“Someone needs to be concerned about those girls."
"Kara and Kendra know that I am only a phone call away."
"Would you even answer the phone if you're laid up under some man?"
Line. Crossed.
Ashanti closed the distance between them, until she was barely a foot away. "Apparently, you didn't hear me the first time," she said. "Who I fuck is none of your business."
Anita gasped, her head snapping back. Her mouth opened and closed but no words came out.
"I should petition the courts!" she finally screeched. "Get those girls away from you!"
"Try it," Ashanti said.
"You shouldn't be raising my brother's children!"
"I am tired of your bullshit, Anita. You hadn't talked to your 'beloved' brother for over three years before he died. I know my dad tried to contact you, and you ignored him."
"He was not your father!"
"Fuck you! He is my father. He loved me and treated me like his own flesh and blood. You, on the other hand, who actually was his flesh and blood, didn't want anything to do with him until he was buried in the ground. And all because he took your mother's dishes."
"It was her wedding china and it was mine!" Anita said. "And it has nothing to do with you."
"No, it doesn't. I don't care why you cut your own brother out of your life. What I do care about are my sisters. You talk about wanting to raise Kara and Kendra? You live an hour away and saw them five times in the first ten years of their lives.
"I know what this is, it's guilt," Ashanti continued. "But you don't get to alleviate the shame and regret you feel at the way you treated your own brother by making my sisters' lives hell.”