Years passed. I softened and assumed we would make our way back to each other. I ran into her grown son, a boy I hadn’t seen since he was in elementary school. He owned a restaurant and was taking orders for dinner at the salon where I was getting my hair done. He recognized me immediately. I was happy to see him. I asked about his mom. He said she was fine. I called her a few days later, left a message. No one ever called back. Shortly after, maybe a few months, my friend Wendy called me at 5 p.m. and told me that my friend’s obituary had been in the paper that day. I hadn’t known she was sick and didn’t know until that moment that she had died. No one had ever bothered to tell me. I would’ve gone to the hospital. I would have gone to the service. I would’ve apologized for writing such an angry letter. But it was too late. She was gone, and I was left with a bunch of would-haves.
During Baldwin’s first two years, I took care of her with help from my mom, who came three days a week to babysit. I realized then, and even more so later, what a gift it was to have had her to care for Baldwin. By the time my daughter started school, I’d written two books; both had gone from hardcover to trade to mass-market paperback; and I’d done four book tours. I was able to do all this without worry because I’d had Cliff and I’d had my mother.
I delivered my second child, all nine pounds six ounces of him, via C-section on Valentine’s Day 2001. At the time, I still had two more books on my contract but decided to take off the year to be with him. When Ford was three months old, I got a call from Neil Baldwin, then executive director of the National Book Awards, asking me to be a judge. I was sitting in my dressing room, nursing Ford, cradling him with one arm and holding the phone with the other. I looked down at my luminous-skinned, brown-black, shiny-haired, giant baby boy as I ignored the warning ping in my stomach and said yes. It was a huge honor to be asked. It would put me in the company of boldface-name writers like Colin Harrison, Mary Morris, and Susan Richards Shreve. A chance to sit with the popular kids in the cafeteria, how could I say no?
I hung up the phone and felt simultaneously thrilled and nauseated. I called my longtime agent and friend, Faith, and told her the news. She was way more excited than I was. “Of course you should do it; it’s second only to being nominated,” she said. I let her enthusiasm wash over me.
Three days later, the books started arriving. I would be judging in the fiction category, and I would have to read something like two hundred books. Three boxes arrived one day, three the next; I opened one. How in the hell would I get through reading them? I was nursing Ford every two hours, twelve to fourteen hours a day, and Cliff would bottle-feed him my pumped milk at night. How could I get through one book? I decided I needed to hire someone. I didn’t have any child care, not even for a few hours during the day as I’d had for Baldwin. My mom was less robust, and while she wanted to help out, she couldn’t do it anymore. I needed another Dawn, the great young Jamaican woman who was a live-in nanny for our family friends the Thames and babysat Baldwin after my mom. I began the interview process, but I felt like I was in the scene from the Diane Keaton movie Baby Boom when she’s interviewing possible babysitters. The quick cuts from interviews with one more awful than the next. In the movie, a promiscuous, corn-fed teen is shown making out on the couch with a guy whom she’s picked up in the park while out with the baby; another is a cold German nurse who believes that picking up a baby is coddling. I didn’t feel comfortable with any of the women I’d interviewed. When I told my mom, she said, “That’s cuz you don’t want no nanny.”
I could always count on her to tell the truth. She was seventy-six at the time, and while her spirit was still vital, she’d begun to show signs of wear on her body. This was around the time she acknowledged that in working the night shift at the hospital for thirty-two years, along with all her civic commitments, she had simply worked too hard. She would later say to me, “I worked myself to death.” She kept thinking she was going to feel better and then be able to help out with Ford. I didn’t expect her to, but never said so. I just wanted her advice.
But there was another truth hiding behind my concerns about finding a nanny: I didn’t feel worthy to judge those books. Many writers want to be invited to the party, but do you really want to go? I wanted to be seen, but if I couldn’t show up as the best of who I was as a writer, a mother, a Black woman, then I’d rather not be on the scene.
Even though Ford was a much better sleeper than Baldwin (Dracula was a better night sleeper than Baldwin was!), I was still exhausted from caring for him. I was forty-three and didn’t understand then, as I know now, that having babies is a young woman’s game. Sure, you can birth a baby at forty, but in ten years you’re fifty with a child in elementary school. Menopause and milk money is a road I would advise avoiding.
I looked at the boxes piling up in my foyer like Tinkertoys as I maneuvered the stroller past them to take Ford for our walk. I had opened just one book.
We strolled down Park Street to Watchung Plaza. One of the things I love most about my town is that it’s a walking town. We have two big centers with shops, restaurants, and movie theaters: Upper Montclair, also called Uptown, and the strip of Bloomfield Avenue known as Downtown. There are several smaller sections of restaurants and shops like the one at Watchung, where Watchung Booksellers, one of the best independent bookstores in the country, is located. With its children’s area full of big comfy chairs and books and games, Watchung Booksellers was a lifesaver for me during Ford’s early years. It’s a place to flop and let the baby roam, so that mothers can get out of the house and browse books and have stimulating conversation with grown-ups.
Just as we got to Watchung Plaza, heading to the bookstore, I heard a rumble of thunder, and I thought, Shit, I don’t have a raincoat, no umbrella, nothing. The rumble was louder the second time, and I wheeled the stroller into a U-turn to head back home. The closer I got to home, the darker it got, and the louder the thunder became. Two and a half blocks from home, the clouds released a flood of hard, insistent rain. Fortuitously, I did have a plastic cover that I put over the stroller to protect Ford from getting wet. I was wearing a Gap cotton T-shirt, thin Italian jeans, and Nikes. Within a few feet, I was drenched.
When we got home, I could barely get into the foyer because it was filled with the boxes of books. I looked at the mound of them just staring up at me, summoning me to open them, to read them. All. I just wanted to pull off my wet clothes, put on something soft and flannel, and take my baby to bed for a nice nap. I looked at my delightful smiley boy and knew these moments would be fleeting. I picked up the phone and called Neil Baldwin and told him I had to back out. I couldn’t do it. I needed to be with my son.
He was gracious, although I could tell that he was annoyed. He’d have to find someone else to step in. I’d have to wait for the new person to be chosen in order to ship all the boxes to him or her. I hung up and felt pure relief.
The year went by, and we celebrated Ford’s first year with a combination African naming ceremony and christening at home. We had the same minister, Phyllis Crutchfield, who had performed Baldwin’s ceremony at the Unity Church. The naming ceremony consists of putting six different tastes on the child’s tongue to symbolize wishes for the child. There is salt for vigor and happiness; water because it has no enemy; sugar or honey mixed with kola nut to symbolize the duality of the sweet and sour in life; palm oil as an emollient to ease life’s problems; and pepper to energize speech.
We served a huge dinner for fifty to sixty friends and family, and my big boy was passed from hug to hug. The air was thick with happiness. I knew I’d made the right decision when late in the day I looked down at him holding onto my pant leg and gazing up at me with an expression of pure adoration. He’d started walking two months earlier. I’d been there for his first attempts. I saw him let go and stand for a second before falling and I saw him get up again, hold onto the coffee table, let go, stand for several seconds, grin when he realized what he was doing, and finally to take the first few st
eps. I was thrilled that I hadn’t missed anything, even though I would later come to question some of my choices.
9
Who Do You Think You Are?
Baldwin, Ford, and me.
IN 2003, ten days after Ford turned two, my third book, Acting Out, was published. Then, just before he was to start kindergarten, Who Does She Think She Is?, my fourth novel, hit bookstores. A year later, I still hadn’t begun working on anything new. I was in full-on mommy, wife, and housekeeper mode. My writer identity was slipping away like the long summer days in late September. I’d run into people in town, and after “How’re the kids? Cliff? Charlie?” came the invariable question, “Are you writing?”
They’d look at me eagerly, ready to hear about the plot line, the characters.
“No,” I’d say, “I’m taking time off to be with Ford.”
That was now officially my plan. To be with Ford until he was in kindergarten, one year, then poof, I’d find a great nanny and get back to writing bestsellers.
Ford had fallen in love with Elmo, and when he turned two I decided to hire an Elmo character to come to his birthday party. In all the huge birthday celebrations we’d had for Baldwin, I’d never once considered hiring a life-sized character or any kitschy kid stuff, but I thought Ford would be tickled. On the day of the party, when the six-foot-tall Elmo arrived, Ford screamed in terror. For the entire party, all twenty-five pounds of my boy’s arms and legs were wrapped around my neck and torso with every bit of strength he had. The only other person he’d allow to take him from his monkey pose was Sister, his name for Baldwin.
I should’ve seen the hiring of a Sesame Street character as a sign that I was morphing into someone who would eventually become as constricting as Ford’s grip, but I didn’t. I was happy. Then.
My book, Acting Out, is the story about a woman whose husband leaves her (it appears) for another woman. The story explores how the main character loses her core self, her artist self, when she gives up her career to became a full-time mother and wife. The funny thing was, I didn’t see the novel as being about me at all. After all, I was still writing full-time. I hadn’t yet fallen into the domestic dungeon.
I hired our first au pair, Gosia, who was from Poland, when Ford was two. She’d come to New Jersey to work for another family who, after a few weeks, had sent her back to the agency because she was “too quiet.” The Montclair coordinator, Larissa, with whom I’d been in touch, mentioned Gosia and asked if I wanted to meet her. Larissa brought Gosia over, and after we’d sat and talked for an hour and the kids met her, I decided to give her a try. She turned out to be perfect: a hard worker, loving to the kids, especially to Ford, who adored her. Her easygoing, quiet way was a plus in my mind. She had only a one-year visa and after her year was over, she decided to extend it and stay on with us. All was well for a while. But a few months later, she came to me and said she needed to talk—unusual, because Gosia didn’t talk much. She stood in the kitchen against the counter in front of the toaster and her body started to shake.
“What? What’s the matter?” I asked, concerned that a family member was sick or that she was.
Even though she’d worked prodigiously on her English and had been successful, her accent was still very heavy. Eventually I made out that she was leaving us.
Another family in town, who undoubtedly had heard about how great she was, had poached her. Gosia explained through sobs that she didn’t want to leave, but she couldn’t turn down their gigantic cash offer. She was supporting her parents back in Poland, where the unemployment rate, she said, was 25 percent. I didn’t even attempt to counteroffer when she told me that the family had a private jet.
After Gosia left, I had two more years of au pairs, both from Germany. They were very good, but after their time was up, I decided I wanted the kids to be cared for by someone of color and who spoke Spanish. Not that I hadn’t been comfortable having European nannies. They didn’t have a lot of the race baggage and I had also considered that having European Whites working for us sent an unspoken message to my kids that Black people aren’t always the ones doing the caregiving.
Our next au pair was a brown Spanish speaker from Lima, Peru. She was sweet and cute, and her English was excellent. In order to be an au pair, facility with English has to be above proficient. What I didn’t realize was that, because of the huge caste divide in Latin America, only the upper caste is fluent in other languages. It turned out that our girl was a princess: Her family had several homes, horses, and servants. She had never made a bed or picked up after herself. She had never operated a washing machine and didn’t understand that being an au pair involved more than playing with children, that it also meant cleaning up after them, helping with homework, cooking, doing their laundry.
After two weeks, which included teaching her how to operate a dishwasher, washer, and dryer, and even how to drive (she’d had a license but had never had to use it, because her father had provided her with a car and driver). When she crashed the car into the garage, we sent her back to the agency, and they sent her back home. The timing worked out fine, since I’d recently completed my fourth contracted book and all the book tour promotions. It was time to get out of the au pair business. Instead, I hired Rose, a happy, positive, older woman whose best friend, Jean, was the longtime nanny of one of Baldwin’s preschool friends. The part-time situation was great. Rose was like an Auntie Mame to my kids. She’d dance and sing songs from her home in Jamaica. She cooked like a dream, but as Ford got older and more active, Rose got older and less active. She had a hard time keeping up with him, and eventually told me that she’d have to leave but would stay on until I could find someone.
Then she called in sick, and one day turned to a week, then two. Her heart began to fail quickly. During the third week she went to the emergency room for chest pains and passed away. I didn’t find out until Jean called me with the news. I’d been prepared to lose Rose as a nanny, but not her complete presence. I silently mourned her passing and couldn’t bring myself to tell Ford what had happened to her. For a while, whenever I would head up the hill to my house after my walk in Brookdale Park, I’d remember the smell of curry that would let me know Rose was at my stove, singing and taking and care of not just Ford, but all of us.
Thus began my full-time stay-at-home phase. In the beginning, I loved being able to meet Ford’s school bus every day. We would walk hand in hand down our block, but by the time he was a third grader, he stopped holding my hand. I remember watching him run ahead one day, his thin, longs legs in skinny jeans, leaping over slabs of slate, and I was filled with something so tender and sweet it was a breathing cliché.
I’m an accidental housewife, I thought.
I used to have a career, first as a magazine editor and then as a bestselling novelist. Now this. But it’s not permanent, I told myself, and besides, look at how cute my son is. That smile he gives me as he gets off the bus is so bright that even the jaded bus attendant breaks into a huge grin. I knew how lucky I was to have the freedom to be there when he got home. I decided to continue channeling Donna Reed.
I began to “do lunch,” something I’d never allowed my previous writer self to do because I was losing valuable writing time. I went shopping—lots of that. I tried new recipes; I entertained. It was okay. Ford was now in first grade, and Baldwin was in the seventh. I was hearing the refrain from other stay-at-homes: “When they’re in middle school, that’s really when you need to be there.”
While waiting at Ford’s biweekly tae kwon do lesson, I became pals with a few mommies. The ones whose hair and clothes were too pulled together, I didn’t bother talking to, except for my Puerto Rican girl, Vanessa, who was always turned out with the newest, most coveted designer bags and jewelry. I also became friendly with Tory, a blond former college lacrosse player. Tory had quit her job at iVillage after having two kids and moving to the burbs. After the third one was born, she said that she had to get back to work. She admitted that she was losing her mind
being home all day. Her frankness hit me in the gut. A few weeks later, Tory met a woman, Jane, at a dinner party, and they decided to open a women’s shoe store. Tory Janes stocked cool, comfortable shoes for moms that were not Rockports or Tevas, just hip platforms, heels, clogs, and boots. The store quickly became a success. I was happy for Tory but secretly jealous. I probably already knew at a visceral level that the domestic rapture wouldn’t last.
Family, 2004.
All the same, I was still feeling good. We’d gotten a puppy for Baldwin, whom we named Charlie, and every day, I would walk Ford and Charlie to school. I was consistently happier than I could ever recall being. I had accomplished my list: married a great partner, check; became a novelist, check; had my first child, a girl that I’d wanted with my whole being, check. Then came this lovely bonus baby boy at forty-three (without any fertility support); and for the first time in twenty years I didn’t have a deadline hanging over my head. I had given myself until Ford started kindergarten. I figured after that year was over, Ford would be well settled in school and I’d find a Mabel Perkins—that would be a Black Mary Poppins—to help with the kids and the housework for twenty-five hours a week while I got back to writing bestselling novels. Right? Wrong.
No word of mouth, no agency, no nanny websites, newspaper ads, prayer (my mother’s suggestion) yielded Mabel. When a nanny didn’t materialize, I took that as a sign that I was to stay at home a little longer. I was enjoying it. I told myself that I should give it more time, that my son needed me; Baldwin, who was entering the morass of middle school, needed me. I would rise to the occasion. I would become an über-stay-at-home mom. I ran an after-school writing class at Baldwin’s school; I was the head of the PTA T-shirt committee (of one). At my friend Patti’s urging, I chaired the Montclair Art Museum gala twice, with her as my wingman; I was a group chair in Jack and Jill. I became friends with women whose lives revolved around their children, the ones who know every child her child knows; the ones who run their children’s student council presidential campaigns; the ones who know the details of the elementary-school grading system; the ones who know, by Christmastime, what extracurricular activities their kids will be doing during the summer. These are the mothers who are praised by the principal and the teachers because they are at the school, helping, raising money, giving teachers Staples gift cards. Other mothers listen when they speak. They run school fundraisers like Art in the Park and Green Eggs and Ham and Fun Day. They seemed satisfied. Among them, I felt like a fraud. Baldwin couldn’t have cared less that I was working at her school, while Ford wanted me there as often as the doors opened. This kind of mania of enrichment was not what I’d envisioned when I decided to step off for a minute to be with them. I wanted to show up for them, and I did, but more and more often it was at the expense of myself.
Welcome to My Breakdown Page 8