Tuesday, February 5th - Dear Miss Pearl...

Dear Miss Pearl,

I have contemplated whether I should email you with my dilemma for a few weeks, but I’ve finally decided to see what your take on my situation is.

My problem is my mother and her new “family”. My father died two years ago. He was a good man who worked hard to make sure that his family was taken care of, and did a damn good job of it because we never wanted for anything.

He worked two jobs to save enough money to purchase mom the home of her dreams and he always told me that one day the home would be mine. When my dad died, it broke my heart, but it was even worse on my mother.

After he died, I left school and moved in with mom because the family suspected that she was having a nervous breakdown. Ayntee Pearl, I gave up my life and my apartment and came home to nurse my mother back to mental “health” but when she started to get back on her feet, she wasn’t the same person.

Mom started dating “Rudy”, an alcoholic who barely works, and constantly puts her down. No sooner than mom cashed her insurance check, Rudy asked her to marry him and moved in. Two weeks after he moved in, he decided that I was too old to be living at home and my mother gave me two weeks to find some place to go. I was pissed because I had only been living there to help her. Two months later, Rudy’s daughter Trish, a drug addicted, unemployed user just like her dad, moved in.

Rudy and my mother will be married in June and we don’t really have a good relationship anymore because I feel like a visitor in my own home. If I open the refrigerator, Rudy yells that the food in “his” house is for the people who live there. I can never talk to my mother because he’s always in the room (he won’t leave her alone with anyone).

One day when we were arguing, Rudy’s daughter told me that I could get out and not come back if I didn’t like the way things were run in “their” house! Then she told me that if my mother dies before her father, that my fathers home, the one he told me would be mine one day, would eventually be inherited by HER. I was so upset, I couldn’t even respond because she was right. If my mom didn’t stipulate in her will that “our” home was to be left to me upon her death, that it would end up in the hands of Rudy, and eventually, his daughter.

One day, during a rare moment of civility between me and my mother, I relayed my concerns to her and she told me that it is not her responsibility to “provide” for me and that, after raising me, her job was done and she had to “let me go” and be committed to her husband. She told me that she was going to will her home and everything she has to her husband – and that includes my father’s home. Miss Pearl, I am on the verge of hating my mother, and I don’t want to. What can I do to show my mother that she is being a fool for this man who is using her?

Sad and alone in Highpoint,
___________________________________
Dear Sad,

Baby, you have my deepest sympathy regarding the death of your father and the demise of the relationship between you and your mother. For some reason, your mother seems to be willing to accept what she deems as “love” any way she can get it, and if that means marrying a no – good, drunk assed, broke abuser – she’ll take it.

Whatever Rudy has said to your mother to drive a wedge between her and her daughter, was some shit she NEEDED to hear because she lost her gat damn mind, I ain’t lyin’. Your mother should know better than that shit! If she knows that you put your career and life on hold to move in to help her through HER problems, then there is NO way she should have put you out of her house because RUDY told her that you shouldn’t have been there. SHE should have told Rudy that the reason you WERE there was to help HER ass out… so, she was obligated to help YOU until you got back to where you were prior to your life altering decision to help her ghetto ass.

I’m tryin’ real hard not to talk about your mother because you seem to really care about her, but this shit is pissing me off! How DARE this hoe put her daughter out of her home because she was “too old” and then let a fuckin’ grown assed crack head move in two months later.

Your mother is one of those women who will put a man before her children, and in my opinion, ain’t NOTHIN’ worse than a bitch who won’t lay down her life for her child. You don’t owe your mother shit at this point, you’ve done all that a “good” daughter is obligated to do, and she repaid you by putting your ass out and adopting a “new” family.

If you truly believe that your father meant for that house to end up in your hands, then you need to get your ducks in a row TODAY! If you have any family members willing to testify to your relationship with your father, who are also willing to testify to the fact that your father meant for that home to be yours… then get some affidavits, call an attorney and start this process before something happens to your mother and Crackhead Carlotta and Alcoholic Albert end up turning your fathers dream into a juke joint.

Your relationship with your mama is currently on the edge of nothin' – so, you don’t stand to lose much there. Talk to her again and find out if what she said she was going to do is truly her intent, and if she is still determined to provide for her “husband”, then you need to inform her of YOUR intent… to keep your father’s home in the family – and let her know that you will be getting an attorney and you’ll see her dick whipped ass in court.

I’m really in a bad place with this one baby because I don’t know how this can be fixed without someone being hurt in the end. You owe it to yourself and your father to right this wrong.

Love,

Ayntee Pearl

If you need advice from Ayntee Pearl, please contact me @ misspearlswindow@yahoo.com