Good Time Bad Boy by Sonya Clark

substance after another, but her once pretty face bore the mileage. Deanna looked more like the old pictures of their mother than Daisy did.
    “I’ll keep that in mind,” Daisy said, mostly just to be polite. She didn’t want to work in a factory. She’d done it as temp a couple of times and hated it. That was an option that would definitely only be part of the last resort list. Besides, they only had two shifts anymore, and barely that, so she’d likely be working with her mother. They just didn’t need that much togetherness.
    Alice crossed her legs and folded her hands in her lap. “I’d like you to go to church with me Sunday, too.”
    Daisy shut her eyes. “Ah, Momma.”
    “Now, you listen to me, Daisy. You need to do this. You have done some things in your life that you need to set right with the Lord.”
    “We’re not having this conversation.” Daisy launched up out of the recliner and sped to the kitchen. Washing dishes might not be quite loud enough to drown out her mother but it was worth a shot.
    Alice followed her. “I know you think this is foolish. I used to think the same thing. But honey, it’s not. It’s the most amazing thing to finally lay all your burdens down and find forgiveness for you sins. That has made all the difference for me and I want that for you.”
    “I’m glad for you, Momma. I really am. I’m glad you made peace with your sins. But you know what? I’ve made peace with the things I’ve done, too. We just went about it in different ways. So stop trying to get me to go to church with you.” Daisy’s stomach rolled at the thought of where this might be going.
    “You may think you’ve made peace but you haven’t. You can’t, not without God. You need God’s forgiveness for what you did.”
    There it was – the thing Daisy had been afraid of. She realized then that her mother would have come today, or maybe tomorrow or another day this week, whether Daisy had lost her job or not. Because her getting fired wasn’t what this visit was really about.
    She rested her hands on the edge of the sink. “You need to let it go.” At first it had been almost constant, an unceasing litany of abuse and accusation. When she was drunk Alice would get downright mean and nasty about it, calling Daisy every name in the book and screaming about how she’d thrown away her child. That if being a single mother was good enough for her, good enough for Deanna, it should have been good enough for Daisy. When Alice was sober, she was all tears and regret and pain born of self-pity. Then she finally sobered up permanently and her anger had taken on a different flavor. Now Daisy needed God’s forgiveness for giving away her baby. Daisy thought that was bullshit and she was pretty sure God did, too. She’d given her daughter a better life, given a child to a good family who could provide for her. Throwing away something unloved was nowhere in that equation.
    But Alice had never accepted that. “I will never let it go. It may have been easy for you to toss aside your baby, my grandchild, but I will never let this go. No college degree, if you ever even finish, will make up for what you did.”
    There was so much Daisy could have said to that, but none of it would have mattered. They’d had this conversation a thousand times and it always went the same way. Today just happened to be one of those days that Daisy didn’t feel like taking any shit from her mother. “You can hate me all you want but I know I did the right thing for her.” She looked Alice in the eyes. “And if you want to hate me for wanting better than what you settled for, for her and me both, you can do that, too.”
    “Better,” Alice spat. “You always did think you were better than me. Who’s better now, you ungrateful little slut? I’m the one with a good job and a nice little place to live. And here you are, can’t even keep a job at a bar and living in this dump of a trailer. What good are those honor roll