He Gave My Bedroom to His Ex ,So I Gave Him a Divorce

Ten years of rotating shifts at the mill, and I'd finally been assigned an apartment.

On moving day, my husband, Lester Rowe, walked his childhood sweetheart, Laurel Gilbert, through the door instead. Two suitcases trailed behind her.

Laurel just got divorced. There's really no room for her at her parents' place, so it works out. She can stay with us.

I went stiff. I stood there looking at the new apartment I'd just finished cleaning, swallowing my anger. "There's only one bedroom. Where exactly do you want Laurel to sleep?"

Laurel's eyes went red, and she spoke in that careful, small voice of hers. "I know you don't want me here. But I've got nowhere else to go. I'll just set up a folding cot in the living room, that's all. I won't get in your way, I promise."

Lester looked at her instantly, all tenderness. "You're not well. How can you sleep in the living room? This bedroom gets the morning sun and it's roomy. You take it."

I actually laughed, it was that absurd. He ached over Laurel's poor health, but he'd conveniently forgotten that my back had been bad for years because of my job.

"Lester, if Laurel takes the bedroom, then where do we sleep? The two of us crammed onto a folding cot in the living room?"

Something ugly crossed his face. "Enough. I'm the head of this household, and this is settled. Laurel takes the bedroom, you set up a folding cot in the living room, and I'll stay in the dorm at school."

"We're all comrades here. Laurel's going through a hard time. You can't be so petty about it."

"If you keep throwing these tantrums, then this marriage really can't go on. I mean it."

To keep Laurel here, he was actually using divorce as a threat. I didn't say a word. I went to the factory administrative office and got the official divorce referral paperwork.

This apartment had been approved by the mill on the strength of my seniority. Without my say-so, every last one of you can get out of my apartment.

...

Seeing me go quiet, Lester assumed I'd caved. Something smug flickered at the corner of his eye. "See, you should've just agreed from the start instead of making a scene. Go put the new silk bedding set on for Laurel. That one's soft. Laurel's used to nice things."

My hands curled into fists inside my sleeves. He had his eye on my bedding set now.

"My mother saved for three months to buy that for me at the downtown department store. It's meant for me."

Lester scoffed, not the least bit concerned. "I know it's from the department store, that's exactly why I want you to hand it over for Laurel. As for you, you've got thick hide. You've made do with plain cotton all these years, haven't you? What's the fuss? "

"Besides, a textile worker pounding away at a machine in the workshop all day, you think you'd even know what to do with fine things?"

So in his eyes, I didn't deserve nice things.

Lester saw my face go pale and realized he'd come down a little hard. He softened his tone. "I just say what's on my mind, that's all. Don't be so touchy."

"Laurel's used to nice things. She can't stand that plain cotton, it breaks her skin out in a rash. Have a little sympathy."

"I'll save up and buy you another set later, that's all."

So because Laurel was used to nice things, the nice things had to go to her.

And because I was used to the cheap ones, I could only ever have the cheap ones.

But by what right? This apartment was assigned to me by the mill. The bedding set was something my mother bought to celebrate my moving into the new place.

Why did everything that was mine have to go to Laurel?

"I don't need you to buy me anything. If she wants a set, you can pay for one yourself. And this apartment was assigned to me by the mill. How it gets used, that's mine to decide, no one else's."

Lester saw my sudden hardening and his face turned very ugly. "What is that supposed to mean?"

I lifted my head and looked at him coldly. "What do you think?"

"You're not afraid that"

I cut him off. "Divorce. I agree."

Lester Rowe stared at me, his eyes wide with shock, unable to believe what he was hearing. "You want a divorce over something this small?"

I shook my head. "I'm not the one who brought it up. You did. I'm just respecting your wishes."

Laurel's eyes reddened, her whole face a picture of wounded innocence. "Lester, don't fall out with your wife over me. She doesn't want me staying here, so I should just go back."

She made a show of turning to leave, and Lester caught her by the arm. He looked at her with aching tenderness. "Laurel, where would you even go? Your own family doesn't want you back after the divorce. All you'd have there is a mat on the kitchen floor. It's too cruel."

Then he rounded on me, furious. "Ruby, you'd drive Laurel to her death over one room? I already told you what she's been through."

"Her brother and his wife can't stand her. They make her do the laundry and cooking every single day. Her parents always favored the sons. She couldn't survive in that house."

"Sending her back now, that's the same as pushing her to her death."

I went rigid, looking at this man I'd spent three years with in the countryside and ten years married to after we came back to the city, and something in my chest sat heavy and stuck.

I'd never known he could be so attentive, so understanding of how hard a woman's life could be.

He knew Laurel had it bad at her family's home after the divorce, that her brother and sister-in-law made her do this and that, that her parents treated her poorly.

He'd just forgotten that I had lived exactly the same way in his house for ten years.

Every day I was up at five or six to cook for the whole family, then wash a household's worth of laundry.

Every month my wages had to be handed over. At meals I ate the least.

Because his mother said a man was the pillar of the house, the man had to eat his fill first, and a woman could get by on a few bites of whatever was left.

Most of the time he stayed at the school dormitory and only came home on weekends, and only when he was home was I allowed to sleep in the bedroom. Any time he wasn't there, the bedroom went to his brother and sister-in-law's kids, and I slept on a mat in the cold kitchen that reeked of damp.

I'd complained to him about it, and he'd only turned cold and scolded me. "Doesn't every married woman live this way? Mom's doing it for our own good. Can you not be so petty about it?"

Ten years in that kitchen and he never once felt for me, but Laurel spent one month on a kitchen floor after her divorce and he ached for her so much he threatened me with divorce to make me give up the bedroom.

So it turned out he did understand. He just cared about someone who wasn't me.

I looked down at the thick calluses on my palms, worn there by ten years of work. In those ten years I never once let myself rest. I ran myself like a spinning top. The night shifts nobody wanted, I took. The jobs everyone called too exhausting, I did.

I did all of it so I could earn my housing eligibility sooner and get out of that house that ate people alive.

Now I had my apartment, and the house was about to take in an outsider all over again.

"This apartment is what I earned after ten hard years. I slept in the kitchen at your family's place for ten years, and now you want me to sleep in the living room. Lester, do you really think that's fair?"

Guilt flickered across his face. He'd just opened his mouth when Laurel clapped a hand over hers, her voice all hollow despair. "I knew I was just in the way. Then I'd be better off dead."

With that she shoved past Lester and ran out.

Lester scrambled after her, not even caring that he knocked me down on his way.

I braced myself against the table and got up, then started packing the room myself, folding all the clothes that were mine into the closet. Lester's things I left untouched.

Then I went to the factory office. "Write me a referral letter. I want a divorce."

Freya Lambert, the office supervisor, and I got along well. When she heard I wanted a divorce, her face went blank with surprise. "Ruby, why so suddenly? Is it because of that Laurel woman?"

I nodded. "It is. Since the two of them are so devoted to each other, I'll let them have it."

Freya caught my hand, her whole face crowded with worry. "Ruby, listen. I know that Laurel Gilbert is no good. Her last marriage ended because her husband caught her running around behind his back."

"Lester's a teacher. The country's putting real weight on education now, so his standing's only going up. You divorce him and you're the one who loses out. You clawed your way through all these years. You want to just hand it all over to Laurel Gilbert?"

"And you're doing well now. Top marks in the evaluations, a promotion coming any day, off the line and done with weaving. A divorce could set all that back. Don't do something foolish."

Looking at how genuinely she worried for me, I knew she meant every word for my good. But I couldn't waste the rest of my life sunk in the mud.

So I told her. All ten years of it, right down to what had happened today.

By the time I finished, her eyes had gone red. "The rotten wretch. He's no kind of man. You've suffered for nothing."

"If you've truly thought it through, I'll write out your referral papers."

I nodded. "I've thought it through."

With the finished paperwork in my hand, I felt lighter than I had in a long time, so I stopped by the shop and bought a pound of pork ribs.

I'd barely stepped out the door when I saw Lester and Laurel looking at leather shoes together, leaning into each other, close as anything.

"These are too expensive, Lester. I couldn't."

But Lester only pinched her cheek, doting all over her. "I'm buying them for you. However much they cost, you're worth it."

"Only real leather heels like these are good enough for you."

Laurel flushed, all shy sweetness. "So has Lester ever bought heels for your wife?"

Lester gave a scornful little snort. "All day long she's either doing housework or off weaving at the mill. When's she going to wear heels? Buying her a pair would just be throwing money away."

Laurel let out a coy little sound. "I really am lucky, then, aren't I? Having you spoil me like this."

Standing there at the corner, I felt something heavy slam into my chest, so tight I couldn't breathe.

A year ago, when heels had just come into fashion, I'd wanted a pair too. His face had gone cold on the spot. "What do you want to go wasting money on that for? One pair of heels is half my monthly wages. Think how much rice that could feed the family. You've got no sense for running a household."

So it turned out that, in his eyes, I wasn't fit to wear heels.

It had nothing to do with running a household.

I turned with the meat in my hand and had taken only a few steps when someone blocked my way. It was Laurel.

She looked at me, pleased with herself. "You saw all of that just now, didn't you? Even married, the person who matters most to Lester is still me."

"And here's something else for you. All these years, every ration coupon for cloth and meat his unit handed out, he gave them to me. He said you weren't fit to wear anything good and didn't need to eat meat, either."

Then she flicked a glance at the ribs in my hand. "I like my ribs braised. Remember to go heavy on the sugar."

With that she turned and walked off, all smiles, stepping back so she blocked me from Lester's line of sight.

And I stood rooted there, my legs shaking and refusing to stop.

Back when Lester and I first came home from the countryside, he'd said he wanted to sit for college. But no one in his family would put him through it, so I pretended I had no wish to go, then buried myself in the textile mill to pay for his schooling.

By the time he'd graduated and been assigned a job, five years had gone by. He never once brought a cloth or meat coupon home for me. He said the school didn't hand those out, and I believed him.

So it turned out they'd all gone to someone else, and I was the one who'd eaten ten years of bitterness for his sake.

I would never eat that bitterness again. I walked off quickly, and then I knocked on that weathered little wooden door.

"Ruby, what brings you by at this hour?"

I lifted a smile and gave the ribs in my hand a little shake. "I've been wanting your braised pork ribs."

My mother looked me over, then took the ribs from me. "All right. Let's eat first. Whatever it is, we'll talk after dinner."

The smile on my lips froze for a second. My mother knew me better than anyone. I hadn't said a word yet, and she'd already felt the change in me.

A whole pound of pork ribs, eaten clean in one meal.

There was a time I wouldn't have dared imagine it. In that house, good food like ribs was saved for the men and the elders. I got the side dishes. Only at New Year's did I get to pick up a single rib, always the smallest one.

I thought about it, then spoke up. "Mom, I'm getting a divorce."

Her hands stilled over the dishes, then went back to washing. "You've thought it through?"

"Yeah."

"Then I'm behind you."

I froze. I'd expected to spend a long time talking her around, and instead she took it more calmly than I did.

Seeing my face, she gave a small smile. "I just don't want you swallowing more of this. You've got decades ahead of you. A person can't spend all of them shortchanging herself."

Hearing her say that, my eyes went hot at once. I threw myself into her arms. "Mom, once the divorce is done, move in with me. My place is nicer."

She stroked my back. "All right."

I slept at her place that night, planning to head home the next day and go with Lester to the county clerk's office to file for the divorce.

But when I got home from work the next evening, the sight inside stopped me cold.

My clothes had been dumped on the floor. The bed in the bedroom showed the wrinkle of someone having slept in it, and the new silk bedding set my mother had bought was smeared with lipstick.

I opened the closet. It was hung full of pretty dresses in every color. Laurel's clothes.

She'd moved in without ever asking me.

Then laughter drifted in from the doorway. I walked out and saw Lester and Laurel chatting away, the two of them all smiles, Laurel's arms loaded with shopping bags of clothes.

She'd walked out of her own divorce without a cent, and she had no job. It didn't take much to work out who'd paid for all of that.

The moment he saw me, Lester tensed, then rounded on me, furious. "Ruby, where were you last night? Why didn't you come home to cook?"

"Do you have any idea? Laurel waited all evening for you to come back and make braised pork ribs. She was so hungry her stomach was cramping, and you still weren't home. What were you off doing?"

I hadn't imagined that after a whole night away, his first words wouldn't be to ask what had happened to me, but to demand why I hadn't come home to make braised ribs for his little sweetheart.

I didn't answer him. I pointed at the bedroom. "I never agreed to let her live here. So why is she living here? And why are my clothes thrown on the floor?"

Laurel covered her face, the picture of alarm. "I'm so sorry. When I was tidying up I didn't know where to put your things, and Lester said the floor was fine. I did want to put them away for you, but Lester said not to bother."

Then she shot me a smug little look.

Lester jabbed a finger at me. "They're just some old rags. Pick them up yourself. You're really going to make a scene over something this small?"

"And Laurel staying here isn't up for discussion. Since you're back, go buy some ribs. She wants them."

He truly didn't have me on his mind at all. I couldn't be bothered wasting more breath on him. Calmly, I pulled out the referral letter.

"I've already gotten the divorce paperwork. We're getting divorced."

"And then the both of you can get out of my apartment."