Insanity by Omar Tyree Page A

don’t need to scare the man to death with lies and carrying on,” Mercille told her.
    “ Lies ? Who lied ? Your daughter is crazy ,” Allison insisted. “She focus on things that nobody else focus on.”
    Queen shook her head and finished making their plates before she led Bryant through the kitchen and onto an elevated deck outside. The wooden stood above the driveway, where they sat in a pair of black plastic picnic chairs.
    “What was that all about?” Bryant teased. In a sick way, he thought it was all comical. Queen’s folks were as outspoken as she was.
    She took a deep breath before answering him. “With my family, nobody really got an education, they all work regular jobs and stuff. So, with everything that I’m doing with school and whatnot, and the way I go after what I want, my aunt has always considered me crazy. And she always complains about how I can’t cook, especially if we’re all around food .”
    Bryant laughed it off and began to eat. “You mean this stuff?”
    Queen grinned. She told him, “Actually, my aunt started off by calling my mom crazy for doing so much for me, when she really couldn’t afford it.”
    Bryant nodded with a mouthful. “But education at all costs is a good thing, right?” he mumbled.
    “I guess if you’re into moving up in the world. But if you’re complacent with where you are . . .” She shrugged. “Then I guess you wouldn’t understand it.”
    She took a bite of her own plate of food.
    Back inside the dining room, Mercille asked her sister, “Why do you keep doing that to my baby ?”
    Allison looked appalled by the question. She answered after she chewing down her potato salad. “Girl, are you kidding me? That child needs to be brought back down to earth. You shouldn’t have even named her no damn Queen . She’s not my damn Queen . Sounds like a dog’s name.”
    “Oh, just cut it out , Allison,” Mercille told her.
    “No I won’t . Now you know good and well your child walks around us like we’re all embarrassing to her, just because she had a little extra schooling . And I feel like I paid for most of it with as much as you asked me for help , trying to get her little uniforms and stuff.”
    “And you think she doesn’t know that ?” Mercille questioned.
    “Evidently not , because instead of her keeping a job to start to pay us back with, her crazy behind goes back to school . And for what , four more years of poverty?”
    “It’s only two more years,” Mercille corrected her.
    “Yeah, on top of what, sixteen ? See I can count .”
    Overhearing them argue, Justina, the middle sister, walked down into her dining room from upstairs and immediately sided with Mercille..
    “The more education, the more security, Allison,” Justina reasoned. She was actually the smallest sister in size, where Allison was the oldest and biggest in every way, a bully with it.
    She grimaced and said, “Oh, so you think educated people don’t go broke ? Because I know plenty of them who never even paid off their college loans , and they end up in debt for their entire lives. I mean, at least I know when enough is enough. But some of them so-called educated people are just plain dumb , buying and borrowing until they got no way out of anything. And then they try to twist their noses all up in the air to you like they’re so smart .”
    Overhearing his sister-in-law, who refused to be reasoned with, Mario began to chuckle from where he was sitting on the sofa and added fuel to her fire. He had moved up in the Baltimore construction industry with more than thirty years of experience and no higher education himself.
    He yelled, “Get ’em, Allison! I work with some educated fools on the job right now. And we’re always training them and retraining them when they come in. But yet the company starts them off with more money and higher positions.”
    “Yeah, so they can pay for them college loans and get themselves into more debt when they start buying houses