Instead of answering her directly, I opened the family group chat which was titled Fam Fam and had originally been my sister’s idea. The chat was usually a mess of chain prayer graphics from my mother and political memes from my father along with blurry photos of birds.
“I am giving everyone a heads up that Tiffany is trying to move eight people into my apartment for the weekend without asking,” I typed into the group. I made sure to clarify that I had already told her no, but she was ignoring my boundaries and heading there anyway.
My mother, Diane, replied first to tell me that I should not make a scene because family is supposed to help family during difficult times. My father, Robert, followed up by saying that I was a single guy and that I would be perfectly fine for just one weekend.
They did not see me as a father or a tenant or even a man trying to give his son one stable room after a difficult divorce. To them, I was just a single guy who acted as a placeholder with high speed Wi-Fi that they could use whenever they felt like it.