by Jenny Mollen
For the last month of my pregnancy our house had been in a state of entropy. Mismatched body pillows and blankets sprawled lazily across every couch, piles of unopened gifts barricaded the kitchen from the dining room, and every glass surface was streaked with cocoa-butter fingerprints.
It was the next day, a Monday, when the doorbell rang signaling Debora’s arrival. The dogs went crazy. Jason ran around, tidying up like an eighteen-year-old whose parents were coming home from vacation early. Apprehensively, I hobbled toward the door, nursing my C-sectioned stomach. I had an idea of what was waiting for me on the other side, but I was starting to get cold feet. With Sid out of my uterus, I suddenly felt too emotional to want another person in my home. I wanted to hibernate. I wanted to make a giant nest out of all the hair wrapped around my round brush and bury the two of us deep inside it. I wanted to open my mouth and swallow his little body whole, landing him back in my belly where he belonged.
Taking a deep breath, I worked up the courage to crack open the door.
A tall black woman with a Halle Berry haircut and wearing blue hospital scrubs and large round sunglasses stood there, typing on her cell phone.
“I was afraid I might have the wrong place.” Debora smiled sweetly, rolling past me with three matching Louis Vuitton suitcases. “Where’s the little yummy?” she said eagerly.
“Who?”
“The baby! The yummy-yum-yum!” Debora flung off her sunglasses and walked into the kitchen to wash her hands.
When Jason tiptoed out of the back room with a sleeping Sid, she lit up.
“Da widdle wummy!” she said in a low whisper, toweling off her hands and taking Sid from Jason like a pro.
Jason smiled at me with an overly confident look that said, “I want credit for all of this.” Debora settled onto a bar stool with the yummy and we walked through what to expect for the first week. She inquired about my breast-feeding and if I had any previous experience with newborns.
Tears of self-doubt welled up in my eyes as I shook my head no. “I haven’t even taken the tags off him yet.” I guiltily motioned toward the medical bracelet on Sid’s ankle like he was an impulse buy I couldn’t actually afford.
Jason patted my shoulder, hoping to offer comfort. I wanted to relax, but I was far too anxious. I didn’t know how to take care of a baby. I didn’t even know how to work our dishwasher. Everything I needed to know about domesticity I was going to have to learn from Debora.
Debora unpacked her bags in the guest bedroom, soon to be Sid’s nursery, formerly the Champagne Room (when I’d taken up pole dancing), before that the Zen Den (when I got super into incense and past lives). Debora must have sensed a disturbance in the air. She pulled a large Bible out of her purse and placed it on her pillow.
“Gotta get my daily dose of the Holy Ghost,” she said, lifting her hands over her head like she was about to be beamed up through my roof. Hollice had mentioned that Debora was a Pentecostal, and she spent most of the time she wasn’t with the baby reading scripture. I didn’t mind her zeal. I took it to be a good indicator that she wouldn’t try to murder me in my sleep or order any porn On Demand.
I watched as she laid out towels and created a makeshift changing station next to the bed. She sprinkled lavender oil in Sid’s bassinet and organized his swaddles by color. She asked me how I knew Hollice.
“We’ve been great friends for years and lost touch for a while because of our booming careers,” I lied.
“She’s incredible. Truly one of the best people I’ve ever met.”
“Is she?” My voice cracked slightly. I felt a surge of adolescent jealousy.
“Oh, yes. We had the greatest time together. Watched Wendy Williams and E! News every afternoon. Got manis and pedis every Friday. Best boss I’ve ever had.”
Huh. I wondered if Debora was just trying to play me for free manicures, but her face seemed sincere. Was it possible that Hollice was the best boss ever? In my mind I liked to picture her life having a dark underbelly. Not that she was Mommy Dearest, but at least that she was a high-maintenance, demanding narcissist whose early success would one day shrivel away with her youth, leaving her washed up and alone like Norma Desmond. I rocked back and forth in my glider, internally grappling with the idea that Hollice was a good person.
“We still text all the time,” she continued, as she wrapped her head in a do-rag. “I mean, I lived with her for four months. You just get close.” She flashed me a picture of her and Hollice clinking wineglasses on an Air France flight to Saint Bart’s.
I smiled and excused myself to have a word with Jason, who was upstairs, ostensibly hanging out with Sid but actually naked on the toilet, answering e-mails.
“We need to hire Debora for at least four months,” I insisted. I needed to prove to Debora not only that we were as financially secure as Hollice, but that I was way more fun and totally more right for the role of Medea in our senior-class play.
“You want a stranger in our house for four months?”
“What’s the big deal? We already have one that’s staying for eighteen years,” I said. “ ‘Of all creatures that can feel and think, we women are the worst treated things alive,’ ” I moaned, channeling my best mid-Atlantic dialect.
“Isn’t Medea about a woman who hates her husband and kills her kids?” Jason finished peeing, then traipsed into the bedroom and turned on a golf game.
“And her husband’s name was Jason. I would have been brilliant!” I blocked the television and took a long, drawn-out dancer’s bow, then pretended to drink a vial of poison, which had nothing to do with the plot of Medea and everything to do with showcasing the “Special Skills” section of my résumé that listed my proficiency in mime. Sid watched from a makeshift pillow crib in the center of our bed, clearly picturing what his life would be like if Hollice were his mom.
Jason consented to keeping Debora on for an additional ten weeks, less because he agreed with me and more to increase his odds of never seeing me mime again.
I was quickly learning that a baby is a gift that requires a million other gifts. No matter how prepared you think you are, you are missing at least a dozen vital basics.
“Where are his pajamas?” Debora rummaged through Sid’s drawers, confused. It was Sid’s first real bedtime in his nursery and the only thing he had on was a diaper and an umbilical cord.
“What do you mean?”
“The baby needs something to sleep in.”
“Don’t we just swaddle him? I didn’t know they made baby pajamas.”
“Yes, he has to have clothes to sleep in,” she said, like a worried social worker talking to a teen mom. “And you also have to buy a bathtub, a bottle warmer, some diaper-rash cream, crib sheets, storage bins…”
The list went on and on. I was the least prepared parent she’d ever worked with, she said with an uncomfortable laugh. She told me she’d spoken to her best friend Uzo about the situation during a break that afternoon, and they were going to pray for me on their Tuesday-night prayer hotline. I envisioned her and Uzo on their hands and knees, weeping to Lord Jesus to save Sid from the certain doom that would come from having a mother who was too dumb to know what baby pajamas were and was still hiding a stripper pole in the garage.
Uzo was Debora’s good friend who she never shut up about. She also happened to be Beyoncé’s baby nurse.
“She’s been a celebrity baby nurse for years,” Debora said, pulling a bag of kale out of the fridge to make a green drink she’d read about in Us Weekly. “She gets paparazzied all the time. You’ve definitely seen her in all the magazines.” Debora beamed. The blender begrudgingly chewed up the copious amounts of ice, almond milk, and bananas as Debora stared at me, waiting for some sort of kudos for the fact that she drank smoothies.
It weirded me out how wrapped up in the fame game my baby nurse was. I understood a hairstylist caring about celebrity—a trainer, even a chef. But a fucking baby nurse? Was there anyone in Los Angeles not trying to jockey thei
r way into their own reality show? Debora was a churchgoing woman, a disciple of the Lord, a woman who told me at least twice a day that she could communicate with angels. But even Debora couldn’t resist the siren song of Bravo Andy.
Hollice had taken to texting me daily, checking in. She was over-the-top sweet, asking when she could come over and meet Sid. She’d never been to my house before and I was more than a little hesitant to have her over. I didn’t know how I would handle being around her. In high school I had always left our interactions feeling depressed and inadequate. I was afraid even now to hear about what new job she had or what cool friends she was hanging out with. Also I looked like shit. I’d just had a baby and was twenty pounds overweight, with nipples the size of rice cakes.
I told Hollice that I would love to see her! That I couldn’t wait! But that, sadly, Jason was experiencing postpartum depression. I suggested we touch base again in a few weeks, hoping her super-glamorous lifestyle would sweep her out of town and prevent our meet-up from ever actually happening. It wasn’t that I disliked her. I just wanted to prevent myself from getting hurt or possibly deciding to change Sid’s name to something flashy and attention-grabbing like “Afrika” to ensure he’d be more famous than her kids.
“Hollice might stop by in a few weeks to say hi,” I casually mentioned one morning as I loaded Sid into his car seat. We were going for a routine doctor’s visit in West L.A. and Jason had asked Debora if she wanted to join us. We didn’t know how not to. Leaving her in the house alone all day just seemed rude.
Debora had been at our house just under a month at that point, and she was already way too comfortable with us. It wasn’t all her fault. Jason and I didn’t know how to say no. Neither of us had grown up with “staff,” and bossing an older black woman around the house just felt a little too Gone with the Wind. So instead of treating Debora like an employee, we treated her like a houseguest. I stocked the house with everything she liked to eat: berries, tortilla chips, coconut water. I bought her a bathrobe and a down comforter. I even let her borrow my car when she needed to run errands. Some people know how to handle obvious codependents like Jason and me, and they would have likely compensated for our lack of boundaries by enforcing boundaries of their own. But others tend to take advantage of our hospitality and end up controlling us completely.
I can’t deny that part of why I let it happen was to ensure that Debora enjoyed her stay with me more than she did her stay with Hollice.
“Can we eat at Mr Chow?” Debora chimed in from the backseat as we made our way to the doctor. “Uzo always gets to go to Mr Chow.”
Mr Chow was a high-end Chinese restaurant in Beverly Hills that I hadn’t eaten at since the early nineties. Once a notorious hotspot to see and be seen in, Mr Chow had in recent years become little more than a tourist trap (with great lettuce cups) and a standard stop for every TMZ tour bus.
“Maybe…” I said, annoyed, looking at Jason from the passenger seat. I’d spent enough time around her to realize that whenever Debora really wanted to get her way, she’d throw a little Jesus talk into her negotiating.
“The Lord Jesus is telling me I gotta get me some Mr Chow! Because the Lord was not liking what you fed me last night.” She paused, reading a text on her phone, then continued, half-focused. “The only kind of sushi I can do is a Californian roll.”
Not only was Debora strangely manipulative, she was always on her phone. And aside from the handful of times I’d heard her wiring money to a relative in Atlanta, she was usually gossiping with Uzo.
Uzo was the Queen Bee of the baby-nurse world. She was the Heather with the red scrunchie. She had an army of lower-level baby nurses she’d farm jobs out to when she deemed them unworthy of her time. Uzo seemed like a self-obsessed fame whore. And though she’d unequivocally signed a nondisclosure agreement with her current employer, she didn’t mind bending the rules to divulge secrets, especially if it allowed her to brag about a fancy new trip or a restaurant she’d tried. Debora worshipped Uzo and wanted everything she had. This included “the three b’s.”
“My goals are simple,” she said, sucking down garlic prawns at Mr Chow after our appointment. “I want a Bentley, a black card, and a Birkin. Then I’ll know I’ve made it.”
I didn’t own a black card, nor a Bentley, and I most definitely didn’t own a Birkin. With prices ranging anywhere from ten to two hundred grand, a Birkin was an outrageously priced handbag typically reserved for Park Avenue princesses. Out of principle, I couldn’t imagine myself ever buying one. But I did take note when someone around me had one. Carrying a Birkin is like the female version of walking into a locker room with a monster-sized dick. Eyes turn in your direction; perceptions shift. When I see a Birkin on the street, I eye it the way I do a girl who’s prettier than me. It’s a mixture of jealousy, lust, and begrudging respect. I try to guess if the owner bought the bag herself or if she’s just letting someone else’s husband come in her mouth. If she looks at me, I smile. I even offer my help if needed. No matter how hard I try to fight it, I’m disarmed, subservient, and mildly depressed.
I stared out at two grungy-looking paparazzi standing near the valet. They waved to a Hollywood tour bus filled with sunburnt white people in visors.
“I don’t have any of those things,” I said to Debora, trying to bring her back down to earth.
“Uzo got a Céline from Beyoncé for her birthday. My birthday is next week. I’m about to be fifty! That’s a big birthday.” Debora let the information hang in the air as a waiter walked over and handed Jason the check. “You’re only fifty once, after all,” she said, as if you’re other ages more than once.
“Oh, I think I wanna order something for later.” Debora looked at us innocently. She told the waiter she’d like the lobster pasta and another order of shrimp toast to go. Jason shot me a look, then gave the waiter his credit card.
“You’ve got one of them Célines, though…” Debora said. She’d clearly been digging through my closet while I was out.
“It’s a knockoff,” I shot back, defensive. “I got it in Turkey. Jason, tell her it’s a knockoff.”
“It’s a knockoff,” Jason said, handing me Sid and excusing himself to the bathroom.
“I actually have a fake Birkin, too,” I confessed under my breath. “I got it from my guy Elan here in town. I just can’t justify spending all that money on real bags. I don’t care about them enough.”
Debora looked at me, shocked. Her jaw hung open. I could see bits of macerated shrimp waving at me between her teeth. “You carry a fake bag?”
“Well, yeah. Sometimes.”
The truth was I loved fake bags. They provided me with all the respect and credit that comes with a real bag for a fraction of the cost.
“I could NEVER. Debora don’t break for fake!” She threw an arm in the air for emphasis.
Debora and I walked with Sid out toward the valet. The paparazzi were still waiting, to Debora’s satisfaction. She giddily applied lipstick and grabbed Sid from my arms. I smiled at the two broken men with beat-up jeans and telescope lenses as they scanned my face through their mental database, coming up with absolutely zero reason to take my picture.
“Weird. They aren’t shooting us.” Debora shrugged, disappointed. “When I was with Hollice people basically attacked us for photos.”
I felt a pang of defeat in the pit of my stomach. I knew Debora was judging me. I was judging me. Just then, Jason appeared and the men sprang into action.
“Quick, Debora! Go hold his hand!” I heard myself say. “Give him a peck on the cheek! See if he’ll dip you!” The words poured out of my mouth. It was as if the Holy Ghost had inhabited my body, only instead of speaking in tongues I was speaking in Kardashian.
Jason gave Debora an awkward, obligatory hug, then jumped into the car, rattled. We didn’t speak about the incident until later that night.
“I couldn’t disappoint her! She wanted it so badly. Uzo bullies her and makes her feel like she’s not a hig
h-profile-enough baby nurse, it’s just not fair!” I said, like a mom talking about her overweight teenage daughter.
Jason looked at me in disbelief. “Do you hear yourself? ‘High-profile-enough baby nurse’? What does that even mean? She’s here to take care of our kid. She’s lucky we even take her out of the house.”
“Jason! That’s racist!”
“Racist? I don’t care what color skin she has. We aren’t here to improve her social status.”
“Yes, we are!” I said, realizing the absurdity only after the words had come out.
In my heart, I knew Jason was right, but I couldn’t help myself. Debora was Patrick Dempsey from Can’t Buy Me Love. She was Rachael Leigh Cook from She’s All That. She was the DUFF from The DUFF. I related to her feelings of inferiority. And I felt it my duty to transform her into the coolest girl in school.
Later that night I rocked Sid to sleep while Debora sat in the kitchen eating her ninety-five-dollar lobster pasta. When I walked out, she stopped me.
“So. I thought about what you said and…I wanna meet your dealer.”
“I—” I hesitated, wondering which dealer she was referring to and how deep she’d actually dug into my closet. “Elan?”
“I prayed about it and I think you are right. Gonna start out with a fake Birkin and work my way up. Hang on.” Debora held one hand to my lips while the other went to her ear like a Secret Service agent. “Uh-huh, yeah…Okay…Yup. I understand.” She nodded as she looked off into space, having a conversation with nobody.