat.
The one who never learned her place.
From the guest bedroom doorway, my Aunt Deirdre leaned against the frame, swirling a glass of Chardonnay in her hand. She watched the carnage unfold with a bored, amused expression.
“Who knows,” Deirdre laughed, taking a slow sip. “Maybe now someone will finally pity you enough to give you a chance at a date.
Pity’s a powerful motivator for men, darling.”
I said nothing. I had learned long ago that crying only fueled them. Tears were currency in the Pratt household, and the exchange rate was brutal.
Every sob was an invitation for them to hurt me more. So, I swallowed the lump in my throat, the stone of twenty-six years of sorrow, and forced myself to keep my breathing even.
I turned and walked away, leaving the remnants of my self-expression scattered behind me.
I made my way downstairs, wearing what remained—an old gray t-shirt from a charity run three years ago and faded jeans, surviving the purge only because they were already deemed beneath contempt. I felt small.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
TAP → NEXT PAGE → 👇
