The Christmas family gathering was in full swing when my aunt Karen started mocking me as I reviewed some work documents on my laptop: “Stop pretending to be so busy. We all know you only make $3,000 a month! My daughter Rachel is a real high-earner – she’s such an important designer that she couldn’t even make it home for Christmas!” Seeing that I wasn’t responding, she encouraged her spoiled son Peter to delete all my files while I was in the bathroom. I was shaking with anger when I returned. “That proposal was due in 10 minutes! If I don’t submit it, I’m done for!” Aunt Karen shrugged nonchalantly. “He’s just a child, how could he know any better? Your job can’t be that important anyway. So what if you get fired? Maybe then you’ll finally settle down and get married so your parents can stop worrying.” I couldn’t help but smirk silently. If only she knew that the proposal was actually her precious daughter Rachel’s work – the one that would determine whether Rachel kept her job or not. And I was the client who would be making that decision!
On the second day of the Christmas break, our family of three returned to my grandmother’s house for the annual gathering. I had barely sat down when I received a text from my cousin Rachel: “Brynn, I just emailed you my proposal. Please, I’m begging you to review it ASAP. My whole career is riding on this!” Rachel currently works as an advertising designer. Her company isn’t doing well financially and is planning layoffs. They’re using this collaboration with my company as an opportunity to have employees compete against each other – whoever’s proposal gets selected gets to keep their job. Before Christmas, all of Rachel’s coworkers had already submitted their proposals. Only Rachel hadn’t finished hers yet. She said she needed to come up with a perfect proposal to outshine everyone else, so she’d been pulling all-nighters for over a month, sleeping only two hours a day. However, my business partner had already seen a proposal he liked and didn’t want to consider any more. It was only after I pleaded with him repeatedly that he agreed to give Rachel one last chance. My partner made it clear that meeting deadlines was also part of evaluating capability. To be fair, he said we must receive the proposal by 8 PM tonight – no exceptions! I reminded Rachel multiple times to submit as soon as possible. But after waiting all day, she only just sent it to me now. It was already 7:45 PM. In our group chat, my other two partners were getting impatient. They said if it weren’t for my sake, they wouldn’t be wasting their Christmas working overtime. I quickly forwarded Rachel’s proposal to the group chat. At least this way, I could say I did my part for her. Just when I thought the crisis had been averted, a red exclamation mark popped up. No internet connection. Sending failed! I looked up to see my 10-year-old cousin Peter waving the unplugged network cable at me and making faces. I sighed and said gently, “Peter, don’t mess around. Please plug it back in!” Before I could finish speaking, Aunt Karen’s shrill voice rang out: “Brynn! How dare you yell at a child?” The whole family turned to stare at me. I was baffled. I forced a smile and said, “I wasn’t yelling. I just asked him to plug the cable back in.” Aunt Karen brushed some snack crumbs off her hands and looked me up and down with disdain. “Working on Christmas Day? You must be SO busy! Even your Uncle John who runs a supermarket isn’t as busy as you! Who are you trying to impress?” I glanced at the time – only 12 minutes left. I didn’t have time to argue with her, so I decided to use my phone to send the email instead. But Aunt Karen snatched my phone away before I could. “Your elder is speaking to you! How dare you look at your phone? I hate you millennials always glued to your screens! It’s a family gathering and you can’t even be bothered to talk to your relatives. You’re just pretending to be busy to avoid us! Who do you think you’re fooling? We all know you only make $3,000 a month, you wage slave!” With that, she turned off my phone right in front of everyone. I couldn’t help but laugh. “Aunt Karen, this is about your daughter’s future!” Aunt Karen burst out laughing. “My daughter is a top designer! Her future has nothing to do with a bottom-feeder like you! You never tell us what you actually do for work. I bet you’re just too ashamed of your pathetic salary to say anything!” “We all know you’re just a regular office drone making $3,000 a month. Stop pretending to be so busy – it only makes you look ridiculous!” My mom could see I was getting upset. She quickly tried to mediate: “Karen, don’t say that. Brynn wouldn’t be working on Christmas unless it was really urgent. Please give her phone back. And Peter, hurry up and plug the network cable back in – we all need to use the internet!” My mom spoke very gently, but somehow it was enough to make Peter burst into tears. He pointed angrily at me and my mom, then stomped his feet and started wailing. Aunt Karen rushed to comfort her son and turned to berate my mom for bullying a child. My grandma, worried about her grandson, grabbed a pair of scissors and threatened to cut the network cable. The scene descended into chaos. I checked the time – only 8 minutes left. Rachel, your job might be ruined by your own mother and brother!
Come to think of it, no one in the family could out-pretend Rachel when it came to putting on airs. She only graduated from community college but told the family she had a bachelor’s degree. She works at a small advertising company but claims to be a designer at a top 100 firm in the country, making $400,000 a year. One lie leads to another. To keep up the charade, she, who only makes 4,500 a month, went crazy enough to borrow 150,000 and give it to her mom, saying it was her year-end bonus. Her mom had been bragging about it in the family group chat for over a month, always putting me down to prop Rachel up. But I understood why Rachel did it. With a status-obsessed, sexist, and overbearing mom like Aunt Karen, she was forced to pretend just to survive! She used to be honest before, but her life was miserable then. The incident that left the deepest impression on me was when Rachel was in 5th grade. She got a 69% on her final exam. I had gotten a 99%. As soon as her mom saw her test paper, she slapped Rachel across the face twice without a word. Rachel was stunned, humiliated, but didn’t dare cry. It didn’t stop there. Her mom grabbed her by the ear, cursing and kicking her, forcing her to kneel in the snow holding up her test paper. She wasn’t allowed to eat dinner. Every time they saw someone, her mom would humiliate her daughter in front of them, calling her useless for not getting top scores. Rachel used to be cheerful and outgoing, but her mom’s abuse gradually made her withdrawn and gloomy. From then on, she learned to alter her grades, only bringing home perfect scores. Aunt Karen isn’t very educated, so she’s easy to fool. When she saw the perfect test papers, she finally started treating Rachel better, buying her gifts and praising her in front of others. Rachel became addicted to her mother’s exaggerated praise, even starting to believe she really was a genius. In this daily self-deception that went on year after year, she could no longer accept her true self. When facing me, who knew the truth, she begged me not to tell anyone, saying she would kill herself if I did. She said that if she could land this deal with my company, she could slowly pay back the $150,000 debt. Her boss had said that after the layoffs, they would focus resources on developing whoever remained. If that was her, she could easily make $20,000 a month and gradually turn her fake persona into reality. The premise was that she had to keep her job. I wanted to help her, but I never expected this scene unfolding before me. There were only 5 minutes left! I strode over, snatched the scissors from my grandma’s hand, and grabbed the network cable from Peter. With a stern face, I said: “Just 5 minutes! In 5 minutes, I’ll be done!” Peter cried even harder, pointing at me and shouting: “You $3,000 loser! How dare you take my things? I’ll beat you to death!” Aunt Karen let go of him, allowing him to charge at me with his fists flying. My dad tried to hold Peter back, but before he could say anything, Aunt Karen yelled at him: “What are you doing?! Peter is just a child! His punches don’t even hurt. He’s just playing with Brynn!” My grandma slapped my arm, cooing at Peter: “Bad Brynn! Grandma hit her! Don’t cry, Peter, don’t cry.” She then smacked my back twice more. It didn’t hurt much, but my parents’ expressions darkened. My grandma, leveraging her seniority, scolded them: “What’s with those faces? You want to hit me or something? Brynn’s just a girl, a few smacks won’t hurt her. But if my grandson cries his eyes out, how will you make it up to him?” Aunt Karen smirked triumphantly at my parents. My parents aren’t ones to cause a scene, so they decided not to make a fuss, given it was a holiday. I had plugged the network cable back in and didn’t bother arguing with them. I rushed to connect to the internet and send the email. My business partners were already raging in the group chat, tagging me frantically, saying they wouldn’t look at any proposals after 8 PM, no matter how brilliant. I understood their frustration at having to work on Christmas. There were only 3 minutes left until 8 PM. I quickly sent the files to the group chat. The internet was a bit slow, but it should be fine. I urgently needed to use the bathroom, so I ran off. When I came out, it was already 8 PM. I thought the proposal had been sent successfully, just in time. Crisis averted. But when I returned to my computer to check my partners’ feedback, I was horrified. Rachel’s proposal hadn’t been sent at all – it had been recalled. Seeing they hadn’t received anything, my partners angrily declared they wouldn’t look at it anymore. I quickly tried to resend, only to find the files were gone. I looked up to see Peter making faces at me again. I asked him, “Did you delete my files?” He stuck his tongue out at me: “That’s what you get for being mean to me! This’ll teach you a lesson. Take that!”
Aunt Karen glared at me hostilely: “Brynn, what’s with that look? Are you going to hit my son? He’s just a child! What’s wrong with kids being playful? You’re an adult – aren’t you ashamed to pick on him?!” She scoffed coldly, then said: “It’s just some files. So what if they’re deleted? Your job that pays a few thousand bucks can’t have anything important. Worst case, you get fired. That’d be great actually – you can come back and get married so your parents can stop worrying.” I closed my eyes for a moment, suppressing my anger. I messaged Rachel on my computer, telling her to resend the files ASAP – there might still be a chance. Unexpectedly, Rachel didn’t seem to be checking her phone and didn’t reply immediately. I panicked and reached out to Aunt Karen for my phone so I could call Rachel. Aunt Karen walked up to me with my phone, saying ominously: “Learned your lesson, huh? If you know you were wrong, apologize properly to me and my son. Then I’ll give you your phone back.” I blurted out: “He’s the one who did something wrong. Why should I apologize to him? Being young is no excuse!” Aunt Karen’s eyes widened like saucers: “Big attitude for someone so useless! What right do you have to yell at me? You make 3,000 a month, you good−for−nothing ! My daughter makes 400,000 a year as a top designer!” As she spoke, she started dragging my mom into it: “Emily, I never imagined you could fail so spectacularly as a parent, raising such a useless and rude girl. How embarrassing!” My mom got angry: “Karen, you can say whatever you want about me, but Brynn did nothing wrong. You’d better watch your mouth!” Aunt Karen laughed coldly: “Why should I be careful what I say to a nobody like her? It’s a fact that your family is useless, isn’t it? You couldn’t give birth to a son, that’s useless. Your daughter can’t make money, that’s useless too. Which part did I get wrong?!” She crossed her arms smugly: “I’m different. I raised a daughter who’s a top designer, and I gave birth to a son to carry on the family name. I’ve got nothing to worry about for the rest of my life!” “That’s enough!” my dad finally lost his temper. At this point, my usually silent second aunt and uncle stood up to mediate, holding my dad back: “It’s Christmas, don’t fight. It ruins the mood. Kids will be kids, no big deal. You know how Karen is – she just speaks her mind. Don’t take it to heart.” Here we go again. Every time Aunt Karen attacked my parents, Aunt Sarah’s family always took her side, leaving my family to swallow our anger. Suddenly, I realized that in a way, I was also partly responsible for my parents being mistreated like this. Thinking of this, I wasn’t in a rush anymore. I shrugged and said to her: “Keep the phone if you want. I’m done working!” I turned off my computer too. It’s Christmas – wouldn’t it be better to just relax, play cards and eat snacks? Why bother with this thankless task that only gets me grief? Aunt Karen didn’t expect me to say that. She suddenly felt like she’d punched cotton – all the fight went out of her. She tilted her head back and yelled at me: “You think I want your crappy phone? My daughter has plenty of money – she can buy me whatever phone I want anytime! I only took your phone to teach you some basic manners on behalf of your parents! “Look, this is the year-end bonus my daughter gave me – $150,000! What about you? How many thousands do you have?” She turned on my phone right in front of me: “Let’s see how much money you have in your WeChat wallet. I bet you don’t even have $300.” As soon as the phone turned on, a message from Rachel popped up: “Sis, what’s going on? Why is our boss saying in the group chat that you guys have made a decision, but my proposal wasn’t even considered?!”
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