305 Days
Ada Achebe called herself a “family manager,” which was the updated term for “stay-at-home mom” and far more accurate in describing Ada’s role in life, since she micromanaged her family and everyone around her, whether they liked it or not.
Although it was a weekend, Ada was clocked in for the day, hard at work as family manager, an eternal job she could never clock out of.
She held her screaming son, Ekele, while putting brown rice, spinach, and sun-dried tomatoes into a casserole dish.
For Ada, the best part about being a mother was the impossibility of it all.
Ada was a winner; anything she put her mind to, no matter how challenging, she would master.
She had been valedictorian at Auburn Sinclair.
In her senior year at MIT, she had won the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for inventing a new procedure for filtering water.
She did this while also being an All-American on the women’s soccer team.
And when people would marvel at her accomplishments, she seemed to shrug it off as if it were easy.
Parenting, however, was a feat that, no matter how hard she tried, she could not master.
Thus it gave her an infinite outlet to pour her ambition into.
Chioma sat next to Rhea, drawing doo-doo with brown crayons.
Chioma had recently become obsessed with doo-doo.
Her parents did not know if she’d contracted the obsession from her nanny or her preschool, but she talked about doo-doo ad nauseam, drew it everywhere, and thought it was hilarious.
Rhea also thought doo-doo was hilarious, and this shared sense of humor tightened their already strong bond.
A few months after Chioma was born, Rhea got over her intense jealousy and accepted that Ada was going to take care of Chioma from then on, leaving significantly less space and time for Ada to take care of her first child, Rhea.
And Rhea’s reward for getting over her jealousy was falling madly in love with Chioma.
Which was not difficult because Chichi, as everyone called her, was the most lovable child on earth.
She had kinky hair, deep dimples, and permanently excited brown eyes. She loved hearing jokes of all kinds and would laugh extremely loudly, no matter how mediocre the joke or how predictable the punch line. Rhea would always bring at least one new joke to Ada’s house, knowing Chichi would guffaw.
That evening, Rhea brought, “My love for you is like diarrhea; I can’t hold it in.”
Ada scolded Rhea with her eyes for encouraging Chichi’s fecal fascination, and Chichi laughed so hard she started coughing violently, which made her mother tell her to “slow down and drink some water.”
Rhea could never tell if Chichi understood the jokes she brought over, but it didn’t matter; Chichi would burst into hysterics just knowing they were meant to be funny.
After she was finished slowing down and drinking water, Chichi yelled, “Diarrhea comes outta my butt!” which extracted a laugh from Rhea and a sigh from Ada.
Then Chichi demanded paper and crayons, announcing, “Ahree, I’m drawing doo-doo in my teacher’s pants!”
Chichi had created the nickname “Ahree” when she was first learning to speak, since she could not pronounce “Aunt Rhea.” Rhea’s nickname was coincidentally the reverse of her given name. “Ree-ah” became “Ah-ree,” and with that reversal, she felt initiated into the Achebe-Miller family.
Chichi had not bestowed a nickname upon any of her mother’s other friends.
Ahree was a trusted inner member of the group; Ahree was special.
Ekele, however, did not follow in his big sister’s footsteps and chose to call her “Aunt Rhea,” in an oddly formal tone, another reason the two of them did not quite gel.
“Wow! Your teacher’s pants are so cool!” Rhea exclaimed as she took in Chichi’s drawing.
Doo-Doo in My Teacher’s Pants, crayon on paper, by Chioma Achebe-Miller, looked more like two tree trunks with a brown circle connecting them, but Chichi was still quite young and had plenty of time to develop as an artist.
“I can’t have you do that, baby. We don’t pull Mommy’s hair,” Ada told Ekele as he yanked a fistful of her hair, demanding she stop cooking and play with him.
In Ada’s constant pursuit of mastering motherhood, she devoured every parenting book in existence, as well as all podcasts, TED Talks, and mommy blogs.
During her extensive research, Ada had learned it was not good for children to hear the word “no,” so she was always coming up with new ways of saying “no” without saying “no.” Rhea laughed every time she heard Ada say a new not-no. Some of Rhea’s favorites:
“Do you think you should be drawing on Mommy’s shoes?”
“That spider is not food.”
“Peeing there hurts the rug.”
But the absolute craziest, in Rhea’s opinion, was when Ada would swap “no” for “yes” but add a qualifier: “Yes, you can have gummy bears after you brush your teeth and go to sleep.” But these interactions ultimately did leave the children too confused to have a meltdown, so Rhea could not completely argue with Ada’s madness.
Rhea offered to take over the cooking to relieve her friend, but Ada said Marcus was on his way downstairs to do just that.
“Besides, you’re hanging out with Chichi, and that is a huge help,” Ada added, smiling through the pain of getting scalped by her son.
Rhea suppressed the desire to talk about the Edible Gardener.
She wanted to hear Ada say she was not a crazy stalker in the slightest, and Danny sat next to her at Zoe’s baby shower because he was attracted to her, and scheduling Patricia to come over and give her a quote on a garden bed was a completely sane thing to do, and it would eventually lead to Danny and Rhea’s whirlwind romance.
But over the years, she had become embarrassed when opening up to her friends about her dating life.
She thought it all sounded so trivial compared to their mature, adult domesticity.
She preferred to save it for Topanga General Store, where Louisca would eagerly listen to all the juicy details, perfectly able to relate since he, too, was single.
It did bother her that a twenty-five-year-old was the sole person in her life who could relate to her, but it was what it was.
Rhea did not know how to tell married-mother-of-two Ada that she had a crush on a boy without feeling like she was Ada’s teenage daughter.
Also, she would have had to shout all the Danny details over Ekele’s screams. Rhea was beginning to wonder if Ekele screamed more when she stopped by.
She suspected one of the reasons Ekele was not warming up to “Aunt Rhea” was her uncanny ability to absorb his mother’s precious attention, yet another reason she remained silent.
“Look, Ahree!” Chichi said.
Chichi proudly held up her drawing; her teacher was now spraying diarrhea on a small, unidentifiable brown animal. Chichi’s mother scowled at Chichi’s best friend.
“See what you did?”
“Hey, I didn’t make poop funny. Poop has been funny since the birth of humankind,” Rhea said, and Ada laughed.
“Don’t laugh,” Marcus said, entering the kitchen and taking in the chaos. “We’re trying really hard not to encourage potty humor. And you are sabotaging us.”
He playfully pointed at Rhea, who did her best I’m innocent face.
“That’s the timer, beans are done,” Ada said.
“I got it,” Marcus said.
Since Ekele refused to let Daddy near him, Ada had to hold him while shouting over his screams to Marcus, who was taking over the casserole. Rhea wondered if Ekele would maybe be a little easier to deal with if he heard the word “no” every once in a while.
“You gotta add more water or the rice will be undercooked—” Ada shouted.
“But the recipe says two cups—” Marcus protested.
“No, it’s always a little off—”
“I don’t want rice!” Ekele screamed.
“I doo-doo rice outta my own butt!” Chichi squealed gleefully, and threw her crayon across the room for some reason. The crayon might have left a brown smudge on the wall, but there were so many other smudges that it was difficult to be certain.
As Rhea retrieved the brown crayon, she took in the scene: the family manager juggling her son’s rage and daughter’s defecation deification while overseeing what looked like an unnecessarily complicated Mediterranean casserole.
Ada looked exhausted and at least five years older than thirty-eight.
Every one of her limbs was swollen from pregnancy.
Her husband, who had not carried any of the children inside his womb, somehow looked even worse.
With his black hair turning silver, it seemed as if the darkness of his hair was fleeing and setting up camp under his eyes.
Not to mention his new shaky self-esteem from constantly taking the hit of his children preferring his other half.
Their formerly gorgeous house was a disaster.
Their dishwasher had been leaking for months, and instead of embarking on the odyssey of scheduling a plumber, they’d just stacked a pile of beach towels on the kitchen floor.
Their living room had been taken over by toys.
They’d even gone as far as getting rid of their coffee table to make more room for miniature kitchens and fake workbenches.
Their life was about to get even more impossible with the looming arrival of another untamed human, and yet… Rhea wanted all of it.
It did not make logical sense to long for such a disorganized existence, and yet there she was. And with each passing year, she had to confront the idea that she might never get what she wanted.
She might never have sleepy little voices in her kitchen in the morning, or shiny bellies covered with bubbles in her bathtub in the evening.
She might never pet her child’s soft head on the couch in front of a Christmas tree like her mother used to.
She felt tears hit the back of her eyes and stood up, announcing she had to head home.
“Oh God, yes. Good for you, get outta here, save yourself,” Marcus joked, looking at carefree, single Rhea with envy in his eyes.
“You’re not staying for dinner?” Ada asked.
“Nah, I gotta get home,” Rhea said, kissing Chichi on the top of her head, grabbing her leather Saint Laurent jacket, and borderline running to the door. Every second she stayed increased her chances of breaking down in front of the entire family.
“Okay…well, do you wanna take some lasagna? We made it last night, and we have so much left,” Ada offered, still able to mother Rhea amidst her overwhelming life.
“No, no, that’s okay—Actually, yes,” Rhea said, deciding there was always time for lasagna.