Mother Knows Best - Chapter 1 (Patreon)

"The start of  a new story, about a young woman living at home with her overbearing mother."

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“JESSIE.”

It was her mother’s booming voice that was travelling down the hallway towards her bedroom. It was a simple response for her to slightly raise the volume of her headphones, listening to her favourite songs while she tapped away on her keyboard.

She was only in her first semester of college and boy was it was rough. The amount of work she had been given felt astronomical and paled in comparison to what she used to have to deal with in high school. She should have expected it to be honest; she intentionally picked the easier subjects with fewer tests and no exams. History was her only one and she aced it but scraped by the skin of her teeth, treading the thin line between a pass and a fail. It was the pressure that got to her; it ate away at her skin giving her a bad case of anxiety and a rash. Her mother was constantly berating her for scratching her arm, but it was such an unconscious response and she couldn’t control it. The solution was to lather it in cream several times a day.

Putting cream on her arm wasn’t so bad in theory but it was the fact that her mother had taken control over the task. From an unbiased view point Jessie was horrible at remembering to do it and definitely not the required three times a day. So the fact her mother tasked herself with the charge would have been a blessing if she wasn’t so condescending about it. It had become an awkward routine at this point; her mother would call for her she would refuse to answer pretending she didn’t hear. Then eventually she would get sick of waiting and barge into her daughter’s room unannounced and clean the spot for her. All the while commenting how she should stop doing it and get it under control, threatening to shove her hands in mittens like she had done years ago when Jessie had the chicken pox.

The music didn’t do enough to cover the sound of her mother’s footsteps as she arrived at her doorway. She sighed exasperatedly as her mother flew open the door and stepped in right on schedule.

“Jessie!” Her mother sighed, seeing her daughter with her headphones on and back to her she quickly walked up and pulled them away.

“If you can’t hear me calling for you then you have your music on too loud young lady, do you want permanent hearing loss?”

It was ironic Jessie thought, her mum talking about something giving her hearing loss when she clearly couldn’t control the volume in her own voice when she was shouting for her. It honestly pierced her soul and Jessie would shudder any time she would hear her name called out from another room. It normally would be accompanied by a berating for whichever chore she had failed to complete in what her mother would call a reasonable amount of time.

“What do you want?” Jessie asked innocently, the clear annoyance was obvious in her tone.

“Don’t play coy with me Jessie.” Her mother said matter-of-factly, this wasn’t her first rodeo they had been playing this game for weeks now.

“You know why I’m here.”

Jessie sighed but apprehensively shoved her arm out for her mother just to get it over with. She cringed as her mother tut-tutted and shook her head while she rubbed the cream in generously.

“I keep telling you Jessie, what’s it gotten to take for you to stop this.”

She hated being scolded by her mother, especially considering she was no longer a child. She thought as soon as she left high school she automatically would be treated as her equal, she was in college now after all. But apparently her mother didn’t get the memo, she constantly talked down over her and treated her quite similarly to how she had years prior. Nothing really changed except she had more responsibilities expected from her, for example the chores she always seem to neglect. It wasn’t fair though, she wasn’t made to do this much house work when she wasn’t in college. But now coupled with the extensive work load and study she was expected to slave around the house too.

Apparently she was old enough to get a part time job and pay her own share of the bills, her mother choosing to forgo charging her rent. But when did she expect her to go work, slave away for some company at minimum wage. She didn’t even get much time to herself between work and study, including spending time with her friends. Her catch-ups were getting far and few between compared to how they were. Her friends were all at college too, and most of them were working on the side. She had no idea how they were managing work and study side by side and it frustrated her to no end. How come they weren’t struggling like she was, if they were lying about it than they were doing a pretty good job of it.

“If it isn’t looking better and fast than I’ll be taping mittens onto your hands.”

Jessie scoffed at the ridiculous notion her mother kept threatening her with. She couldn’t imagine having a pair of oven mitts strapped over her hands, not to mention her mother constantly used them for cooking and they were severely blackened over parts of them. Would she really go out and buy another pair just to do that to her, seemed like a waste not to mention there was no way Jessie would let her do it.

“Whatever.” Jessie replied plainly before putting her headphones on.

It was better just to ignore her when she went on rants like this, disagreeing with her was a moot point. Thankfully her nonchalant way of brushing off her mother’s comments was enough to make her leave. She managed to catch her saying something about ‘being ungrateful and not thanking her’ as she turned the music back on and drowned her voice out.

Part of it bugged her, the way she reacted to her own mum in such a typically juvenile rebellious way. Especially at her age, it wasn’t common to have a teenage I had my parent’s phase when she was in college. But whatever, she wanted and needed her own space but her mother had become so overbearing as of late. She could probably deal with her controlling nature if she would at the very least stop pressuring her to find work. Realistically she might be able to find something and do it very casually just enough to pay what was being asked of her. But the thought of working for her mother and not even for herself made the idea sound gross. Right now with how things were her mum may not have liked it and was very apparent about it but she was willing enough to still pay for everything Jessie needed even giving her a small allowance at the end of each week.

It was enough that if she was careful she could still go out to dinner every so often and occasionally go out and buy herself a new dress or something to fill her capitalistic inclinations. Sure she was somewhat embarrassed at her age for still getting an allowance albeit such a small one. But she rationalised it by the fact that once she finished college and got a degree it would pay much better than what she would get if she was to quit now and find work. That’s what she had been telling herself anyway, she wasn’t sure how much money was potentially there after finishing her degree and becoming a historian. But she had to go to college all her friends were and it was the only subject she seemed to do succeed in so she bit the bullet and went along with it without giving it much thought.

Her mother was sceptical of course but she knew what her grades were like and was happy to support her daughter’s choices academically. She just wished that like Jessie somewhat thought herself, that she gave it more time to decide if that was what she really wanted. Especially considering now she was there that it was constantly becoming harder and harder to keep up with everything that was been given to her. The theory was so much more to take it, the texts way complicated compared to her previous high school ones.  She honestly felt stupid sometimes when she tapped her way across her keyboard trying to string words together into tangible sentences that made any sense. Always second guessing herself with every paragraph she managed to type out. She scratched her arm again before quickly pulling her hand away and mentally scolding herself.

It seemed to always happen whenever she had been cramming extra-long that day or became doubtful of herself. Little did she know that right across the hall her exasperated mother was sitting in the living room on her own computer. Finalising her checkout for what she hoped would be the solution to her daughters scratching problem.