This may be a looong post. I'm so sorry but it may be worth it. At this point, I just want to get it off my chest.

For a little background on my family, my father is black, we'll call him "Ed", and my mother is white, we'll call her Maria. Yes, race matters in my case. Ed and Maria broke up not long after they had me and are on decent terms up to the moment that I'm typing this. I (30f) never had a really close relationship with any of my family on my dad's side except maybe two cousins and my stepsister and stepbrother. Ed's mother, we'll call her Jen, who's about in her seventy's now, has a bad problem with running her mouth and talking shit about people behind their backs. Jen never liked Maria (49F) for as long as I can remember. For the first twelve years of my life, Maria had custody of me due to Ed's drinking problems. Not that Maria's then husband was much better. But that is another story for another time.

From what I witnessed as a child and young adult, Maria had always tried to be civil with Jen. They didn't hang out with each other or anything like that, but Maria never badmouthed Jen or started fights when they were in the same room. That, however, didn't stop Jen from badmouthing Maria or calling her names when she had the chance. Jen even called Maria trash in front of me one day when I was around thirteen or fourteen years old. I was cleaning scraps of paper of other things like that up off the floor of my room when Jen walked past and said "Yeah, that's right. Clean your mother off the floor." Yes, those were her exact words. She was calling Maria, the mother of her grandchild, trash right in front of me. There were some other side comments and little things she did that made me feel like she disliked me and Maria but that was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I was speechless and couldn't even move. Jen just walked away as if what she had just said was something as common and normal as stating that it's going to rain or something.

I couldn't do anything but cry after she walked away. I'm the type of person who doesn't care if you talk shit about me or make fun of me, but as soon as you bring someone I love and care for into it, I get very protective. On the other hand, I'm also someone who tries to respect their elders. I had tried to respect her because of her relation to me and because of her age but that day something snapped in me. From that day I refuse to call Jen my grandma and instead introduce her to new people as my father's mother. So AITAH for refusing to call my father's mother "grandma" after the way she disrespected my mother to my face??